AL Development in Business Central – Part 2 (Install VS Code + AL Dev Extension)

In order to customize or extend Business Central you need the AL Language Extension and Visual Studio code. To get started with AL follow these steps:

Download Visual Studio Code and install it (I used version 1.44). After downloading, run the setup, Next, Next, Next, Next, Install and VS Code is installed in a few seconds.
Download AL Language Extension by clicking on Install. In the popup screen now click on Continue. Now click Allow to open the al file in VS Code.

Tip: on the BC Application Server the extension is also available but VS Code won’t update it automatically. A big advantage of downloading the extension is that VS Code will automatically update it if there are updates.

Open AL file in VS Code from the browser (Internet Explorer)

VS Code is now opened with the Extension you selected. Now click the green Install button.

Install AL Language extension for VS Code

After installing select AL as the File Icon theme:

Select File Icon Theme

Now that this extension is installed you can get started. Basic functionalities at your disposal:

• IntelliSense (Ctrl+Space) for editing, syntax highlighting, formatting
• Type AL:Go! in the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P)
• Support for snippets to easily create objects like code units, pages, etc.
• Support for finding all references (Shift+F12) to list all instances of a specific symbol
• Added native support for using HTTP and JSON types to access Azure functions and other Web Services
• Use Ctrl+F5 to deploy to the current development instance and use F5 to deploy and debug
• Use Ctrl+Alt+F5 to perform rapid application development (RAD) and use Alt+F5 to perform RAD and debugging

More information about developing in AL can be found on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/

AL Development in Business Central – Part 1 (High Level Steps)

Because we are working from scratch to create an extension, the following steps should be performed. And before going in detail in my opinion it’s important to first understand what we are really going to do before the ‘how’. In high level the following steps are going to be explained:

Part 2 of this series:
* Open VS Code (with the AL Language extension installed)

Part 3 of this series:
* Run AL:Go!
* Specify server connection in json file
* Download symbols
* Write AL code
* Publish

Part 4 of this series:
* Explain more in detail the configuration files (app.json and launch.json) we used in Part 3.

Part 5 of this series:
* How to create a table-extension

Part 6:
* How to create a page extension

In the upcoming posts I will focus more on these high level steps.

How-to Upload the FLF license file

Run the ‘Business Central Administration Shell’ as Administrator. You can find this ‘tool’ on the server where the Business Central Server Instance is running. It looks like this:

Now type:

Export-NAVServerLicenseInformation -ServerInstance BC160

to view the current license information:

If you have a new license file you can upload this by using the Cmdlet:

Import-NAVServerLicense -ServerInstance BC160 -LicenseFile "C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\BC16License.flf"

Finally, restart the service mentioned. In this example this is BC160. This can also be accomplished by PowerShell:

Set-NAVServerInstance -ServerInstance BC160 -Restart

Please take into consideration that all users, services connected to this service will lose the connection to BC16 (Business Central 2020 Wave 1). Don’t run this cmdlet in a production environment if you don’t know what the real impact is!

How-to Start BC16 Client (Business Central 2020 Wave 1)

If you’ve managed to install BC16 (Business Central 2020 Wave 1) like I wrote in my previous post the next step is to check if everything is ‘really working’ by starting the client. Start the web browser and go to http://localhost:8080/BC160/ on the machine where you also performed the installation. You should now see Business Central:

Tip: always check the system requirements. Microsoft recommends Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. Internet Explorer 11 is still supported though.

Tip: if you get an error in your browser than maybe setup didn’t finish with success and then this ‘component’ (IIS Application) could be corrupt or not installed at all. Or you could be using the wrong Url or port if you changed some parameters in the setup. If you have problems review your configuration in IIS Manager:

How-to Install BC16 (Business Central 2020 Wave 1)

In this post, I will explain how to install Business Central 2020 (version 16) on Windows Server 2019. All components will be installed on the same machine so please take that into account when you are following the steps. This way of installing is of course not a best practice for production environments but ideal for demonstration, testing or development purposes.

Before you run setup you need to have the following steps done:

• Install an OS that is supported like Windows Server 2019 Standard
• Download the Product DVD from Microsoft (I used the NL, Netherlands version)
• Install .NET Framework 4.8

You can find the full requirements on Microsoft Docs.

Note: if you don’t install the .NET Framework the Business Central setup might prematurely end most of the time because of a required reboot.

Tip: you don’t have to download the .NET Framework 4.8 because it’s shipped with the Product DVD. You can find it in the Product DVD Folder\Prerequisite Components\Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8

Tip: you also don’t have to install SQL Server. The setup will perform this task for you by installating SQL Server 2016 Express edition. This version has several limitations like database size limit, CPU- and memory limit and no compressed backups and is not suitable for production environments but it’s okay for testing/demonstration or development purposes.

If the prerequisites are met run setup.exe and click Next

Read and Accept the Microsoft SLT by clicking ‘I Accept’

Now choose ‘Advanced installation options’:

Now choose ‘Choose an installation option’. The install demo option requires the installation of Outlook which we don’t have on the server.

Now select Custom to choose the components we are going to install. Don’t click on Load configuration because this will ask for an installation XML which we don’t have right now. The setup can generate this for you but I will focus now on an installation from scratch.

Now select all components except ‘Microsoft Outlook Add-In’ and click on Next.

Now specify all installation parameters. I recommend leaving all settings out of the box. If you know what you are doing change settings if needed. Now press Apply to commence the installation.

Now because the SQL Server instance can not be found a new instance will be created. That’s fine because we only have a plain Windows 2019 machine without SQL Server installed. Click on OK to continue.

The setup is now installing the specified components:

• 

When the setup is completed without errors (which should be the case if you followed my steps) click Close.

Business Central Wave 1 2020 is available

This version has been released on april, 1st.

For more information check https://community.dynamics.com/nav/b/olisterrs-nav-bc-blog/posts/business-central-wave-1-2020-version-16-release-is-officially-out to find out how to deploy this in a SaaS (Software as a Service) environment.

You can download the On-Prem version from PartnerSource. Download link BC16:

Download Business Central Wave 1

Business Central 2020 Wave 1 is BC v.16:

In the upcoming weeks I will post some new articles how to perform (mainly) technical tasks for this new version.