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  • Book Overview & Buying Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

By : Stefano Demiliani, Tacconi
4 (2)
Buy this Book
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Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

4 (2)
By: Stefano Demiliani, Tacconi
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution, which is easy to adopt and helps you make smarter business decisions. This book is a comprehensive guide to developing solutions with Microsoft ERP (in the cloud and also on-premises). It covers all aspects of developing extensions, right from preparing a sandbox environment to deploying a complete solution. The book starts by introducing you to the Dynamics 365 Business Central platform and the new Modern Development Environment. You'll then explore the sandbox concept, and see how to create sandboxes for development. As you advance, you’ll be able to build a complete advanced solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central with AL language and Visual Studio Code. You'll then learn how to debug and deploy the extension and write automatic testing. The book will also take you through advanced topics like integration (with Azure Functions, web services, and APIs), DevOps and CI/CD techniques, and machine learning. You'll discover how Dynamics 365 Business Central can be used with Office 365 apps. Finally, you'll analyze different ways to move existing solutions to the new development model based on extensions. By the end of this book, you'll be able to develop highly customized solutions that meet the requirements of modern businesses using Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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Who this book is for
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What this book covers
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To get the most out of this book
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1
Section 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central - Platform Overview and the Basics of Modern Development
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Section 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central - Platform Overview and the Basics of Modern Development
2
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Overview
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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Overview
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Understanding the customer perspective
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Understanding the partner's perspective
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Under the skin of Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Understanding the future perspective
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Summary
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Mastering a Modern Development Environment
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Mastering a Modern Development Environment
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Mastering Visual Studio Code
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Visual Studio Code – the editing features
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Understanding the AL Language extension
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Understanding symbols
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Understanding AL Language extension configuration
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Mastering AL Language code snippets
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Summary
4
Online and Container-Based Sandboxes
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Online and Container-Based Sandboxes
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Creating online sandboxes
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Introducing Docker
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Locally available environments using pure Docker commands
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Connecting to an existing SQL Server
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Handling your running containers with Docker cmdlets
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Creating locally available environments using navcontainerhelper
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Pulling new image versions
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Handling your running containers with NavContainerHelper
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Centrally available on-premise environments
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Containers hosted on Azure VMs
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Choosing the right image
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Summary
5
Section 2: Developing Extensions for Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Section 2: Developing Extensions for Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Extension Development Fundamentals
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Extension Development Fundamentals
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Technical requirements
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Basic concepts regarding extensions
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Understanding the basics of the AL Language
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Understanding AL project structure best practices
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Naming guidelines and AL object ranges
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Working on AL coding guidelines
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Summary
7
Developing a Customized Solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Developing a Customized Solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Translating a business case into a real-world extension
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Understanding a dependent extension
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Summary
8
Advanced AL Development
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Advanced AL Development
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Understanding immutable keys
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Handling files with AL
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Handling attachments
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Reading and writing text data to and from BLOB fields
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Using XMLports in AL code
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Creating and extending Role Centers
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Handling XML and JSON files with the AL language
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Consuming web services and APIs from AL
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Publishing Dynamics 365 Business Central objects as web services from AL
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Using Azure Functions to replace .NET code
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Understanding Isolated Storage
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Working with control add-ins
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Notifications inside Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Understanding page background tasks
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Summary
9
Report Development with AL
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Report Development with AL
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Anatomy of the AL report object
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Tools to use for Word and RDL layouts
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Converting an existing C/AL report into AL
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Feature limitation when developing an RDL or Word layout report
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Understanding report performance considerations
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Summary
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Section 3: Debugging, Testing, and Release Management (DevOps)
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Section 3: Debugging, Testing, and Release Management (DevOps)
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Installing and Upgrading Extensions
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Installing and Upgrading Extensions
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Deploying extensions
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Deploying the main extension
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Deploying a new version of the main extension
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Summary
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Debugging
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Debugging
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Running in debug mode
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Understanding code analyzers
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Understanding Event Recorder
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Summary
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Automated Test Development with AL
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Automated Test Development with AL
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Test automation and testing design principles
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Designing tests with ATDD
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Preparing the environment
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Setting up test development for extensions
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Learning about the technique behind test code
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Designing our test scenarios
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Implementing our test scenarios
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Summary
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Source Control Management and DevOps with Business Central
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Source Control Management and DevOps with Business Central
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Understanding Azure DevOps and what it offers
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Managing tasks, sprints, and boards in Azure DevOps
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Creating a repository for your code
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Managing repositories
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Branching policies
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Branching strategies
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Understanding Git merge strategies
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Exploring Git with Visual Studio Code
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Understanding Azure DevOps Pipelines
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Understanding the YAML pipeline
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Summary
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Section 4: Advanced Integrations with Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Section 4: Advanced Integrations with Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
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Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
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Comparing OData and APIs in Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Using Dynamics 365 Business Central standard APIs
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Creating a custom API in Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Creating an application that uses Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
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Using bound actions
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Using Dynamics 365 Business Central webhooks
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Working with Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs in Microsoft Graph
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Automation APIs in Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Summary
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Serverless Business Processes with Business Central and Azure
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Serverless Business Processes with Business Central and Azure
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Technical requirements
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Overview of Microsoft Azure serverless services
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Getting an overview of Azure Functions
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Developing an Azure function with Visual Studio
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Developing an Azure function with Visual Studio Code
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Calling an Azure function from AL
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Interacting with Azure Blob Storage to handle files in the cloud
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Summary
18
Monitoring, Scaling, and CI/CD with Azure Functions
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Monitoring, Scaling, and CI/CD with Azure Functions
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Technical requirements
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Monitoring Azure Functions
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Scaling Azure Functions
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Summary
19
Business Central and Integration with the Power Platform
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Business Central and Integration with the Power Platform
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Technical requirements
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Introducing the Power Platform
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Understanding Flow
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Understanding PowerApps
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Integration scenarios with Power Platform
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Summary
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Section 5: Moving Solutions to the New Extension Model
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Section 5: Moving Solutions to the New Extension Model
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Integrating Machine Learning into Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Integrating Machine Learning into Dynamics 365 Business Central
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What are AI and ML?
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An overview of the ML process
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Understanding the Business Central ML Framework
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Understanding the ML Prediction API
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Summary
22
Moving Existing ISV Solutions to the New Extension Model
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Moving Existing ISV Solutions to the New Extension Model
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Preparing the transition from C/AL to AL and extensions
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Planning the number of extensions to code
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Converting existing solutions into AL
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Handling customer-specific personalization's
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Other things to remember
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Dynamics 365 Business Central wave 2 release changes
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Summary
23
Useful and Proficient Tools for AL Developers
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Useful and Proficient Tools for AL Developers
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Who is Waldo?
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What tools to use
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Summary
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Preface

