What’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central 26 (2025 release wave 1)

Along with the release plan, Microsoft published a short video Enter and understand your data faster ^↗ to highlight the key changes in the upcoming release:

Below are some changes from the 2025 release wave 1 plan for BC that, in my opinion, are worth noting. The list won’t be short because the release is one of the largest so far and brings with it many very interesting new features, as well as much-desired improvements. So let’s get started!

Global availability

Business Central, with the release of the 2025 release wave 1, will become available in additional countries/regions, bringing the total number to over 180 countries and regions with support for Business Central (link ^↗). This was postponed from the previous release and is now planned for August 2025. We do not yet know which countries/regions will be included.

Beyond the expanding availability, this release marks another step towards the so-called delocalization of Business Central. With the 2025 release wave 1, the localization for the United Kingdom – previously released by Microsoft as the GB version – will become a package of localization extensions for the W1 version (link ^↗). The change is planned for September 2025 as a preview feature and October 2025 in general availability, likely available from minor version 26.5, just before the next 2025 release wave 2 or already in major version 27. It is worth mentioning that the conversion tool will, of course, be delivered by Microsoft.

Among the other changes for the release concerning countries/regions, languages, and available localization packages for BC, I will also mention the ability to narrow down the list of languages from which users can select a language in My Settings. This way, we can, for example, limit the list of languages from all supported by MS to only those for which we actually have language extensions installed (link ^↗).

The 2025 release wave 1 also includes several other changes and enhancements for selected localization versions released by Microsoft, but for details, I refer you to the official release documentation (link at the beginning of the chapter).

Copilot & AI

Let’s start with the features postponed from the previous release. The Chat with Copilot will be able to learn from the extensions installed in BC and respond to questions about custom objects from the extension (link ^↗). This expansion for the Chat with Copilot knowledge is currently planned for June 2025. Summaries is a new skill of Copilot in Business Central, which can generate concise, interactive summaries for records (even based on custom tables and on custom pages) for card or document type pages (link ^↗). This time planned right away for April!

Among the brand-new features, the ability to auto-fill field values using Copilot suggestions (link ^↗). Much like the ability to generate summaries (see above), auto-completion will work on pages like cards or documents and will be based on company data, most frequently used values, AI-generated values, and later on – public information from the Internet. The principles of the auto-filling feature and the summary generation feature are demonstrated in the promotional video (above).

The first AI agent available in Business Central, the Sales Order Agent, will be released in preview in March 2025, with plans for general availability set for June 2025 (link ^↗). ⭐

I wrote a separate post about how the agent works, right after Microsoft announced it last year. Now I can only add that I’ve seen it in action several times (in sandbox environments so far) and it appears to me as the most promising candidate for AI that actually supports and eases the burden on BC users.

As the general availability of the Sales Order Agent is already set, Microsoft has finally informed us about the costs that BC customers will incur when using AI agents and certain Copilot features in Business Central. I write about this in the chapter Environment administration ¶ We already know how AI features in Business Central will be charged.

Hold on! The second agent is coming

But that’s not all about AI agents in this release! The second AI agent for Business Central will be the Payables Agent (link ^↗). In its initial version, agent will be able to monitor an e-mail inbox where our vendors send us invoices in PDF format or a designated folder on SharePoint where accountants or other employees place PDF invoice files for processing. The agent will process the invoice file and create it in BC as an e-document, forward it to the Azure Document Intelligence service for OCR, and provide the OCR result to the user for verification (full-screen PDF view with highlighted identified field values). Finally, based on OCR data, historical purchasing data, accounting settings, the agent will create a purchase invoice in the system, ready for verification and posting. Microsoft announces that in the future the agent will handle increasingly complex scenarios and user-defined processing rules, manage supply chain expenses and match them to open purchase orders, while also supporting e-invoices received through other channels such as PEPPOL or vendor invoices placed in e-documents through the native API.

Another new feature in the release will be the enhancement of matching e-document lines to purchase order lines by Copilot (link ^↗). The improvement involves increasing the accuracy of matches and adding several new capabilities to the matching functionality. I suspect that the aforementioned payable agent will also use this Copilot functionality in the future.

