Dynamics Business Central / NAV Developer Digest - Vol. 547

ArcherPoint by Cherry Bekaert’s Developer Digest focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV development. This week’s volume includes rec.truncate() vs DeleteAll(), monitoring client infrastructure in BC, and two new blog series on AI agents and the BC MCP Server.

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.

Using rec.truncate() vs DeleteAll()

Duilio Tacconi compares the use of rec.truncate to remove tables in AL quickly. The statement uses the SQL Server TRUNCATE TABLE statement. And, just like in TRUNCATE TABLE, the rec.truncate() has its constraints in AL.

In a downloadable demo app, Tacconi shows that for a table with 50,000 records, the DeleteAll command took nearly 10 seconds while the rec.truncate command took less than half a second. This is useful for clearing up ALL records in log tables.

In a second demo, Tacconi shows that, using another table with 50,000 records, deleting 1000 specific entries takes rec.truncate() more than five times longer than DeleteAll(). It turns out that the rec.truncate() command works best when deleting more than half the records in the table.

Find out more by reading Taconni’s blog, Rec.Truncate in AL.

Monitoring client infrastructure with Business Central

In a recent post, Stefano Demiliani discusses values recently added on page views telemetry, the customDimensions.deviceHardware node, that offers information related to the client’s hardware, including:

• The number of CPU cores
• The device memory (GB).
• An estimate of the network bandwidth (Mb/s)
• And the effective round-trip time of the user’s current connection (ms).

Demiliani suggests that these values can be useful in evaluating the client’s network and their perception of Business Central being slow.

Read Deiliani’s blog, Dynamics 365 Business Central: monitoring your customer’s network speed from telemetry, to find out more.

AI agents and the Business Central MCP Server

Mohana Yadav has started a new blog series about AI agents and the Business Central MCP Server.

Non-technical users can use AI agents to tell their ERP system to perform Business Central tasks via natural-language prompts, without having to navigate menus or open specific pages. Agents can operate (mostly) independently to leverage external systems, call APIs, retrieve data, and execute workflows.

The Business Central Model Context Protocol (MCP) exposes Business Central’s API pages to AI agents as MCP tools, allowing them to Read, Create, Modify, Delete, or perform OData Bound Actions. By default, agents only have read access to Business Central API pages.

In Part 2, Mohana breaks down the Business Central MCP Server: what it does, how to enable and configure it, and the architectural role of the BcMCPProxy.

Read Mohana’s series, starting with Understanding AI Agents and MCP (BLOG 1 OF 4) and The Business Central MCP Server (BLOG 2 OF 4).

Speaking of AI agents…

Bert Verbeek also started a blog series about using AI agents in Business Central.

In his first installment, Verbeek talks about the architecture for creating an agent from AL code. The blog covers the requirements for creating the agent, how to trigger it, and examples of creating tasks and messages.

Read Agents in Business Central – part 1 – the architecture to learn more.

Are you interested in Dynamics NAV and Business Central development? Check out our collection of NAV/BC Development Blogs.

Read “How To” blogs from ArcherPoint by Cherry Bekaert for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central.

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