What's New: Using Power Pages with Business Central (2024 release wave 1)

Overview

The video covers how Power Pages portals can use Business Central data through Dataverse virtual tables. It describes three access scenarios: anonymous read-only access for external users, authenticated access for external users after registration, and authenticated access for internal licensed users. Only the internal scenario requires a Business Central license.

It then explains the multi-company feature. A custom Dataverse mapping plugin and mapping table set the BC Company ID shared execution variable for a given user, app and portal combination. The demo shows several portals each pointing at a different Business Central company. The speaker notes that Power Pages on virtual tables has been in public preview since 2023 wave 2, and that further documentation will be published after the Business Central launch.

Key points

• Anonymous access to Business Central data through Power Pages is read-only and needs no license or sign-in.
• External users who sign in and register also do not need a license. Internal employees must be licensed as for Business Central.
• A virtual table plugin can set the BC Company ID shared execution variable to override both the global and the user-specific company setting.
• The custom mapping plugin is registered with the plugin registration tool and intercepts at the prevalidation stage, so the shared variable is set before the virtual table plugin uses it.
• The mapping table links a portal ID to a company. Get the portal ID by appending _services/ to the portal URL.
• For Power Pages, the mapping plugin parses the portal’s user agent to get the portal ID, looks it up in the mapping table and sets BC Company ID.
• The plugin is triggered when a portal reads a virtualized table such as Sales Invoice, so each portal always targets its mapped company.

Features

Every feature below: status not stated, demoed.

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• table “Sales Invoice virtual table” at 6:06
• table “Contacts table” at 11:11
• table “Item table” at 14:35
• table “Sales Order virtual table” at 12:33
• other “Business Central configuration app” at 12:13
• table “Mapping table” at 13:14
• table “User table” at 12:33

Not found in BC28-30: table “Sales Invoice virtual table”, table “Contacts table”, table “Item table”, table “Sales Order virtual table”, table “Mapping table”, table “User table”.

Quotes

• 0:14 “power pages on virtual tables has been in public review since”
• 0:34 “in a 24 wave 1 release we are introducing a small feature that has been in high demand by many um partners and customer”
• 1:51 “with this uh shared execution variable a virtual table plug-in can actually overwrite both the global and user specific company setting”
• 2:52 “anonymous read only access for external or unlicensed user without signing in so uh uh Power Pages allow you to create for example a”
• 3:32 “you actually have to be licensed to be able to access a business Central virtual tables in data verse the first two you don’t”
• 7:49 “whenever there’s a site that trying to read a sales invoice table which is virtualized in data verse this plugin will be triggered”
• 8:50 “whenever that portal is open it will always use my company as The Bu business Central um uh company to Target”
• 9:30 “in the case of power Pages it will actually uh parse the user agent of the power pages and try to pick the”
• 13:55 “you can actually go to the URL and then add this uh terms uh undor service slab and then you can actually see here”

Disclaimers in the video

• 0:14 preview: Power pages on Virtual tables has been in public review since last uh 23rd Wave 2
• 9:10 coming-later: this is a very um a short cat um um that will be published in the in our documentation after the business Central launch

Presenters (as heard): Sarco.