Waldo's Blog

I haven’t exactly blogged much lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been active for or in the community. You might have seen my previous blogpost for example, where I explored the wonders of streaming (which is for a near future to pick up, by the way ;-)), I also have contributed a few sessions on a few occasions. One of these occasions was “ Dynamics Con ” – a free conference that was organized for the second time. You might remember my blogpost about it of when it was completely new: New Upcoming Conference: DynamicsCon . I’d like to highlight some points of my session in this post. You…

Not too long ago, I asked about opinions on whether I should just keep blogging, or if I should also jump on the streaming-wagon like many already did .. and start streaming content about business central. In fact, that poll is still on my website, and today, it says this result: So, a vast majority isn’t really waiting for me to bring out any streaming videos :-). But .. in all honesty .. I was too curious to try out this streaming thing as well – and in my opinion, I do think that some topics are more useful to stream about, than it would be to blog about. So .. for testing…

For a long time, we have been looking for a solution to be able to set up a docker environment, and then download the necessary apps from AppSource . Why? For different reasons. Like, to set up a development environment . I know we can do that in an online sandbox, but .. we’re already doing this on docker for OnPrem development, so if we could simply set up dev environments for any kind of development we do – in a uniform way – including for SaaS development – well, docker would be my choice. I mean: a developer shouldn’t care where the app ends up – he just needs to create his feature…

Here’s a short post with a small tip about something a lot of you probably already know. How’s that for an intro . If you remember these posts: Getting not-out-of-the-box information with the out-of-the-box web client Check Customer License in an OnPrem db – from the web client Then you know there’s quite a lot of information .. just under your fingertips of the web client. And that’s also the case for API information . Because really .. figuring out het available API’s in your system isn’t that easy at first sight. It is easy when you know where to look, though. Well…

It’s that time again! Recently, Microsoft released their plans for the next major version for Dynamics 365 . Quite some time ago, I started with commenting on that (I actually did that because one of the features at that point (being “code customized base app”), was something that I felt needed some criticism (and still do, by the way ;-))). So, by matter of tradition – and it being a good way for me to get myself informed – let’s go through the points, and give some comments or extra information (if any). Is this post useful? May be not – you can just stop reading and get all the…

I’m not writing a blog about every single (new) command in my “CRS AL Language Extension” . But this Sunday, I added an interesting one. One that I should have had created for a long time – but simply didn’t think of it, until Daniel ( TheDenster.com ) explicitly asked for it on GitHub. Just imagine, you’re building an app, with many pages, and you want to build a page, test it, build the next one, test it .. . You kind have to: – Publish the app – Run the object after the app was published The request was simple: combine both steps in one command in VSCode: Publish & Run Current Object …

This is my first post of 2021, so I’d like to take the opportunity to wish all of you all the best, all the health, all the safety, and .. may we finally meet again in person in 2021 ! I’d be very happy to have much less of this: And more of this: Anyway ;-). Let’s get to the topic.. I got an internal question from our consultants on how they are able to access the license information of the customer for an OnPrem customer. There are a few scenarios where that’s interesting. Just to check which license is in production. Or how many objects or users did they buy. Well …

You might already have seen my session on DynamicsCon about Design Patterns. During that session, I mentioned a tool “mdAL”. If not .. well, here it is (starting at the mdAL part): This tool has seen some major updates – time to blog about it. ;-). Disclaimer I am not the developer of this tool – so not a single credit should go my way. The main developer of this tool is Jonathan Neugebauer, a German genius who made this for his master thesis, and who is putting this out there for free for us to benefit from. And I promise: we can benefit from this .. a lot! I just discovered…

You might wonder: why would I need this? Why would I need to download source code of Business Central, while I can simply access it through the symbols when I’m working in VSCode – or even better, while I can simply click the symbol, and look at the code from there? Well … Searchability Didn’t you ever wonder: “hey, previous version, this codeunit was still in this app – where is it now”? Or something in the line of: “Where can I find an example of a test-codeunit where they create and post picks”? In the old days, it was easy to get to the source code. It was simply an “export all…

Quite honestly, I’m fully into the process of getting our apps (about 30 of them) to AppSource. We chose to have OnPrem implementations first, basically to get the experience, and also because it just still sells better in Belgium (immediate market ;-)). Anyway .. Recently, there was a call with Microsoft with the topic “what to do in order to pass technical validation”. Given my current state – quite interesting to me, obviously ;-). It was a very good presentation from Freddy, with a clear overview of how Microsoft handled it in the past, how it’s handling it now .. and what to expect in the…