The last of the announced new features of Copilot is suggesting gas emission values in sustainability journal lines (link ^↗). Copilot can estimate total emissions based on descriptions and input parameters, and adjust the emission factor for future use.

Core functionality

Before I move on to the new business functionalities, let’s take a look at improvements in the user interface area. Here we have quite an extensive list of changes. So among the enhancements supporting UX (link ^↗) it’s worth highlighting:

• Updated look of the FactBox panel, which now has rounded corners and makes better use of screen space (smaller margins, better width fitting to the window, used empty space at the top on list-type pages),
• Updated the control for embedded Power BI reports with improved navigation and action buttons, along with a new look,

• Enhanced role explorer and report explorer to display descriptions for each page and report in the form of an extended tooltips,

• Added the option to launch a page or report in a separate window from explorers, allowing multiple pages/reports to be opened simultaneously without closing the explorer itself (I’ve been waiting for this!),

• Added divider between system and application action lists in the context menu on the lists.

Additionally, starting with this release, we will be able to freely adjust the panel width for FactBoxes (link ^↗) within a limited but fairly wide range (without disturbing readability). The content of the FactBoxes will adjust to the width (responsiveness works very well here). This improvement will finally allow comfortable use of FactBoxes that contained lists with a larger number of fields (columns). The width of the FactBox panel for a given page and mode (wide or narrow) will be stored in the browser memory – similar to all other light user interface adjustments (i.e., column width changes on lists, introduced in the previous release).

The above change is also part of a broader range of interface updates aimed at better utilizing screen space by the user interface (link ^↗), both in wide and narrow modes. All users will definitely notice this. After spending a few hours clicking through version 26, these changes aren’t immediately apparent at first glance, but they definitely enhance the user interface experience on different screens. ⭐

As if that weren’t enough, starting with the major version 26 in April, we will be able to view PDF attachments directly in the web client (link ^↗)—similar to how report previews are handled, with the option to download the PDF file directly from the preview window.

New business functionalities

Let’s start with the new feature that I often implemented with my colleagues at Polish clients as a modification and later as an extension. It’s about confirming purchase invoice amounts before posting (link ^↗). If we enable the new feature in the purchasing settings, the user will be required to manually enter the gross amount from the vendor’s invoice and the VAT total (automatically calculated from the gross amount provided above) in the header of the purchase documents. These will be verified with the total from the document lines when we want to post the document. The change aims to eliminate errors during the handling of purchase documents. It’s simple and effective from my experience. This change was previously introduced by Microsoft in the Netherlands localization, but now due to delocalization, it is moving to the global scope. I have already tested this change in the preview version 26, and unfortunately, it does not pass the edge case scenario known, among others, for Polish companies, where the VAT amounts of the vendors’s document are calculated according to a different scheme and/or rounded differently than Business Central does. To achieve documental compliance, you need to overwrite the VAT total for the document in BC by the difference of 0.01. I hope this will be refined.

As part of the Intrastat functionality, there will be an option to enable the requirement of filling in values for certain document fields that are needed for Intrastat reporting (link ^↗). These include fields such as Transaction Type, Transport Method, etc. This change will help eliminate data gaps at the time of posting the document, rather than during report generation.

The functionality of inventory cost adjustment has gained enhanced features for the inventory cost adjustment process (link ^↗). According to Microsoft, the introduced improvements should enhance the performance of the cost adjustment process for large databases and allow easier troubleshooting and monitoring:

• Microsoft identified and eliminated bottlenecks based on telemetry data and code analysis, which should significantly improve the processing speed of inventory cost adjustment tasks,
• Introduced period-by-period adjustments and for selected production and assembly orders for items with a high number of transactions, allowing control over the processing scope,
• Added notifications about potential issues, non-optimal settings, a large number of entries, and data discrepancies,
• A tool for visualizing progress of adjustments has been developed, which helps analyze performance issues and identify inefficient settings,
• Introduced item-by-item adjustments, ensuring that partial progress is saved during lengthy processes to prevent having to start over completely if something goes wrong.

