In today’s blog, we are going to look at how to start developing a very simple Hello World extension in Business Central, for which we will create a short video in the coming weeks.
Necessary tools to develop in Business Central
Once we have decided to develop our application or customization in Business Central, we need tools to do so.
El programming language of Business Central, as you already know, is AL.
Development environment: VSCode
We will use VSCode as the development environment. We can download it for free from this link https://code.visualstudio.com
VSCode is a development platform for multiple languages, so once it is installed we will need a specific extension for the AL language (also free). That extension is called AL Language.
Installation of the AL Language extension
- Inside VSCode, go to Extensions.
- In the search bar, type AL Language.
- Select Microsoft’s AL Language and click Install.
Once selected, click Install.
With this, we already have the environment ready.
The next step is to have a test database.
In this blog, we will use online Sandbox environments. To do this, we need Business Central in the cloud.
Environments in Business Central
Types of environments in Business Central
When we acquire a Business Central license, we gain the right to use up to four environments. These environments function as independent instances (or installations) of Business Central. One of them is the production environment, and the other three are test environments, or more technically, Sandbox environments.
The production environment is the main one and will be where the company operates. It has higher performance.
The Sandbox environments are for testing and development.
First extension in Business Central SaaS
Creating the first application in Business Central
Once we have everything set up, we can now create our “Hello World” in Business Central.
To do this, we are going to create our first application.
- We open VSCode and click on the menu View – Command Palette.
- In the command line, we type AL:Go!
- We configure our first application by choosing the folder where we will store our App.
The next step is selecting the platform we are going to develop for:
Once selected, it will create our file structure — which we will review in a later blog — and it will ask whether we want to develop for our own server or for the sandbox we created in the cloud.
In my case, I will use the cloud:
Connection to the Sandbox in Business Central
Downloading base objects
Once “Microsoft cloud sandbox” is selected, it attempts to connect to your Sandbox to download the base objects.
That is, the tables, pages, etc. corresponding to our standard Business Central.
To do this, it will ask us to copy a code, and a browser window will open:
After that, it prompts you to sign in with your user account to open Business Central:
Once you are signed in, it will tell you that you can now close the window, since VSCode will continue downloading the objects in the background.
After automatically running a series of commands in the output window — which we will review soon — the message “All reference symbols have been downloaded” will appear. This means that the Business Central objects have been downloaded.
Developing the PageExtension in Business Central
VSCode itself will have created an initial PageExtension, which essentially extends or expands the Customer List page.
And this is how it extends it, making a message — ‘App published: Hello world’ — appear when the Customer List page is opened. You can modify the content of the message as you prefer.
Compiling and running the application in Business Central
Now we are going to compile and run our new application.
- To do this, we press F5 or go to the Run menu → Start Debugging.
- If everything has gone well, VSCode will have generated an App file and published it to your Sandbox.
- The Customer List is the page that opens by default when you run from VSCode, so the first thing you will see is your message.
If you now go to another page in the menu and then return to Customers, you will see that the message appears again every time you open the Customer List.
We have now prepared our first App for Business Central.
What VSCode has actually done automatically is compile my code, generate the App file, and publish it to my Sandbox:
Conclusion
Well, if everything has gone well, you will have developed your first App for Business Central. In the next video, we will go through all these steps to complement this blog and review them in detail…
I hope this has been helpful.
Specialists in development for Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Whether you need specific customizations, advanced integrations, or simply guidance to get started, we are here to support you every step of the way.
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