Waldo's Blog

Update for my previous post: The complexity of complex return types . (I could have just updated the post, but since that wouldn’t trigger the people that already read it, I decided to create a small update just to pin your attention to the following.. After a few comments from Marknitek and Dennis Reineck , I realized that I forgot one important ability, that actually makes it (kind of) possible to use the Record-return type, and start looping with a minimum amount of code. The trick is to use the Get/SetView methods. In all honesty, I can’t remember I ever used it. But in this case…

Since Business Central 2021 Wave 1 – v18, if you will – we are able to return about ANY type from a procedure. For many languages, that’s the most normal thing, but for Business Central’s AL language, it was not. So, at the time this was announced, many people were ecstatic and talking about it in sessions, on blog posts, on Twitter and so on. And me as well. In fact, I did a session on the Dutch Dynamics Community , and one for Directions . The one for Directions was recorded and shared on the Directions Community Portal, and you can find the recording here: Webinar Preparing For The Future…

Good news. You’re probably all familiar with the great work Microsoft is doing on providing us a huge set of useful out-of-the-box API’s. No? Well, you can find all the information right here: API(V2.0) for Dynamics 365 Business Central – Business Central | Microsoft Docs For Belgium, these have been useless in many situations though. Simply said: the Belgian localization has some fields that kind of replace default fields (VAT Registration Code). When I contacted Microsoft about it, the statement was simple: The Business Central Default APIs are not localized Microsoft And…

For reasons that are not too important, I am trying to find a way to “describe my custom APIs”. You know. You’re at a project, you had to implement an integration with a 3rd party application, and you develop some custom APIs for it. When done, you have to communicate this to the 3rd party for them to implement the integration, so you need to pass the documentation, and kind of help through “how to use Business Central APIs”, and a description of the responses, requests and possibilities you have with “typical” Business Central APIs. Disclaimer Now, before I continue, let’s make one…

You might have read my post “ Visualize app.json dependencies in VSCode (using GraphViz) ” where I explained “another” way to generate a dependency graph. Another than what? Well – other than the DGML that was just announced on Microsoft’s Launch Event of Business Central 2020 Wave 2 as being “on the drawing board”. Well – today Stefano Demiliani found out that the first bits are already on our system. He did that in his blogpost: “ Dynamics 365 Business Central: creating a DGML dependency graph for your extensions “, for which I don’t really have anything to add. Except for one little…

For a few people, this will be a very “current problem”, for other, that have suffered through years of “unstable” NAS and Job Queue for that matter .. this upcoming blogpost might be interesting. The primary reason for this post is an issue that – after quite some debugging – seemed to be an issue introduced in version 17.4 (and currently also v18.0). But I decided to tackle the issue in a way it’s a bit more generic to deal with “unstable Job Queues” in stead of “just this particular issue”. Disappearing Job Queue Entries Although this post isn’t just about this current bug that haunts…

The last couple of months, there has been quite some questions from ISVs (and especially the “old” ISV’s) on how to register their apps in their specific situations. Just to name a few: I only have OnPrem business – and I want to create a new product. How do I get a new object range? Do I still need to go through the CfMD program to certify my apps? App range? RSP range? What the hell is the difference? With my new app, I don’t want to go to AppSource just yet – but first OnPrem – what do I do? … So .. in short: quite some questions on anything product registration and the obligations…

Recently, in our product, we enabled support for the new “Item References” in Business Central. Basically meaning: when upgrading to the new version of our product, we wanted to: Make sure our code supported the new “Item Reference” table in stead of the old “Item Cross Reference” table Automatically enable the “Item Reference” feature” (necessary, because when your code depends on this new feature, it has to be enabled ;-)). Automatically trigger the data upgrade (which basically transfers all data from one table to the other) Obviously, this is all done using an upgrade codeunit .…

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…