These changes complement the inventory cost adjustment process control capabilities introduced two versions earlier, in the 2024 release wave 1, and they are definitely on my list of the most significant changes in this release! ⭐

E-documents enhancements

Along with this release, Microsoft is also introducing many improvements and new features for the e-document framework. These will certainly increase the usefulness of e-documents in BC. I won’t list all the changes, but among the most important are:

• The ability to export reminders and finance charges as e-documents in the PEPPOL format (link ^↗),
• The ability to preview invoice or credit memo lines during import (before creating and processing the e-document) (link ^↗),
• The ability to process e-documents automatically (a purchase document will be created automatically) or in a 2-step process (link ^↗), where the e-document is created automatically, but you need to use the Create Invoice or Create Order action for the purchase document to be created, allowing you to preview and verify the imported document before the purchase document is created,
• The ability to send e-documents from the application to email and through the e-document service simultaneously (link ^↗),
• Easy removal of incorrect or duplicate e-documents, which reduces the list of unprocessed e-documents and saves data storage space (link ^↗),
• The ability to handle embedded PDF documents in an XML file for both sales and purchase documents sent in the PEPPOL format (link ^↗),
• The ability to share and receive e-documents using API for Power Automate (link ^↗),
• The new interface (abstraction data type, not user/graphical interface) will allow to extend the e-document framework easier with new services and formats for document transfer (link ^↗).

New features and enhancements in the supply chain

And now, fans of the Manufacturing module in Business Central, fasten your seatbelts, because there have never been so many new features and improvements for the manufacturing/production area in the history of Navision → Dynamics NAV → Business Central. There will also be a few other changes in various supply chain/operational areas, but at first glance, it’s clear that with this release, Microsoft has primarily targeted the manufacturing/production area. And how delighted I am because of this! 😁

Let’s start with changes towards better usability of manufacturing functionality in Business Central (link ^↗):

• Prod. Order Component List page receives a FactBox, which will display item information for the selected line and its availability on the planned consumption date,
• We will be able to change production order status in bulk for many selected production orders simultaneously from the production order lists (not just using a batch job) (link ^↗),
• Printing Production Order – Comp. and Routing report will also be possible for multiple production orders simultaneously (for the selected ones) from the production order lists (link ^↗),
• We will also be able to print production orders when creating production orders with Firm Planned status from the planning worksheet (link ^↗),
• The Standard Cost Worksheet can be edited using the Edit in Excel function, which will make it easier to modify values for multiple lines at once (link ^↗),
• Routing Link Code field will now be editable on the Prod. Order Routing List page, allowing for the linking of components to the routing line when adding additional routing lines manually to an already started production order (link ^↗),
• On the Manufacturing Setup page, we will be able to define the default general business posting group for production orders (finally!); a similar setting has also appeared for assemblies on the Assembly Setup page (link ^↗).

Many UI/UX changes have also been introduced around the process of creating/editing production BOMs and routings (link ^↗). Thanks to these changes, users should be able to navigate between windows and functions more quickly. Features like comparing BOM versions or replacing a component in BOM lines have been improved, and BOM lines and BOM version lines can be edited in bulk using the Edit in Excel function.

The Edit in Excel function will also be available from version BC 26 for the Item Journal, Consumption Journal, and Output Journal (link ^↗). If the option to enter item tracking information directly to the line is enabled for the journal instance, the Edit in Excel function will also take this into account and display the appropriate columns in the file.

Version 26 will also introduce the functionality of attachments to production BOMs, routings, production orders, and production order lines. Additionally, a new option visible on the attachment details page will allow you to forward attachments related to the item, BOM, or routing to production order documents (link ^↗). For some reason, Microsoft has not introduced attachments at the component level nor the BOM versions and routing versions.

Consumed non-inventory type items can be included in the calculation of the cost of the output item, both in actual and standard valuation methods of product items (link ^↗). Additionally, in the case of standard costing method and setup with a different BOMs and routings for item in the SKU cards, the standard cost value can also be taken from the SKU card (rather than the main item card) (link ^↗).

The selected item or variant can be blocked so that it cannot be posted from production (link ^↗). This block applies only to output entries, not consumption entries. While the blocked item or variant may appear in planning lines, it will not be possible to create a production order, nor to post documents or journal lines that was created before the block was established. This is a very practical feature if we want to block future production but still want to keep the inventory record unblocked, for instance, to sell off quantities from the stock.

