What's new: Productivity features in the web client (2023 release wave 2)

Overview

The session covers navigation and search changes in the web client. Lookup dialogues get a show details action and a Control Alt Down shortcut that opens the related card. Tell Me can search company data with Alt Q, with a smarter results page and an explore reports link.

It also covers shared link readability, browser tab naming with a company switcher that opens a page in another company in a new tab, and actionable error and inline validation dialogues. For developers, it covers native rich content fields in AL and page inspection additions. Analysis tabs are now generally available. Two changes are tied to Update 24, approximately April 2024.

Key points

• Control Alt Down in a lookup opens the related card page; if no card exists it opens the list filtered to the selected record. Show details in simple lookups needs no partner uptake.
• Alt Q opens Tell Me for company data search; the focused value on an editable page is copied into the search. Results are tailored to permissions and user role.
• Legacy list views are to be removed from the web client in Update 24 (approximately April 2024), previously Update 23, so they need migrating.
• Automatic saving of field values when leaving a field will be enabled for everyone in Update 24 (approximately April 2024).
• Actionable errors include dimension posting fixes (dimension must be the same or blank) in the first iteration, plus an interface for AL developers to add fixes for custom errors.
• Rich content fields can be implemented natively in AL without control add-ins, with a toolbar of over 25 functions.
• Page inspection can scroll to a field and link to Visual Studio Code. With Update 23, UI customization can add read-only source table fields to a page; editable fields can also be made read-only.

Features

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.

• other “Tell Me” at 3:22
• other “Role Center” at 7:55
• other “Role Explorer” at 8:26
• page “page inspection pane” at 26:22
• other “Visual Studio code” at 26:43
• query “query objects” at 29:14

Not found in BC28-30: page “page inspection pane”, query “query objects”.

Quotes

• 1:40 “2023 release Wave 2 brings you 60 to 80% productivity boost in these scenarios depending on whether you prefer to use mouse or keyboard”
• 2:00 “new keyboard shortcut was added it’s called it’s uh control alt down and it navigates the user to the related data definition”
• 3:22 “simply press the well-known alt Q to open tell me and start searching for your company data get into company data search through tell”
• 11:38 “when update 24 4 which is approximately April 2024 um Legacy list views will go away they will disappear from the web client”
• 12:18 “developers can now Implement Rich content Fields uh and do that natively in Al code without having to use control add-ins”
• 12:38 “each reach Rich content field uh it stretches to fill all of the horizontal space on the screen um it is multi-line uh but”
• 14:19 “the collectible errors and check documents and journals while you work capabilities help produce inter interruptions and give you an overview”
• 15:05 “in the first iteration we provide users with capability to fix Dimension code related errors when Dimension posting rules require Dimension to be the”
• 15:38 “in 2023 release Wave 2 we’ve also improved inline validation dialogues as they are also a surface they also surface errors during data entry”
• 20:58 “we’ve applied the same simple and consistent naming convention also to the title of each Tab and that’s very similar to what I showed”
• 24:22 “page inspection is a Swiss army knife of sorts uh it helps you understand the underlying data model uh for your your pages uh”
• 26:02 “page inspector has this handy little feature now to really help you get straight to those fields in no time”
• 26:22 “you can now use this new Link in the page inspection pane to explore this page in Visual Studio code”
• 27:23 “we’re excited to announce that with update 2 three we’re also introducing the ability to add existing table fields to your pages”
• 27:23 “these fields are not editable so you’re really just bringing in Source table fields which are going to be readon”
• 28:03 “the ability to make Fields readon this means you take any editable field you can now lock it lock its editability becomes read only”
• 28:34 “last wave we also introduced analysis tabs uh this was released in preview a whole new way of deriving insights from your data without”
• 28:54 “you can actually share um a link to your newly crafted analysis tab with your co-workers again as I mentioned earlier the name of”
• 29:14 “finally we’re also going Beyond lists um in terms of now applying the same experience also to queries and query objects”

Disclaimers in the video

• 4:18 other: Tell Me is also available on Business Central mobile app but there’s a separate session that goes into more details on this
• 11:38 subject-to-change: Legacy list views will go away in update 24, which is approximately April 2024
• 11:58 subject-to-change: Automatic field value saving will be automatically enabled for everyone in update 24, which is roughly April 2024
• 27:23 coming-later: with update 2 3 we’re also introducing the ability to add existing table fields to your pages
• 28:34 preview: last wave we also introduced analysis tabs uh this was released in preview

Presenters (as heard): Mike, Ivan, Ian.