Deciding on your tablet and phone strategy
To offer users a great mobile experience, you must decide on a strategy for how to accomplish this based on an analysis of your users' needs. This topic explains the different options for developing for the Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client, but the documentation you will find in this section is primarily focused on the first of these scenarios.
Mobile app development strategy
This section briefly describes some of the options that exist for Dynamics 365 Business Central.
| Development strategy | What also to consider | Examples | For more information, see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Central platform Use the AL Language development environment to modify and extend the Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client.This scenario resembles developing for Business Central Web client. The main advantages of this strategy are: - Extending and modifying Business Central tablet and phone clients is useful for a minimal learning curve and a reduction of development costs; scenarios automatically work on multiple operating systems without having to worry about the maintenance. - You can reuse existing investments in Dynamics 365 Business Central page objects, business logic, and javascript-based client add-ins. Ideal for user scenarios which can be achieved by using simple application pages. |
Dynamics 365 Business Central only supports a specific number of page types, and this can be a limitation in some type of development projects. |
- For salespeople tracking customers, looking up item details, and capturing orders. - For technicians on the road using and re-ordering spare parts. - For simple approval scenarios. |
Introducing the Dynamics 365 Business Central Mobile App Getting Started Developing for the Dynamics 365 Business Central Mobile App |
| Power App Use the Power Apps platform connected to Business Central either using the Business Central connector in Power Apps or custom connector and access your modify data. |
The standard Business Central connector for Power Apps only supports built in APIs, so you may need to use custom connector feature to access your custom APIs. | For field salesforce in need of user experience that is more customized or tightly connected to 3rd party software or hardware. | Connecting to Your Business Central Data to Build a Business App Using Power Apps Create a canvas app from a template in Power Apps |
| Connected mobile app Based on OData web services or SOAP web services technologies, write an app that interacts with Dynamics 365 Business Central. Visual Studio includes project templates for this kind of app. This strategy applies when you want to build a highly customized app with your own UI design that takes advantage of all the rich features which native apps provide. |
Cost to learn development tools and languages outside AL, preparing new development environments. Cost of licensing any of these tools, and having to maintain code for different operating systems. |
A simple touch interface for users to scan their access card for time registration. | OData Web Services Data Modification OData Web Services SOAP Web Services Web Services |
Remarks
If you are developing using the AL language, use a browser for continuous development and test of the Business Central tablet client and the Business Central phone client solution that you are working on. Switching to running in a browser is an easy and efficient way to test what new and modified pages look like. Running the Business Central tablet client and Business Central phone client in a browser is only recommended for development scenarios. For more information, see Opening the Dynamics 365 Business Central Tablet or Phone Client from a Browser.
Related information
Getting Started Developing for the Dynamics 365 Business Central Mobile App
Introducing the Business Central Mobile App