Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Discover extension development best practices, build advanced ERP integrations, and use DevOps tools

Stefano Demiliani, Duilio Tacconi

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789952650
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence
• Index: Business

Develop customized business management solutions with the latest features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Key Features

• Learn Dynamics 365 Business Central, the next generation of Dynamics NAV
• Explore advanced topics for handling complex integrations such as using APIs, OData, and Azure Functions
• Discover best practices for developing SaaS extensions and moving existing solutions to the cloud

Book Description

Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution, which is easy to adopt and helps you make smarter business decisions. This book is a comprehensive guide to developing solutions with Microsoft ERP (in the cloud and also on-premises). It covers all aspects of developing extensions, right from preparing a sandbox environment to deploying a complete solution.

The book starts by introducing you to the Dynamics 365 Business Central platform and the new Modern Development Environment. You'll then explore the sandbox concept, and see how to create sandboxes for development. As you advance, you'll be able to build a complete advanced solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central with AL language and Visual Studio Code. You'll then learn how to debug and deploy the extension and write automatic testing. The book will also take you through advanced topics like integration (with Azure Functions, web services, and APIs), DevOps and CI/CD techniques, and machine learning. You'll discover how Dynamics 365 Business Central can be used with Office 365 apps. Finally, you'll analyze different ways to move existing solutions to the new development model based on extensions.

By the end of this book, you'll be able to develop highly customized solutions that meet the requirements of modern businesses using Dynamics 365 Business Central.

What you will learn

• Create a sandbox environment with Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Handle source control management when developing solutions
• Explore extension testing, debugging, and deployment
• Create real-world business processes using Business Central and different Azure services
• Integrate Business Central with external applications
• Apply DevOps and CI/CD to development projects
• Move existing solutions to the new extension-based architecture

Who this book is for

If you're a new developer looking to get started with Dynamics 365 Business Central, this book is for you. This book will also help experienced professionals enhance their knowledge and understanding of Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Section 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central - Platform Overview and the Basics of Modern Development

In this section, we will introduce you to the Dynamics 365 Business Central architecture (cloud and on-premise) and to the new development platform.

This section comprises the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Overview
• Chapter 2, Mastering a Modern Development Environment
• Chapter 3, Online and Container-Based Sandboxes

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Overview

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is one of the best-in-class pieces of cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application software that's targeted at the small and medium business (SMB) market. The application is based on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, and it is sold through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners.

Potential customers can spin up a trial tenant at any time and/or contact a CSP partner to purchase and assign a per-user license.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Customer perspective: What Dynamics 365 Business Central is, what functional areas it covers, and licensing
• Partner perspective: An overview of Business Central Admin Center and its use
• Microsoft perspective: A deep dive under the technological skin of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
• A future perspective: What to potentially expect in the upcoming years and how to contribute to making it happen

By the end of this chapter, you'll have a clear and in-depth overview of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform.

Understanding the customer perspective

Targeted at SMBs, the core design of Dynamics 365 Business Central relies on Microsoft Azure and the Office 365 platforms. The application's core code and business processes come from the evolution of 30+ years of feature enhancements of Microsoft Dynamics NAV (mostly known as Navision): one of the most solid pieces of on-premise ERP software in the SMB domain.

Potential customers – or those who simply want to give the application a spin—can subscribe for fast setup with a trial version through https://trials.dynamics.com/Dynamics365/Signup/BusinessCentral by providing an email address that's bound to an Office 365 subscription and a phone number. After 30 days, when the trial period ends, the product needs to be purchased.

Official licensing is assigned exclusively through Microsoft Partners that are credited and certified by the CSP program. Simply browse through https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/business-central/overview/ and click on Find a partner under the desired licensing module, as shown in the following screenshot:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central delivers out of the box functionalities in modules with a fixed price per month, per user. There are three types of per user/month choices with different capabilities and application modules: Essentials, Premium, and Team Members. Essentials and Premium are full users, while Team Members are just additional users with limited capabilities.

These are the properties (collection of capabilities) of the Essentials module (from $70 per month):

• Financial management
• Customer relationship management
• Project management
• Supply chain management
• Human resource management
• Warehouse management

These are the properties of the Premium module (from $100 per month):

• Financial management
• Customer relationship management
• Project management
• Supply chain management
• Human resource management
• Warehouse management
• Service management
• Manufacturing

Currently, it is not possible to have a mixed user experience of both Essential and Premium within the same tenant. It is possible to move from the Essential to the Premium module, but you can't downgrade from Premium to Essential. If you have already at least one user licensed as Essential or Premium, it is possible to have an external user added as a named license Team Member within the same module (Essential or Premium).

This is what you get as a Team Member (from $8 per month):

• Essential or Premium (depending on the module of the user that has added the Team Member).
• The ability to consume data or reports, complete light tasks such as time or expense entries and HR record updates, and use PowerApps for Dynamics 365.
• Technically, they might have read access to all the tables but only have insert/update access to a maximum of three tables.

All the details related to the licensing types and what they include are described in the official Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing Guide (the latest review at the time of writing was October 2019), which can be found at https://mbs.microsoft.com/Files/public/365/Dynamics365BusinessCentralLicensingGuide.pdf.

Once the customer gets started with their trial or production tenants, they will be offered a productive, intuitive, and user-friendly web client interface, as shown in the following screenshot:

The best browser experience is offered by Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome.

Customers can also benefit from the universal app deployment type in almost every modern device, such as tablets, phablets, and phones. This is achieved by downloading an app (known as Dynamics 365 Business Central Universal App) from the Windows Store, Google Play, or the Apple Store. To install the mobile app, go to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/install-mobile-app.

Upon opening this website, we get three options for installing the mobile app. You can install it from Microsoft, download it from the Apple Store, or get it from the Google Play Store. The following is a snippet of the screen you'll see when you select to install the app from Microsoft:

At the time of writing, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• About Packt
• Contributors
• Preface
• Section 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central - Platform Overview and the Basics of Modern Development
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Overview
• Mastering a Modern Development Environment
• Online and Container-Based Sandboxes
• Section 2: Developing Extensions for Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Extension Development Fundamentals
• Developing a Customized Solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Advanced AL Development
• Report Development with AL
• Section 3: Debugging, Testing, and Release Management (DevOps)
• Installing and Upgrading Extensions
• Debugging
• Automated Test Development with AL
• Source Control Management and DevOps with Business Central
• Section 4: Advanced Integrations with Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
• Serverless Business Processes with Business Central and Azure
• Monitoring, Scaling, and CI/CD with Azure Functions
• Business Central and Integration with the Power Platform
• Section 5: Moving Solutions to the New Extension Model
• Integrating Machine Learning into Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Moving Existing ISV Solutions to the New Extension Model
• Useful and Proficient Tools for AL Developers
• Other Books You May Enjoy