Enhancements to the intelligent cloud for Dynamics SMB and Dynamics 365 Business Central
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.
Note
These release notes describe functionality that may not have been released yet. To see when this functionality is planned to release, please review What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).
The April '19 release of Business Central adds a number of new business value opportunities in the intelligent cloud for our customers.
Dynamics SL 2018 and the intelligent cloud
With Dynamics SL 2018 CU1, existing customers can leverage the features and functionality that the Business Central intelligent cloud provides.
Customers can replicate open transactional and master record data from their existing Dynamics SL 2018 on-premises solution to their Business Central cloud tenant. Once data replication is completed, the Dynamics SL data can be used in cloud services such as PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, Power BI, and Azure.
Dynamics GP 2018 R2 historical data available in the intelligent cloud
The April '19 release adds support for additional data from Dynamics GP 2018 R2 to be replicated to the Business Central intelligent cloud.
The October '18 release introduced the availability for Dynamics GP 2018 R2 customers to replicate open transactional and master record data to their Business Central cloud tenant. We heard your feedback, and beginning with the April '19 release, historical data will also be supported in the data replication process.
Dynamics NAV 2018 and the intelligent cloud
To complete the data replication support for all Dynamics SMB products in the intelligent cloud, Dynamics NAV 2018 will be fully supported as part of the April '19 release for Business Central.
Dynamics NAV 2018 customers can replicate virtually all on-premises tables to their Business Central cloud tenant, except for customized tables.
Improved data replication services
We are also hardening the data replication service and improving performance and telemetry of the same service. We have added better error messaging in the wizard setup process.
Additionally, we relaxed the schema comparison; we will not fail a table if the schema is an exact match. If there was a custom column added to a table, we will bring over the core column and not give a failure. If an extension is installed in Business Central online but not in the on-premises deployment, we will give a warning instead of a failure. If the columns are longer in Business Central online than on-premises, we will bring the data across.
The April '19 update also brings new notifications for when service updates happen. You have the option to update the service manually instead of automatically. With a new Refresh status button, you can refresh the Intelligent Cloud Management page without having to navigate away from the page.
Before the April update, there was a limit to the number of times you could manually trigger a replication, restricting this to once in a 24-hour period. With the April update, that restriction has been removed.
SmartLists
We're adding SmartLists for simplified business intelligence within Business Central (online) and building a foundation for creating a SmartList designer tool in a later release.
With the April '19 update, we have added 16 default SmartLists to various pages in Business Central. These SmartLists are an additional view of information linked to a master entity in Business Central.
The 16 default lists are based on views that pull data from multiple tables. In this update, we added the ability to create a list view based on a query.
Some examples of lists that we have added are the Customer list, Salespersons list, and Items by Location list. You can access these SmartLists from the list pages. For example, go to the Customer list and then notice the new All dropdown action on the left side of the action bar. When you choose that action, you can see the new SmartLists that were added to this update.
The 16 SmartLists can be accessed from the following list pages: Chart of Accounts, Customer, Vendor, and Items.
| List | Page name of SmartLists |
|---|---|
| Chart of Accounts | Chart of Accounts (Acct Summary) |
| Customer | Customer Ship To Addresses |
| Customer | Customer and Salesperson |
| Customer | Blocked Customers |
| Customer | Customers with Credit Limits |
| Customer | Customer and Contact |
| Vendor | Vendor Order Addresses |
| Vendor | Vendor and Purchaser |
| Vendor | Blocked Vendors |
| Vendor | Vendor Balance |
| Items | Items |
| Items | Item Quantities |
| Items | Items by Location |
| Items | Negative Quantity Items |
| Items | Items Overdue for Count |
| Items | Items Due for Count |
With the SmartLists functionality that was added, we also made some underlying platform changes to make it possible to create SmartLists based on queries. With this functionality, you can now create your own lists through extensions. The created list can then be assigned to an entity by setting the QueryCategory property.
By being able to create a new list page based on a query, you can get the data you want on one list even if all the data isn’t in a single table in the database.