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Get started developing for the Business Central mobile app

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The Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client are built on the same framework as the Business Central Web client, such that they're all based on the same Dynamics 365 Business Central pages. Developing for Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client isn't much different from developing pages for Business Central Web client either, since it's also done from the AL Language development environment.

Steps for developing for the Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client

The first step to take when you're developing for the Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client is to consider the design and implementation of the solution:

  • What is the business scenario that you want to support?
  • Do you want to extend your existing data model?
  • Should the solution work well on both a desktop computer, on the tablet and also on a phone?
  • What design should the Role Center that is the central dashboard for the solution have?

Understanding the business scenario is important to build the best solution. Design your solution for users who are most typically occasional users who need an overview of their daily work status and perform relatively simple or light data entry. Many of these preparations resemble those for developing for Business Central Web client, but in an even smaller scale.

Once the data model, users, permissions, and profiles are in place, you can start developing the Role Center. You can either reuse an existing Role Center or create a new one. This depends on the business scenario. The Business Central tablet client and the Business Central phone client are designed to be smart about laying out the same Role Center depending on the display target.

When developing for the Business Central phone client you want to think even more about design and usability on a small screen. On the phone the app always by default starts a page in view mode, meaning that the user actively must switch to edit mode.

There are some best practices and limitations to consider in particular caused by the smaller screen size and touch experience. For more information, see Differences and limitations When developing pages for the Dynamics 365 Business Central mobile app. On devices that run the Business Central Mobile App and have a camera and location capability you also have a couple of more options. For more information, see Implementing the camera in AL and Implementing location in AL.

To complete designing your Business Central Mobile App solution, you should consider offering users help, to guide them through pages or workflows. For more information about adding help to your solution, see Contribute to the help for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

The next steps are to consider how to deploy your solution and how to distribute it to your customers. After you complete your solution, you can send an e-mail to the users to let them know that they can download Dynamics 365 Business Central from the relevant store and include the organization URL and sign-in information. For more information, see Linking to the Dynamics 365 Business Central mobile app.

Deciding on your tablet and phone strategy
Differences and limitations when developing pages for the Dynamics 365 Business Central mobile app