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Action bar improvements

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With Business Central 2024 release wave 1, we're making the modern action bar available and turned on for all users. Since its introduction in release wave 2, 2022, the modern action bar has been the default for new customers and is now becoming the default for all customers upgrading to release wave 1, 2024.

Users who have already been using the modern action bar notice a few extra optimizations in its newest version, such as a more compact representation of Search and Analysis Mode, and the introduction of Microsoft Copilot!

Users who haven't been using the modern action bar with earlier releases of Business Central experience that the action bar looks different to what they were used to, and that some of their routines can need adjustment. The reason is that the modern action bar places some actions differently compared to the earlier action bar (now known as the legacy action bar) to give more prominence to important actions and reduce the numbers of clicks to access them.

Split buttons enhance productivity

Split buttons are one of the new experiences in the modern action bar. Split buttons are well-known from other Microsoft products as a combination of a button and a menu and are introduced in cases where a common action has related actions with similar effects. This type of control gives quick one-click reach to the first action in a menu via the left button part and access to the related actions via the right dropdown part.

For instance, on document pages that have Post and Release actions, these are now presented as split buttons. This provides better discoverability and one-click access to these often-used actions. For example, a new split button is created for the actions Correct, Cancel, and Create corrective credit memo. This provides one-click access to Correct, which is the most often used among the three.

Action tabs open by default

On document, card, worksheet, and listplus pages, the Process tab is renamed to Home, which better aligns with the ribbon terminology that users see in other Microsoft products.

With document, card, worksheet, and listplus pages that have actions in the Home/Process group, the modern action bar starts in the pinned and opened state. This helps discovering relevant actions in the action bar and provides one-click reach to actions, without first pinning the action bar manually. With document pages that have a Lines subpage, or any other page having a subpage, the subpage's actions are now visible right away, without opening More options.

Legacy action bar

While most users are confident with split buttons, and likely know the concept from other software packages, in the rare cases where split buttons or some of the other modern action bar improvements are causing problems for a user, we provide a new personalization option to use the legacy action bar instead.

The Legacy Action Bar toggle is available in users' My settings page and reverts the action bar for individual users to the earlier appearance before the modern action bar. We recommend using the modern action bar for the best productivity and that future releases of Business Central might not provide the legacy action bar option.

Actions in AL
Adding actions to a page
Actions in the user interface
How to promote actions
Organizing promoted actions
Common promoted action groups
Action bar improvements
Behavioral changes for promoted actions