What's New: Key Updates in our Learning Content (documentation) For Developers (2024 release wave 1)
Business Central developer documentation updates for 2024 release wave 1, reached through aka.ms/BC developer. New or reworked sections cover data analytics, reporting and word layouts, error handling, troubleshooting, background processing, telemetry, security, extensibility, and contributing to docs.
- New Developer Documentation Overview and AKA Link
- Documentation Structure: Getting Started and AL Programming
- Data Analytics and Reporting for Developers
- Reporting Documentation: Reports and Word Layouts
- Error Handling and Troubleshooting Guides
- Background Processing and Telemetry for Developers
- Security and Extensibility Documentation
- Contributing to Documentation and Getting Started
- Related Sessions and Resources
Overview
The video walks through the restructured developer documentation for Business Central, now centralized behind the aka.ms/BC developer link. It describes the layout of the getting started and AL programming sections, then goes through the areas that were added or rewritten in this wave.
Reporting and word layouts were reworked, including guidance on designing datasets for word layouts and moving from RDL. New material covers error handling, troubleshooting tools and guides, background processing, telemetry for AL developers, security for developers, and extensibility. The video ends with how to contribute to the docs through GitHub pull requests.
Key points
- aka.ms/BC developer is the entry link to the central developer documentation, with getting started, programming in AL, and AL programming language sections.
- A new data analytics section explains the analytics artifacts available to developers (queries, data analysis on lists or queries, Power BI reports, Excel layout reports) and when to use each.
- Reporting documentation got a major rewrite, and a new word layouts article covers dataset design, layout design, and moving from RDL to Word layouts for document reports.
- A new error handling section covers reasoning about errors, failure modeling, robust coding, error dialogs and stack traces, actionable errors, and meaningful error messages.
- A troubleshooting overview lists the available troubleshooting tools and new troubleshooting guides (TSGs) in many areas.
- A new overview on running things in the background covers new sessions, page background tasks, task scheduler, and job queue, and how they differ, to improve perceived performance.
- Telemetry docs for AL developers add content on telemetry scope and on the feature telemetry module in the system application.
Features
| Feature | Status | At |
|---|---|---|
| New Developer Documentation Overview | status not stated, demoed | 0:16 |
| Data Analytics for Developers | status not stated | 2:27 |
| Reporting Documentation Overhaul | status not stated | 3:21 |
| Word Layouts Documentation | status not stated | 4:04 |
| Error Handling Documentation | status not stated | 4:58 |
| Troubleshooting Guides and Tools | status not stated | 5:55 |
| Background Processing Documentation | status not stated | 6:37 |
| Telemetry for AL Developers | status not stated | 7:20 |
| Security for Developers | status not stated | 8:01 |
| Extensibility Overview Documentation | status not stated | 8:34 |
| Documentation Contribution Process | status not stated | 9:31 |
Quotes
- 0:44 “the new AKA link aka.ms slbc developer takes you to this session section”
- 1:45 “programming in the AL language is a list of sections that describe how to do various things”
- 2:27 “analytics is no no longer just write a report and give it to the customer there are many different artifacts in analytics”
- 4:04 “word layouts also got a huge over overhaul in documentation”
- 4:58 “for stability is error handling and uh for error handling we also added a new section”
- 7:20 “Telemetry is not only for people in the basement is also a tool for you as a developer”
- 8:01 “security is not only for the admin it’s also for you as developer you need to think security into your app”
- 9:51 “the way to get started is simply to search in in docs for contribute”