When production transactions have been posted by mistake or we just wish to reverse entries posted on a released production order, now we will be able to cancel the production order by automatically reversing previously posted consumption and production entries as well as entries in related ledgers (link ^↗). If there are subcontractor operations on the order and the subcontractor purchase order has not yet been invoiced, it will be possible to undo it (with Undo Receipt action) and then cancel the order. The order can then be closed despite the absence of production entries (which is also a new feature). ⭐

Going further, finished production orders can be reopened now (link ^↗)! Reopening a finished production order can only be done once. A reopened production order returns to the list of released production orders. ⭐

Another new feature is the manual scheduling indicator on the production order, which will be visible when the start/end dates or due date have been manually modified, and the ability to define safety lead time for manual scheduling (link ^↗). I have mixed feelings about this change, as I may not yet fully understand the value it brings and in which scenarios it would apply. I’m marking this for myself as to check.

A new feature that came to me like a gift from the sky (I happen to need this functionality in my current client project) is the ability to overpick components from the warehouse for a production order (link ^↗). The new functionality will allow selected items to be overpicked for a production order (in a quantity greater than the quantity in the production order component line – the quantity field in the take lines on the warehouse pick document is unlocked for editing), and then it will also allow to overconsume this component in the production order. ⭐

Among the advanced warehouse functionalities integrated with production processes, a new feature is the ability to select a Warehouse Put-away document for production output warehouse handling (link ^↗). Previously, for advanced warehouses, we could only rely on appropriate configuration of to-production bins. Now, we can take advantage of directed put-away locations and generate a Warehouse Put-away document or use a Put-away Worksheet. ⭐

A new consumption flushing method, manual consumption with pick, has been added as an option in the item card and the SKU card (link ^↗). The new consumption flushing method actually replaces the previous manual option for advanced locations. The manual method (without pick) now complements the list of options for cases where items for consumption do not need to be picked from the warehouse (as they are, for example, stored directly on the production line), but still should not be consumed automatically (forward or backward). This can now be set up, even in cases where a warehouse pick is required in the location card. ⭐

Label generation functionalities have been supplemented with labels for the output item (link ^↗). The default Word layout of the report should, of course, be customized to the client’s individual requirements. The new report is based on item ledger entries and allows you to specify in the report options which tracking number should be printed as a barcode.

Regarding changes not directly related to the manufacturing/production area in Business Central, it is worth mentioning:

• Microsoft has added default visibility for many commonly used fields on various page objects, such as: Name 2, Description 2, Work Description, Routing Link Code, Location Code to the Production Order Component List page, Planned Components page and few others (link ^↗),
• Ability for multiple people to post item ledger entries simultaneously (link ^↗) to avoid table lock issues in the item ledger; of course, with some limitations – entries related to G/L entries, which are still posted sequentially (when automatic cost adjustment is enabled), will also be posted sequentially, ⭐
• Change in nomenclature and naming in the new module of subscriptions and recurring billing – such as changing the entity Service Object to Subscription, to avoid mixing the functionalities of this module with the functionalities of the Service Management module (link ^↗),
• Added support for unit cost in subscription lines (link ^↗),
• The ability to enter subscription contract lines manually (link ^↗),
• Functionality for tracking and rebilling has been introduced for quantity changes in subscriptions (link ^↗),
• Added the lines renumbering feature to the project journals (link ^↗),
• The ability to use warehouse documents or inventory documents for different warehouse configurations in purchase orders related to projects (link ^↗), allowing items to be received and automatically consumed for the project,
• Ability to invoice multiple Posted Service Shipments on a single Service Invoice (link ^↗),
• The page for document layout settings for a given customer has been enhanced with the ability to define layouts for documents in the service management area (link ^↗).

