Force sync of customer-specific extensions in online environments
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.
| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | 
Oct 1, 2021 |
Oct 1, 2021 |
Business value
Whenever the table schema is changed in a destructive way in an extension, it can have a downstream impact for any depending extension and potentially block updates until the breaking changes have been fully resolved. Until now, the process for handling destructive changes has been to implement them, and then obsolete them in due time to allow a more seamless process.
There can, however, sometimes be a need for making breaking changes. This can occur, for example, in cases where there is no downstream impact of the change, if dependencies are under full control (for example, for per-tenant extensions), or to make changes that are forced by new, clashing object identities introduced upstream.
To help with these scenarios, we are introducing the ability to deploy per-tenant extensions (PTEs) with force schema sync mode, which will allow destructive changes to the table schema in the new extension version.
Feature details
When deploying a new customer-specific (per-tenant) extension to Business Central online, either through the Extension Management page or the admin center, it will now be possible to force any destructive table schema changes and circumvent the usual error when such changes are detected. This will allow the removal of specific tables or fields from the database.
Note
This operation means you will lose any data that is stored in the removed tables and fields. You will still have the option to restore the database. Thus, before a force sync in a production environment, this should be thoroughly tested in a matching sandbox environment, container, or on-premises installation.