Tuesday, April 14, 2020
As you probably know, Microsoft released the major version of Business Central 2020 wave 1 on 1 April 2020. In this blog post, we will highlight the main features and functionalities of the latest release and discuss how 1ClickFactory can help Microsoft partners move forward and reap the benefits of the new version.
Business Central Team Lead at 1ClickFactory, Jonas Mikalkėnas, reviews the most important features and functionalities of the latest Business Central release for SaaS deployment.
Changes that are finally here with Business Central SaaS 2020 release wave 1
With Business Central 2020 release wave 1, Microsoft increased regional availability in six more countries and made the solution available in Columbia, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Peru, and Slovenia. Two further localizations, in Brazil and India, are planned for the Business Central 2020 release wave 2. This is good news for the solutions waiting for Business Central localizations in their regions to migrate from on-premises to Business Central SaaS.
The other big change is the possibility to migrate standard data from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2019 Spring Release ("14.00") directly to Business Central SaaS without the need to upgrade to the higher on-premises version as it was before. This simplifies the upgrade process.
With the new release, the Modern Client features were enhanced, such as:
- Enabled non-interactive printing in the cloud
- Possibility to disable Excel export
- Ability to import profiles and UI customizations
- Faster page load time
- Enhanced UI and navigation features
These enhancements will help Modern Client users to boost the efficiency of day-to-day operations. For the Windows Client users it will increase motivation to upgrade, as with each new Business Central release the Modern Client has more and more new features making it equally as good as the Windows Client.
For developers, the latest Business Central release introduces many new AL development features, such as:
- Ability to refactor a field from a table to a table Extension
- Access to camera/location APIs
- Obsolete tag property
- Other features such as AL interfaces, multiple variable declarations, etc.
This will help to increase developers' flexibility when creating new features as Extensions.
It is also important to mention that with the latest release Business Central Admin Center was enhanced with long-awaited features, such as:
- Possibility to manage apps
- Possibility to manage and cancel sessions
- More user-friendly environment list
- Additional information fields
- Possibility to contact support directly from the Admin Center
From now on, administrators will have a much more convenient tool for SaaS administration.
There are many more new features and improvements of the latest Business Central release and all of them help organizations to increase adoption of Business Central SaaS and digitally transform their businesses to achieve more.
Business Central Team Lead at 1ClickFactory, Ugnius Ignatavicius, reviews the latest Business Central release and explains how 1ClickFactory can help Microsoft partners to move forward with less risk and more profit.
The Base App code clean-up in Business Central 2020 release wave 1
When comparing the Base App code of Business Central 2019 release wave 2 and 2020 release wave 1, we discovered that in the most recent version AL coding language, Base App code is not fully clean yet. The clean-up of “CodeCop” warnings in the Base App is still being done since the 2019 release and we think Microsoft will focus on it in future releases. In the 2020 release wave 1, there are a lot more clean-up changes; over 3,000 objects have been changed and many parentheses were applied, but a lot more work needs to be done to have a fully clean and “CodeCop” warning free code. There are still 50k+ warnings in the 2020 release wave 1 Base App that are gradually decreasing with each new version.
The good side of it is that a fully clean code in the Base App will have fewer warnings and therefore code will be simpler and more AL friendly and readable. Because of that, the upgrade of modifications in the Base App will be less troublesome in the future (until Microsoft allows modification of the Base App in on-premises versions).
The bad side of it is that when merging Business Central 2019 release wave 2 Base App modifications to 2020 release wave 1 Base App, the number of merge conflicts could increase which will increase the object upgrade price.
In order not to be impacted by the code clean-up, 1ClickFactory recommends having the solution as an Extension only. In such a case, during an upgrade process, the Base App can be switched by publishing your Extension to the new version and skipping the merge process.
The major Base App changes in Business Central 2020 release wave 1
Besides the clean-up, there are also functionality improvements in the most recent Business Central release, such as:
- Improved “Reservation” functionality as all “Posting Codeunits” which use reservations functionality have related changes.
- “Template” functionality has been centralized. Because of that, when upgrading customer solutions to the most recent Business Central version with the changes in “Vendor templates” and “Customer templates”, additional reimplementation effort will be needed to avoid future errors. At the moment, the old functionality works with “Obsolete - Pending” objects and shows warnings where code must be updated in the Extension.
- “Price”, “Cost”, and “Discount” functionality has been also centralized and updated with the new “Interface” objects. The additional reimplementation effort will be needed during an upgrade if the customer solution has changes in “Resource”, “Job”, “Item”, “Sales”, and “Purchase” functional area objects - in “Price”, “Cost”, and “Discount” calculations.
Due to the above-mentioned changes, there are more “Obsolete State – Pending” objects in the Base App code of Business Central 2020 release wave 1, which affects the Base App upgrade process and price.
How will the major Base App changes in Business Central 2020 release wave 1 affect the upgrade price?
If the solution is not yet in the Extensions and has the above-mentioned changes in the standard objects, the upgrade to Business Central 2020 release wave 1 price will increase by around 5% - 15% compared to the upgrade price to Business Central 2019 release wave 2. This will happen because object upgrade and data migration will cost more.
On the other hand, if you transition the solution to an Extension only, targeting the most recent Business Central version, the price could decrease. This is due to having more Standard Event Publishers that allow you to easily move customizations over to Events without the need to do costly reimplementation work. In addition, the Base App has “enum”-type objects that help to solve reimplementation work with custom added options in standard fields. Microsoft has released around 500+ new Standard Event Publishers and 120+ “enum”-type objects with the latest Business Central release.
Besides, once you have Business Central as an Extension, with the 1ClickFactory Extension Maintenance subscription you won‘t have to worry about future upgrades anymore. 1ClickFactory will update code and make it compatible with each latest Business Central version allowing Microsoft partners to maximize business activities and maintain a large number of customers.
To find out how much it will cost to upgrade the solution to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2020 release wave 1, to simulate various upgrade options to see a change in price and to figure out what would be the fixed monthly extension maintenance costs, visit 1ClickFactory’s Upgrade Analyzer. The estimates are available for Microsoft Dynamics partners within 5 business days entirely free.