Dynamics Business Central / NAV Developer Digest - Vol. 447
ArcherPoint’s Developer Digest focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV development. This week’s volume includes making BC calls to an Azure Function, Business Central telemetry using Azure Managed Grafana, restarting job queues with telemetry, and how the IBM mainframe continues to adapt.
The Dynamics 365 Business Central community comprises professionals devoted to advancing the success of their customers. Developers, project managers, and consultants collaborate to share helpful information across blogs, forums, and social media sites. From discovering new solutions to finding answers to complex issues, these dedicated individuals are constantly sharing their knowledge with others. At ArcherPoint, we recognize and appreciate this highly engaged community’s creativity, hard work, and collective intelligence. To ensure all users can benefit from their expertise, we want to share their wealth of information with everyone.
Making BC calls to an Azure Function
Kyle Hardin provides an outline on how to call an Azure Function from Business Central, a handy way to replace DotNet calls.
“Yesterday, I made BC call an Azure Function. Why would you care about that? It wouldn’t be very often, but Azure Functions are a way to replace DotNet calls – sometimes. I had a customer that needed to export a bank payment in a file format that isn’t supported by BC. Currently, I call DotNet to convert the file format – very SaaS unfriendly. An Azure Function could do that same process for me, and it would work in SaaS.
To learn more, see:
- Use Azure Functions with Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Quickstart: Create a C# function in Azure using Visual Studio Code
portal.azure.com
Search for Function App
Create
Basics
Choose your subscription and resource group
Function App Name kyleazurefunction.azurewebsites.net
Deploy code
Runtime stack .NET
Version 6 LTS
Region East US
Operating System Windows
Hosting plan Consumption
Storage
Storage account kyleexperimentsa803
Network
Enable public access
(take defaults for Monitoring, Deployment, and Tags)
Review + Create
Click Create button at bottom
Once deployment is complete, click Next steps, Create a function
Develop in Portal
Select a template – HTTP trigger for Business Central
New Function: SampleFunction1
Click Get Function URL
[Supply function URL here]
Left menu, Developer, Code + Test
(the coding in c# itself is beyond the scope of this guide)
Can this be done in VSC? Yes!
Create a CDX demo BC instance
AL: Go!
Important safety tip: CDX environments do not have the dev port opened, so you cannot download symbols or publish directly. But you can install an unsigned app manually. Put symbols in place manually.
Business Central telemetry using Azure Managed Grafana
Azure Managed Grafana from Grafana Labs is a tool that lets you bring all your telemetry data from multiple sources into one location, providing an end-to-end view of your application and infrastructure.
Managed private endpoints help protect against data exfiltration. You can use managed private endpoints to ensure data traffic travels exclusively over the Microsoft network and avoid going through the internet. By using private IP addresses, managed private endpoints let you use a private IP address from a Managed Virtual Network to essentially bring your Azure Managed Grafana workspace into that network.
Stefano Demiliani shows how to set up telemetry for Business Central using Azure Managed Grafana in his blog, Dynamics 365 Business Central telemetry with Azure Managed Grafana: Private Access Setup.
For more information about Azure Managed Grafana, see Microsoft’s What is Azure Managed Grafana?
Restart job queues with telemetry
Speaking of telemetry, Kris at MyNavBlog.com tackles the problem of restarting job queues for multiple companies in multiple environments using telemetry, one API, and Power Automate. This flexible method allows the user to manage each environment for each company from a single interface.
Read the blog, How to restart all job queues? Use telemetry, Power Platform, and a small AL development, to learn more.
The IBM mainframe continues to adapt
Far from being an antique, over 10,000 mainframes are still being used today: by two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies and 45 of the world’s top 50 banks! IBM has continued to keep the mainframe relevant by modernizing its infrastructure and software stack, and mainframe COBOL now supports JSON and XML for web-based development.
Kyle Hardin shared this link that tells the in-depth story of the mainframe, a treat for the nerds and geeks out there who still remember punch cards and tape drives and names like Sperry, Univac, and Burroughs: The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives.
Interested in Dynamics NAV and Business Central development? Be sure to see our collection of NAV/BC Development Blogs.
Read “How To” blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central.