Pages and the user interface

Path: Development > Programming in the AL language > Pages and the user interface · tier official · system development · narrative reviewed (checked by Opus)

Overview

This section covers how to build and shape the Business Central user interface with AL. The core subtopics are Pages (page objects, extensions, page types, layout controls, FactBoxes), Actions (action areas, promotion, the modern action bar), Role centers (role-tailored home pages, cues, headlines, onboarding checklists), Views on list pages, and Profiles that decide which pages and reports a user role sees.

Key points

• Page types include Card, List, Document, parts, PromptDialog, ConfigurationDialog and NavigatePage; pages can be extended with page extensions.
• Actions can be added, organized and promoted, with a modern action bar that has split buttons and prompt actions that launch Copilot.
• Role centers provide role-tailored home pages with navigation menus, cues, headlines and a user onboarding checklist.
• Views define alternative filtered, sorted and laid-out list views; legacy Role Center views can be migrated to modern list views.
• Profiles, profile extensions and page customization objects control the UI per user role; profiles can also be created or moved through the client.
• Customizing the UI for roles is layered: Role Centers, page extensions, profiles, page customizations, then personalization.
• Page Inspection in the web client shows page structure, data sources, extensions, filters and source table fields (2023 release wave 2).
• Deep links use URL parameters (company, page, report, table, mode, profile, filter, bookmark) and the ms-businesscentral URI scheme for the mobile app.

Subtopics

• Role centers (6 pages)
• Pages (33 pages)
• Actions (10 pages)
• Views (3 pages)
• Profiles (4 pages)
• Creating deep links (2 pages)
• Developing for the Business Central mobile app (8 pages)

More Learn pages

• Control Add-in Style Guide: Learn about the style guide for control add-ins in Dynamics 365 Finance.
• Customize the user interface for user roles: Description of how to customize the User Interface in Business Central by using user roles.
• Designing the User Interface: Provides an overview of the components available when designing a user interface in Business Central
• Inspecting pages: Learn about the structure of a page and its’ underlying data.

Videos, posts and code changes

Linked by a Haiku matcher with a grounding quote from the item’s summary (link/topics.ts); machine-generated.

• #10134 [Bug 646487] Composite layout: focus fix, body-layout gating, and setup UI (code change): “Focus now moves to the newly created theme or header/footer part”
• #10247 [SOA] Show Cc recipients on email messages (code change): “Sales Order Agent email cards now display Cc recipients in a read-only field”
• #9038 [master][Bug]: Page 615 “IC Inbox Transactions”.RunInboxTransactions (code change): “IsFoundationEnabled check replaced by IsBasicOnlyEnabled in RunInboxTransactions”
• #9896 Rename PBI embedded pages (code change): “Embedded Power BI report pages in the Power BI Reports”
• #214 UI knowledge: notification recall needs a known Id; open mixed-type documents through Page Management (code change): “handle multi-document routing through Page Management instead of hard-coded mappings”
• Dynamics 365 Business Central: introducing the new MaskedType enum field-level property. (community post): “MaskType enum property for table fields supports None and Concealed”
• Dynamics 365 Business Central: previewing PDF files in web client using the new ExtendedDataType = Document. (community post): “new ExtendedDataType called Document that enables PDF file previews in web client FactBoxes”
• Business Central ToolTip and ToolTipML Properties Are Now Available on Pages (community post): “ToolTip and ToolTipML properties directly on page objects”
• Use Teaching Tips to Educate and Guide Users (video): “Teaching Tips; Tours with Teaching Tips”
• What’s New: Business Central User Experience (2024 release wave 2) (video): “Access Keys for Additional Languages; Modernized Search with Full-Text Index; Faster Column Resizing”

Source: Microsoft Learn (CC BY 4.0). Descriptions are Learn’s own.