Sustainability functionality enhancements

Sustainability and carbon footprint management area in Business Central is continuously being enhanced with new functionalities with every single release. When the module was introduced in BC a few versions ago, it only included basic capabilities for recording events in a separate ledger. With each subsequent version, the functionality is becoming more comprehensive and more integrated with the rest of the system. Here are the changes Microsoft announced to introduce in the latest release in the Sustainability module:

• Sustainability data will be able to be posted from the general journal level (link ^↗), meaning there is no need to post a separate sustainability journal for the same transaction/document,
• Default sustainability account number and default emission values support has been added to various pages in the system (the relevant fields have appeared in: G/L account card, item card, item categories, resource card, work center/machine center card) (link ^↗),
• A new type of entries has been added – sustainability value entries for scope 3, which are automatically created at the time of posting a purchase invoice for items and during the revaluation procedures later on (link ^↗).
• Sustainability value entries can be used in production area processes to calculate the value of emissions based on purchasing data and add emissions from production processes (link ^↗),
• The ability to record carbon footprint calculations for scope 3 in transfer orders and assembly orders (link ^↗),
• Automatically calculated average emission value of scope 3 has been added to the sales lines on sales documents (link ^↗), though this data has not yet been added to the printouts.
• A new category for emissions ranges – Out of Scope has been added, which can be used when we are unsure which range the emissions should be assigned to (link ^↗).
• The functionality of the Sustainability module has been expanded to include water consumption and waste management. New categories and new emission value fields have been added to the system (link ^↗).
• The ability to define taxonomy elements for mapping sustainability ledger entries in preparation for CSRD (ESRS) reporting and other standards in the future (link ^↗),
• The ability to use integrated ESG reporting in Business Central with the Project ESG Reporting Power App (in preview) (link ^↗), which is part of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability product,
• Option to generate a preparation report for CSRD reporting in the case of the absence of direct ESG integration (link ^↗).

Shopify integration

Integration with the well-known e-commerce platform is continuously being developed. As part of this release, Microsoft will prepare the following improvements for integration with Shopify:

• Support and synchronization of Shopify sales channel functionality with the option to select channels where new products should be automatically published from Business Central (link ^↗),
• Expansion of data import/export between Business Central and Shopify with Shopify metafields and the ability to map standard or custom Business Central fields to Shopify metafields (link ^↗),
• Expansion of data import/export for Shopify B2B with companies and companies locations data based on tax identifier and payment terms based on mapping (link ^↗),
• New page with a list of skipped records during export to Shopify will help identify data export issues from Business Central (link ^↗).

However, with Shopify releasing a new version of the API every three months and supporting each version for a period of 12 months, the connector for the version from the 2025 release wave 1 will use the new API published by Shopify in January 2025 (link ^↗).

Reporting

As part of the ongoing efforts over several releases to redesign and enhance the reporting system in Business Central, the 2025 release wave 1 announced:

• Ability to use report metadata and report request metadata when creating layouts in MS Word (link ^↗),
• Validation of Word layouts directly from the report layouts list page to identify any layout errors (link ^↗),
• New column definition templates for Financial Reports for use with balance sheet and income statement in two versions (annual comparison and quarterly breakdown of the current year), as well as two additional column definition templates and two new reports for the NA (North American) location (link ^↗),
• Additionally, the functionality of Financial Reports has been expanded with new features and capabilities (link ^↗), such as: the ability to hide empty rows, print in portrait mode, add a description to the report, report header, and footer, save Excel templates in BC, use a new column type month to date, and more…
• The ability to add fields from related tables in analysis mode (link ^↗), which I definitely rank among my TOP features in this release, ⭐
• Revamp, expansion, and reporting improvements in the manufacturing/production area in Business Central (link ^↗), which includes: an updated Power BI app with new KPI indicators and support for additional scenarios, reworking analytical reports into Excel-layout reports, and listing reports into Word or Excel-layout reports; marking some reports as obsolete (with the removal date from BC set for the 2027 release wave 1), while all reports have a replacement in the form of a new or enhanced analytical report with an Excel layout or with Power BI report, all reports are now thoroughly documented on Microsoft Learn, including an article on production data analytics in Business Central, ⭐
• The area of subscription and recurring billing receives a dedicated Power BI application with data analytics from this module (link ^↗), which includes 11 reports, detailed reports, KPI indicators, and a shared semantic data model,
• Enhanced analytics for Sustainability module in Business Central (link ^↗), where a new version of the Power BI application is added to the existing comprehensive Excel-format reports for this module, featuring new KPIs and support for new scenarios, and additionally, all reports for the module will be documented in Microsoft Learn.

