Directions Asia

April 5, 2019

Dynamics Development Center this year is taking part in the Directions NA and Directions EMEA conferences. Meanwhile, the third large conference – Directions Asia took place recently. What did the participants of the Asian edition of Directions learn about? We will try to describe in this article.

At the beginning it is worth mentioning that this year’s edition of Directions Asia hosted an impressive number of participants, 450 people from 157 companies coming from 32 countries. The conference is a great opportunity for networking, but at the same time one of the main assumptions of each conference is to equip partners with knowledge about news from the world of the Dynamics system. The deadline for the Asian edition of Directions coincided with the release of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central April release , thanks to which the topic about new release took most of the time during speeches.

During the most important speeches, representatives of Microsoft Mike Ehrenberg (technical fellow at Microsoft), Toby Bowers (senior director of the Worldwide Business Application and Industry) and Claus Busk Anderson (Dir. Of Platform Program) highlighted that the most important elements of the latest update is the improvement of efficiency, stability and security. In addition presenters talk about the issue of replacing the Windows client to Modern Client, which is to take place already in the October update, was raised. This change changes the programming tools. As a result, C / AL and C / SIDE will be changed to AL and Visual Studio Code.

The main message during keynote is stability, security and performance.

Stability – telemetry

Telemetry detects errors
Automated, proactive logging of errors

Security
In addition to continual improvement of our security infrastructure and processes, we ensure Business Central continues to meet the following industry security and privacy compliance standards:

ISO27001
ISO270017
ISO27018
SOC 1 & 2 Type 2
HIPPA BAA
FERPA

Efficiency

Tuning performance errors
Telemetry
Longer-term strategic investments in performance features
Performance monitoring

Business Central Admin Center – new functionalities
The Business Central Admin Center is a platform for CSPs that support the implementation of Business Central in the SaaS model. In the April update of the Admin Center there were many new functionalities, eg:

Planning to carry out updates for clients
The possibility of using BC in the test version (multiple sandboxes)
You can set notifications about events that take place in client environments.

The end of C/AL and Windows Client are approaching
April 2019 release to ostatnie wydanie zawierające C/AL oraz Windows Client. Wydanie zaplanowane na październik 2019 będzie opierało się na nowoczesnym kliencie obsługiwanym przez VS Code + AL.

A big part of the conference was devoted to the discussion of the new features introduced together with the April update. You can read more about this topic in Microsoft materials.

The character limit for names and descriptions has been increased
Now you can enter up to 100 characters in the description and name fields. Previously, there was a 50-character limit. This change applies to:
– Name and Description field on master data cards such as: customer card, vendor, item, contact, resource.
– Name and Description field on documents such as sales and purchase orders, invoices and quotes
– Description field on ledger entries, such as customer, ventor and items.
The ability to add multiple elements simultaneously to sales or purchase documents. You can choose the entire product line.
The ability to quickly import photos that correspond to products. Just name photos according to the product name and send them all at once in .zip format
Before you import data from a file created in Excel, you can view it in the preview. At the same time, you will get information if importing data will create a new configuration package or update existing tables.
New keyboard shortcuts have been added:
– Slim/wide page mode (Ctrl + F12)
– Show/hide fact box (Alt + F2)
– Add new item (Alt + N)
– Previous/next navigation (Ctrl + LeftArrow i Ctrl + RightArrow)
Added “autosave indicator” which is displayed on the right side of the card on the screen and changes the value when the data is saved. The indicator can display information: “Saving”, “Saved” or “Not saved”.
Simplified Help and Support experience
Users get easier access to documentation and ask for support.

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