Introduction to Business Central UI
Up to this point in my new role, I have been collaborating with the company’s Functional Analyst and Solution Architect in modifying Business Central user interfaces for various clients. My main task thus far as a developer has been to familiarize myself with the ERP system and to add more functionality to the application’s UI.
During the first couple of days, I was introduced to the AL programming language which is the language used to control the implementation of the different objects in Business Central. Since this ERP is cloud-based, I had to first set up the proper development environment by connecting VSCode to my own cloud sandbox so that I could start implementing features of my own. To get started in learning the language, I was given various Microsoft Learn modules and helpful YouTube videos to learn the syntax and basics of AL programming in Business Central.
I was also introduced to Azure DevOps to manage different projects and tasks. This also gave me access to the company’s codebase. After cloning the different projects and deploying the solutions to my sandbox, I was able to see all of Geoson’s implementations for various client Business Central UIs. My very first exercise was to create a page extension onto existing code to add more fields to a specific table. I was lucky enough to get a live walkthrough of how to code this feature from my very welcoming team.
Postman
In addition to learning AL programming, I was also introduced to Postman as a tool to create APIs and make HTTP method requests that modify field information on Business Central. As an exercise, I created a simple API page as a Business Central web service that changed the status of a non-editable field on a table.
I was able to access the API using Postman by using the GET request to see what key I should change and the PATCH request to modify the existing data of the table. More specifically, I targeted the field by providing its ID information (from the GET request) as parameters to my PATCH request.
Changing UI Based on Client Needs
A helpful tool I’ve been utilizing to gain more confidence in Business Central development is the page inspection tool. This tool made it easy to target AL files I wanted to modify in the codebase since it actively showed the tables and pages I could add an extension to.
After getting more comfortable with the codebase, I was tasked to create more fields on a certain page. This was done so that I could customize a client’s sales invoice report by extracting the needed data from the fields I created. This has been my latest project/task and I am very excited to show the client my final draft of the custom report at the start of next week.