Environment administration

Starting from this release, it will be possible to update an existing sandbox environment to the nearest preview version (link ^↗). Microsoft provides a preview version a few weeks before the release of each new major version. Until now, we had to create a new production environment and select the preview version from the list. From September 2025 (the planned date for this feature), we will be able to update an existing sandbox environment to such version to check how the update affects the data, whether new features cause any errors in our environment, and whether our extensions are indeed compatible with the upcoming version.

If that weren’t enough, our arsenal for checking the compatibility of our environment and extensions with the upcoming version of BC will be further strengthened by the ability to display a compatibility report for extensions with the upcoming version of BC directly from the Business Central admin center (link ^↗). Until now, only notification recipients and resources registered in the Azure Application Insights service could receive information about the extensions compatibility.

The Business Central client application will be able to emit to telemetry the exceptions occurring within installed client add-ons, applications, and extensions (link ^↗), which complements the data reported to BC telemetry.

The new release adds support for MultiSubnetFailover (a feature available in SQL Server Multi-Subnet Clustering) (link ^↗), which will allow for faster failover between cluster nodes for large on-premises Business Central installations using HA features in one or multiple subnets.

Support for IPv6 protocol in Business Central services will finally be added in the 2025 release wave 1 (link ^↗). This will allow for seamless adaptation and migration from IPv4 to IPv6 when needed… 2025, the year of IPv6? Probably not yet.

Furthermore, as part of environment management, the Business Central admin center API is being further developed, and with this release, it will receive a connector for Power Platform! (link ^↗) The connector will allow the automation of administrative tasks such as creating an environment, copying an environment, scheduling environment updates, or integrating the environment with other systems using Power Platform products, including Microsoft Copilot Studio.

We already know how AI features in Business Central will be charged

Some AI services and features in Business Central, such as the Sales Order Agent, will generate a cost in the form of Microsoft Copilot Studio messages 💸. Linking a BC environment in the Business Central admin center with a Power Platform environment will allow AI agents and some Copilot features to use the prepaid Microsoft Copilot Studio message budget and the billing policy from the connected Azure subscription (link ^↗). What does this mean for the wallets of clients interested in using agents? What are the costs of sending 1 message and how many such messages are sent by the AI agent? I will soon provide details on usage, pricing, and estimated costs in a separate article.

Development & AL

In the field of the AL language, the development environment, and the AL runtime environment, the list of announced changes is also substantial. I warn you right away that you will not find info about all the changes below as not all changes could be documented yet (also, for deep-dive check the AL Language Changelog ^↗). Let’s start, with a chain gun, with changes and new features in the AL language itself:

• New method ToText for simple data types (BigInteger, Boolean, Byte, Date, DateTime, Decimal, Duration, Guid, Integer, Label, Time, Version) will allow for quick conversion of values to plain text (link ^↗); for advanced conversion options, FORMAT should still be used,
• The new parameter for the IncStr method will allow for increasing or decreasing the number within the string by a specified value (it doesn’t necessarily have to be an increment or decrement by 1) (link ^↗),
• Known from other programming languages, the support for the continue keyword is being added to the AL language (link ^↗); continue will allow interrupting the current and invoking the next iteration of the loop – previously, we only had break, which, however, interrupted the entire loop and exited it,
• Up until now, we had to write very long string values in a single line of code, which made it difficult to read and search the contents of this string later on – with this release, we can write multiline values for strings, by preceding the value with the @ symbol (link ^↗),
• Lists and dictionaries (as data structures in AL code) can also be used in relation to interfaces (link ^↗), allowing for even greater flexibility and power for solutions utilizing interface-based abstraction, ⭐
• Support for the JSON format has been expanded with the ability to read and write YAML data using JsonObject (link ^↗), enabling manipulation of YAML data in the same way and with the same JsonObject API methods that have been used for JSON data; and finally, the data can be written out again as YAML,
• Next, new overloaded GetValue methods have been introduced for JsonObject or JsonArray (link ^↗), such as GetBoolean, GetInteger, GetDecimal, GetText, etc., which will simplify access to JSON data from the AL API level,
• The introduction of new features for intercepting HttpClient calls will allow for mock outbound HttpClient calls for unit testing purposes (link ^↗); in the new TestHttpRequestPolicy property for codeunits, we will specify how outbound HTTP requests should be handled by the HttpClient call handling functions (HttpClientHandler).

