Dynamics Business Central / NAV Developer Digest - Vol. 510
ArcherPoint’s Developer Digest focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV development. This week’s volume includes date formats in Report Builder, using GitHub Copilot in VS Code, a little “this” and that, and debugging from 15 billion miles away.
The Dynamics 365 Business Central community, consisting of developers, project managers, and consultants, collaborates across various platforms to share valuable insights. At ArcherPoint, we greatly value their dedication and expertise. To ensure widespread access to this technical knowledge, we created Developer Digest.
Changing date formats in Report Builder
Jon Long writes:
I think I’ve modified maybe 4 reports in the past decade, so this may not be new to you, but super useful to me.
The Number formatting feature in Report Builder doesn’t work for most date values since Microsoft renders them as text. So, if you want to convert a date value that is “March 27, 2024” to “3/27/2024”, this works.
=FormatDateTime(Fields!DocumentDate.Value, 2)
Using GitHub Copilot in VS Code
The folks at Visual Studio Code have created a great starter video on improving your prompts for GitHub Copilot in VS Code! Perfect for boosting your productivity and getting the most out of Copilot.
Check out “Master the core principles of prompt engineering with GitHub Copilot” on YouTube.
“this” and that
Kyle posted:
With the latest version 14 compiler VSIX, if you define a global variable on a Page and then reference that somewhere in the Page, the compiler issues an info that says that you should preface the variable with “this”, as in
this.Variable
Interesting. This (no pun intended) appears to be part of the effort at reducing confusion from implied Rec, With, or This.
Debugging from 15 billion miles away
Debugging is a challenge at the best of times, but it’s nearly impossible when you’re working on nearly 50-year-old hardware and software that is 15 billion miles away. At that distance, updates sent at the speed of light take almost two days to see if the change made it let alone if they fixed anything.
That’s the problem engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab face when trying to fix problems with the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Launched in 1977, both were intended to study Jupiter and Saturn. When they survived longer than expected, they looked at Uranus and Neptune. Now, outside our solar system, they are still sending back data from interstellar space.
Earlier this year, JPL engineers discovered a problem on Voyager 1 and successfully moved code from a malfunctioning chip by dividing it up and distributing it to several different memory locations. Then, in October, a routine command caused Voyager 1 to turn off its main radio transmitter (apparently to conserve energy) and switch to the backup radio transmitter that uses less power, which hasn’t been used for over 40 years. JPL engineers are trying to determine what might have caused that.
Hat’s off to the JPL engineers as they work to keep these craft functioning.
Talk about working remotely!
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