Dynamics Business Central / NAV Developer Digest - Vol. 478
ArcherPoint’s Developer Digest focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV development. This week’s volume includes identifying users who change an extension, integrating Business Central data with Dataverse, how to automatically receive notifications when AppSource apps are updated, and checking on SQL Server indexes, locks, and deadlocks.
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.
Identifying the user behind changing an extension
It’s not always easy to find the person who made updates to an extension. In fact, it can appear next to impossible.
Duilio Tacconi addresses the problem where you know someone has updated an extension, but you don’t know who did it. “Extension lifecycle signals,” says Tacconi, “do not contain a user_id that is the equivalent of User Telemetry Id in the User Card.”
Tacconi uses a combination of Telemetry, new features coming in version 24 this Spring, and some masterful sleuthing to identify the user.
He also discusses Business Central’s move from Delegated Administrator Access (DAP) to Business Central Online to Granular Delegated Admin Permission (GDAP). From Microsoft’s documentation, “GDAP users are listed with user names such as USER_1A2B3C4D5E6F, and an email address such as USER_1A2B3C4D5E6F@partnerA.com, which isn’t the person’s actual email address.”
Read Duilio Tacconi’s blog, Who deployed that extension? “Wasn’t me…” Another practical telemetry case, to learn more.
Integrating Business Central data with Dataverse
There are several ways to integrate Business Central with Dataverse.
One is to write AL code, as Microsoft has documented in Customizing an Integration with Microsoft Dataverse.
Another is to use an extension, as described in Sync your BC data to Dataverse with less code.
A new feature in version 24 will allow users to integrate Business Central with Dataverse without writing any AL code.
Bert Verbeek shows how to integrate Business Central data to fields already in the Dataverse proxy table, either by adding fields to an existing table or creating a new table.
Find out more by reading Verbeek’s blog, BC24: Manual integration mapping with Dataverse and Business Central.
Automatically receive notifications when AppSource apps are updated
When AppSource apps are installed in a Business Central tenant, Microsoft handles the updates automatically using the App Update Cadence parameter in the tenant’s Admin Center.
Sometimes, you would like to see if updates are available in the marketplace in case there are hotfixes or new versions.
Stefano Demiliani shares how to receive automatic notifications whenever an AppSource app has updates available programmatically using the Business Central Admin Center API. Demiliani shows how to use a PowerShell script to:
- Call the /availableUpdates API for a given tenant
- Retrieve the list of available app updates
- And, if an app update is available, send a notification to a pre-defined mail address with the details of the available updates.
Read his blog, Dynamics 365 Business Central: receive notifications when AppSource apps updates are available in a tenant.
Check SQL Server Indexes, Locks, and Deadlocks
Roberto Stefanetti provides an excellent resource for checking indexes, locks, and deadlocks in SQL Server. Business Central on-premises users can use the scripts Stefanetti includes in his blog post, while SaaS users can use Telemetry to get the information. The scripts included are:
- Help (info) about Indexes
- Detect Missing Indexes
- Check duplicated\overlapped indexes
- Detect Locks
- Detect Deadlocks
Check out Stefanetti’s blog, SQL Server: How-to check info about Indexes, Locks & Deadlocks.
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.