Additionally, the AL runtime will verify server certificates used during calls to external web service endpoints from HttpClient objects (link ^↗). External service certificate validation will be enabled by default, but appropriate properties have been added to HttpClient to allow AL to selectively disable certificate validation. Issues with connections to external services caused by certificate discrepancies can be reviewed from telemetry. Certificate validation will be available to enable or disable from the Feature Management page, although it will be mandatory from version BC 27 onward.

The view layer is equipped with a new type of page specifically for embedded Power BI reports (link ^↗). It will significantly improve navigation through the report, making it more user interface-friendly.

We will also be able to modify the CardPageId property on page extensions (link ^↗). This will allow to set card page identifier for list or listpart type pages, where the property was not set by default, or to change the standard card page for a list to another one. Until now, the CardPageId property was uneditable for page extensions.

When adding a page action that runs an object using RunObject, if no values are provided for properties such as Caption, Tooltip, AboutText, and AboutTitle, the action will adopt the description values from the target object specified in RunObject (link ^↗).

Here’s an interesting feature. Ability to calculate values only for FlowFields that are visible on the page (link ^↗). Until now, a FlowField with the property Visible = false; was not displayed on the page, but its value was still calculated—often unnecessarily, using resources and thereby reducing performance. Starting with the 2025 release wave 1, we will be able to control this behavior and simply disable the calculation of invisible FlowFields from the feature management list page.

New properties ObsoleteState and ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets have been added to the report layout (link ^↗). The first can be used to indicate that the layout is marked as obsolete and will be removed in future versions of the extension (the value is visible on the report layouts list page). The second property allows us to override the value set globally for all report layouts in the report object, so that we can apply Excel layouts with multiple sheets in the selected layout without disrupting the operation of other single-sheet layouts for the same report.

At the request of developers, PDF post-processing capabilities for reports have been added (link ^↗). Developers will be able to: append a list of PDF documents, attach a list of documents to be embedded in the PDF file, set an administrator and user password for the file.

Enhancements for developing with Visual Studio Code

Among the improvements in working with Visual Studio Code, a feature was added to generate a launch.json file directly from the Business Central web client (link ^↗). The action to generate a launch.json file specifically for a given environment is available on the help and support page, as well as on the extension management list page.

Furthermore, from the web client and the list of installed extensions, we will be able to select one or more extensions that we want to open/attach to the project in Visual Studio Code (link ^↗). Depending on the permissions and access to the extension’s source, they will be attached to the project as symbols or their source code will be included.

Visual Studio Code will be able to search and navigate through AL objects contained in downloaded symbol packages (.app) (link ^↗). This change also allows the use of symbols as context when using GitHub Copilot, to receive better suggestions based on existing code. ⭐

Enhancements in extensions management

The extension card page available from the extension management list in the Business Central web client has been enhanced with information from the build property defined in the application’s manifest file (app.json) (link ^↗). The ability to add information about the source and build of application created as part of DevOps pipelines was introduced in the 2023 release wave 2: Track source and build metadata on extensions ^↗.

Ability to transfer tables and/or fields with data from one extension to another (link ^↗) will be particularly useful in cases where we’d like to break down a monolithic extension into several smaller ones, or simply separate some functionalities into a separate app. As a consequence and result of the development of a given extension, I think this need arises quite often. This capability was previously available for first-party, Microsoft extensions, and now it will also be accessible for Partner extensions. ⭐

Finally, there’s a change in the process of providing application keys when publishing an extension in AppSource. Applications can access keys stored in Azure Key Vault automatically during the publication process (link ^↗), which should speed up and further automate the extension publishing process in AppSource.