This book is an essential guide for developers that need to create advanced solutions with Dynamics 365 Business Central, the cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution provided by Microsoft.

We start by explaining the Dynamics 365 Business Central platform and its most recent developments, as well as anticipating its future development and how you can prepare for it. Our aim in this edition is to start coding an extension as soon as possible, so we will promptly move on to cover developer-oriented topics when coding your own Business Central extensions, covering the best coding practices for performant code.

In this edition, you’ll find new and improved coverage of some of the most common developer tasks in Business Central. In particular, you’ll find chapters on reporting, printing, and handling files from the cloud platform. After covering these tasks, you’ll learn how to perform debugging and telemetry for fully monitoring a Dynamics 365 Business Central tenant. You’ll also learn how to apply DevOps principles to your development practice by using AL-Go for GitHub.

In this book we put a strong focus on integration, covering topics like APIs, Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Dataverse, and Power Platform. Integrating with these technologies allows you to create custom applications connected to Dynamics 365 Business Central. In this edition we wanted to expand our coverage of Power Apps in particular, so we have added a detailed project with step-by-step instructions. You’ll learn how to create a fully functional app, complete with offline capabilities.

An exciting new topic in Microsoft is the integration of custom generative AI solutions in Dynamics 365 Business Central by using Azure OpenAI and the Copilot developer toolkit from AL. We’ll wrap up covering how you can configure the Copilot capabilities in Business Central, as well as how to create your own copilots.

Overall, we hope this book will help experienced developers learn the latest tools in the trade and best coding practices to become an expert at developing solutions for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

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