We're going to build upon what we started in Chapter 1, Let's Get the Basics out of the Way, so if you've not worked through that chapter, you should do that now so that you can get your development sandbox set up and Visual Studio Code configured.

Code samples and scripts are available on GitHub. Each of the recipes in this chapter builds on the previous recipe, so you can always download the previous recipe's code to get a quick jump on things if you don't want to work through them all in order. You can download everything from https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Microsoft-Dynamics-365-Business-Central-Cookbook.

It's one thing to create brand new tables in order to track new information that doesn't exist in Business Central, but what if you just need to track a few additional pieces of data for an entity that is already part of the base application?

This recipe is going to show you how you can add a new field to the Customer table.

Some might refer to this process as customizing Business Central, but I'll be referring to it as extending the Business Central application.

You're going to need a Business Central AL development project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We will continue to build on the project that we created in Chapter...

Being able to add new fields to pages, or new actions to the page ribbons, is very common practice, and, luckily for us, it is incredibly easy!

This recipe will show you how to make two changes to the customer card. First, we're going to add a new field, and then we'll add a new action button to the page ribbon.

You're going to need an AL project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We will continue to build on the project that we started in Chapter 1, Let's Get the Basics out of the Way. You can download that from the GitHub link at the start of this chapter.

Even if you have been working along, you're still going to need...

Being able to enhance and modify the logic within Business Central is incredibly powerful, and it's possible without changing any of the base application source code!

This recipe will show you how to modify the sales document posting routine to add a check to make sure the customer has a favorite television show. I know; it's a completely logical and useful thing for an ERP system to have, right?

You're going to need an AL project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We will continue to build on the project that we started in this chapter. You can download this from the GitHub link at the start of this chapter.

While it's certainly easy enough to code a new page layout in AL, or modify an existing page layout with a page extension, there is another way that you can do this: using Designer, which resides directly in the Business Central web client!

This recipe will show you how to launch Designer from Visual Studio Code, make some changes to an existing page layout, and then bring those changes back into your AL project.

You're going to need an AL project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We will continue to build on the project that we started in this chapter. You can download that from the GitHub link at the start of this chapter.

Earlier in this chapter, the Modifying the base application business logic recipe showed you how you can modify the existing business logic in Business Central. That recipe showed you what event you needed to subscribe to, but what if you didn't know what events were available to you? What if you know you want to modify a specific processing routine but don't know what events, if any, are in that routine?

Here, Event Recorder enters the picture.

With Event Recorder, you can discover what events have been raised in the system, whether they are part of the base application, or whether they are part of another application that's installed.

This recipe will show you how to launch Event Recorder and use it to determine what events are in the sales order release routine.

Business Central is jammed full of great reports. Sometimes, however, those reports are not entirely what the user needs to see, and sometimes, adding a custom layout to the report is just not enough as we need to access new logic or new tables and fields. In these scenarios, what we need to do is replace the base report with our own modified version. Luckily for us, this has been made easy using a Business Central application!

This recipe will show you how to replace the Customer Listing report with a modified version that shows the television shows defined for the customer.

You're going to need an AL project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We...

One of the strengths of Business Central is that it's a role-based experience for every user. If you're a sales-order entry clerk, then when you log in, you will see sales tasks that relate to your job. If you're a warehouse worker, then logging in will take you to tasks that are specific to a warehouse employee. The main point is that every user can have a tailored experience so they only need to navigate through tasks and information that they need to see.

This is done by assigning each user to a profile, which in turn assigns them to a specific role center. That role center is the very first screen that the user sees when they log in, so it's important that the contents of that screen make sense to them.

This recipe will show you how to create a new profile that can be assigned to a user, as well as a new role center...

Being able to filter lists of data in Business Central is an incredibly powerful feature. At the basic level, you can filter a list by any field that is in the table, not just what is showing in the list. We can go beyond that though and create our own filter tokens, which will allow us to filter the list in ways that cannot necessarily be done using simple field filters.

This recipe will show you how to add a new filter token that will allow you to quickly filter the Customer List page to show only the customers that have television shows defined.

You're going to need an AL project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We will continue to build on the project that...

Application areas let you break down your application into multiple user experiences. One example is that you can identify basic as opposed to advanced features so that a new user can turn off the advanced ones until they are more comfortable with the system.

By implementing application areas in your application, when an application area is disabled, all the on screen controls (fields, actions, parts, and so on) are not visible or searchable to the user.

This recipe will show you how to add a new application area to Business Central.

You're going to need an AL project to work in that's connected to a development sandbox. We will continue to build on the project that we started...