Technical code changes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 release wave 2

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Reading time: 7 minutes

October 1^st is the official release day of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 wave 2 (version 19). To find out more about the new functionalities of this release wave, read the Microsoft documentation. You can also review features that have been moved, removed, or replaced in this release here. In addition, to know more about the latest code changes and to easily onboard the new capabilities of new release, read this blog post.

Still pending ObsoleteState functionality which remains from previous Dynamics 365 Business Central releases

There are still pending ObsoleteState functionalities remaining from Business Central 2019 release wave 2 (version 15):

• Microsoft invoicing is not supported in Business Central.
• Id GUID fields are replaced by “systemID” or “systemLastModifiedAt” fields.

There are also still pending ObsoleteState functionalities remaining from Business Central 2020 release wave 1 (version 16), including Sales Prices functionality. Sales Prices are replaced by the new implementation of price calculation (this can be enabled in Features). This is a very big change and when it is released, it will cause Breaking Changes in most solutions. The other pending functionality in Business Central version 16 is a smaller change: Customer Templates is replaced by General Templates.

There are quite a lot of pending ObsoleteState functionalities still remaining from Business Central 2020 release wave 2 (version 17):

• User Tasks functionality in RoleCenters is replaced with User Tasks Activities part.
• Requests to approve activities in RoleCenters are replaced with Approvals Activities part.
• Assembly Quotes are being re-implemented (old functionality is still left).
• TableType=Temporary property will be used for “Buffer” Tables. Pending ObsoleteState is placed as a warning to make sure this table does not store any data.
• Cross-Reference No. is replaced with Item Reference No.
• SMTP Emails are replaced with Email Accounts.
• Functionality that is moved to system application as well as duplicates are marked as pending.
• Add Attachments in email items are marked as pending.
• Assisted Company setup Wizard functionality is moved to other places.
• Empty pages are marked as pending.
• All .NET run onclients codeunits and functions were reviewed by Microsoft and became obsolete (EditWordReportLayout, EditRDLC Report Layout).
• Isolated Storage was introduced to store passwords.
• Native objects will be removed.
• Production order has started to use datetime instead of time.
• Microsoft Social Engagement has been discontinued.

There are a lot of pending ObsoleteState functionalities still remaining from Business Central 2021 release wave 1 (version 18). None of them have been removed yet:

• “Customer Document Nos.”, “Finance Charge Memo Nos.” and other Nos. reports will be removed because they are not used frequently.
• DotNet Regex used codeunits became obsolete as that functionality was centralized to Regex Module.
• File management codeunit was reviewed by Microsoft and 27 procedures which use “Client files” or use DotNet variables “RunOnClient” are not working and will be removed in the future versions.
• API version beta will be deprecated, and our recommendation is to use v2.0 of the standard APIs.
• New functionality is implemented in “Sales Price” area such as Price Lists, therefore more code in “Sales Price” is obsolete.
• “Legacy GL Entry Locking” option is being removed.
• Field lengths are increased with the introduction of new fields.
• Intelligent Cloud Insights is discontinued.
• Settings from activities pages are moved to top right corner of RoleCenters.

New pending ObsoleteState functionality in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central version 19

In addition to the remaining ObsoleteState functionality from previous updates, new ObsoleteState functionalities are accumulating in the code as well:

• Retention policy module was introduced in System Application in Business Central version 18. Actions which were deleting records are marked as pending and made “visible – false”.
• Outlook functionality which works with AUTHv1.0 is marked as pending.
• List action in Card and Card action in List page types are marked as pending, because native functionality already has these functions.
• Smartlist functionality is being removed.

Overall, we calculated the following numbers of pending ObsoleteState functionalities:

All pending ObsoleteState functionality from Dynamics 365 Business Central indicates that that functionality will be removed in the future. Considering that there are so many pending ObsoleteState functionalities in Business Central version 17, and Microsoft’s policy is to leave pending functionality at least one year, I predict that Business Central version 20 may have substantial changes. To avoid disruption, review your solution code now and plan the adjustments that will be needed when those functionalities are removed.

Removed ObsoleteState functionality in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central version 19

262 functionalities are removed entirely in Dynamics 365 Business Central version 19. If those functionalities are used in your solution code, it will cause errors in the new release, and you must adjust the code to deploy the solution. The removed functionalities are:

• CRM tables (that were marked as pending in Business Central 16) have removed Option fields and added Enums instead.
• “Picture” blob field is removed in Customer table because it has been replaced by “Image” datatype “media” field, which was marked as pending in Business Central version 15.
• “TempBlob” table is removed and replaced with BLOB Storage module. It was marked as pending in Business Central version 15.
• Power BI Report table fields were extended to a bigger field. They were marked as pending in Business Central version 16.
• WhatsNewNotified table was removed as it was replaced by “Temporary solution”. It was marked as pending in Business Central version 16.
• Item Reference functionality in all standard places is updated to use new functionality, and it is automatically enabled. It's still pending in ObsoleteState, but as all the new functionality currently works already, and data has been migrated to the new field, I consider the old functionality is removed. It was marked as pending in Business Central version 17.
• Primary key is changed in table “ConfigFieldMapping”. This table is removed and a new table with an updated key has replaced “Config. Field Map” in all references. It was not marked as pending in previous versions.

The overall changed code count

 The following are the biggest changes in Business Central version 19:

• A huge amount (443) of Option fields were replaced by Enum objects.
• 506 procedures were removed, many of which were already referring to the new standard function. If one of those procedures was used in your solution code, it will cause Breaking Changes.
• Preprocessor symbols are being used more often and will be encountered more often in the future. Right now, this symbol is used in 1105 places in the code, which means this code will be removed in the future.
• Two more Interfaces were created in this release.

Overall, comparing the five latest Dynamics 365 Business Central versions, I counted the following code changes:

If you are interested in learning more about the latest code updates, register for my webinar.

To learn more about Breaking Changes in the new and upcoming releases, what to expect and how to adapt, join Andrius Cyvas session in Directions EMEA this year.

And if you are considering upgrading Dynamics NAV/365 Business Central solution to Business Central 2021 release Wave 2 and would like to know how much it will cost, check out 1ClickFactory’s Upgrade Analyzer. It’s free and available for all Microsoft Dynamics partners!