Dynamics 365 Business Central version 28.0 (2026 Wave 1) brings a set of tangible improvements focused on AL developer productivity and platform modernization. Microsoft continues pushing Business Central toward an “AI‑first” model, integrating artificial intelligence capabilities and performance optimizations that directly affect how we design, build, and maintain AL extensions.
Below is a summary of the most relevant technical updates in BC 28.0 (currently in public preview) that truly make a difference for AL developers.
Why does version 28.0 matter?
Business Central 28 is not “just another update”; it’s part of Microsoft’s strategy to push the ERP toward a more connected, intelligent, and efficient system. In this 2026 Wave 1 release, the platform goes deeper in two areas: integrated AI capabilities (both at the application level and in development tools) and technical improvements to the AL environment that simplify the extension lifecycle.
For developers, this translates into changes that affect daily development, compilation, testing, and the performance of our extensions. Version 28.0 is currently in public preview, which allows us to start testing these key improvements and prepare ahead of the general availability (GA) planned for April 2026. Let’s take a detailed look at the most significant technical updates.
Relevant technical updates for AL developers
Below, we explore the main new features, platform changes, and AL language enhancements in Business Central 28.0. Each point includes what it’s for and how it impacts the developer:
Semantic search in data and metadata
A semantic search provider is introduced and accessible from AL. A new standard codeunit (ID 2000000025, “Semantic Search”) allows developers to perform “similarity‑based” queries on records and metadata objects (e.g., finding similar text in fields or object names). This provides an intelligent way to locate entities or references by intent rather than exact match.
Why does it matter? It simplifies impact analysis and large‑scale refactoring: for example, finding all occurrences related to a business term even if they don’t match textually, or locating similar data in tables with synonyms. Note: In the preview, this functionality is scoped to OnPrem (limited to on‑premises or internal environments), so it won’t be available for cloud extensions until Microsoft lifts that restriction.
Downloading symbols from NuGet
The ability to obtain symbol packages for base applications (e.g., System.app, Base Application.app) from a public NuGet feed is now enabled, without needing to connect to a specific Business Central environment. In 28.0 (preview), this feature standardizes dependency management: developers can configure Visual Studio Code to download symbols directly from the global NuGet source, ensuring they use the correct versions of the base libraries.
Advantage: It simplifies CI/CD pipelines and extension versioning—for example, it makes it possible to reproduce builds for specific BC versions without maintaining local instances for each version, and it reduces symbol compatibility issues. This improvement has been described as a “game changer” by the technical community, as it speeds up AL project setup and upgrades to new versions. (Feature in preview in BC 28.0).
Running AL tests from VS Code
Now developers can run automated AL tests directly from Visual Studio Code, thanks to new integrations in the AL Language extension. Until BC 27, the typical way to run tests was to publish the test extension and execute the tests from the web client. With BC 28, Microsoft has added commands and capabilities to run extension tests without leaving the IDE, displaying the results in the VS Code window.
What does this mean? A more agile development workflow: it enables practicing TDD (Test‑Driven Development) with AL, running quick local smoke tests before integrating changes, and debugging tests with the VS Code debugger. In practice, the time savings are significant: for example, it avoids switching to the Business Central client to check whether tests pass, integrating this cycle directly into the developer experience. (Available as Public Preview in 28.0, requires the latest AL Language extension).
“Profile extensions” and resource files
In the area of functional extensibility, BC 28 consolidates features introduced in previous versions to make developers’ lives easier:
- Profile Extension objects: already available since 2024 Wave 2, they allow extending user profiles (Role Centers) without duplicating base profiles. In v28 these capabilities continue to improve, enabling partners to customize the user experience (home pages, available actions) through AL profileextension objects. Benefit: Profile customizations are cleaner and support upgrades with less friction (no more copying entire profiles), improving maintainability of user configurations.
- Resource files in extensions: v28 allows including resource files (configuration data, templates, etc.) inside the extension’s .app package. This means, for example, that a JSON or XML file with initial data or a template can be distributed within the extension and accessed at runtime. Advantage: It simplifies deployments and setups, avoiding the need to write installation codeunits to insert static data. Maintenance also improves, since resources travel versioned alongside the extension code.
FlowField optimization
Regarding performance, Business Central 28 introduces an important change in how FlowFields (fields calculated on the fly from other tables) are computed. Until now, a FlowField was calculated even if it wasn’t visible on the page, which meant additional background SQL queries. In v28, the server will only calculate a FlowField if the field is actually displayed in the user interface. This may seem minor, but it drastically reduces unnecessary queries, especially on pages with many hidden FlowFields.
Impact for developers: Lower database load and faster pages with no code changes. For example, lists with dozens of FlowFields now generate less SQL traffic if the user doesn’t expand all those columns. Microsoft estimates significant scalability improvements for customers with large data volumes by eliminating superfluous FlowField calculations. This optimization is always active in 28.0; it requires no partner action but is important to know when analyzing performance.
Improvements in telemetry and profiling
Continuing with performance and maintainability, BC 28 expands telemetry information and profiling tools for AL:
- More SQL metrics are exposed in Application Insights: query execution times, number of table calls, indexes used, etc., are now logged in greater detail. A developer can monitor, in production environments, how their extensions behave in terms of data access, identifying slow or frequent queries. This goes hand in hand with improvements to the integrated Performance Profiler, which captures the AL execution trace with markers for long‑running procedures, page load times, and so on. Why is this useful? In implementations with many extensions, identifying performance bottlenecks can be challenging. These enhancements provide full visibility into the real impact of our code on performance, enabling data‑driven optimization (for example, rewriting a routine that the profiler shows takes X ms and performs N SQL reads every time a given page is opened).
- MCP Server for AL (Troubleshooting): Within the AI‑oriented tools, the concept of a Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server emerges. In this version, Microsoft enables an MCP Server focused on AL troubleshooting. It is a component designed so that AI assistants (Copilot, etc.) can interact with the Business Central environment securely, obtaining context from code, documentation, and diagnostics. Specifically, the AL MCP Server exposes APIs to query AL documentation, the symbols of our project, or even perform debug queries on execution, all in a way that an AI tool can leverage. In practice: Although it is a technical feature, it opens the door to intelligent assistants that, for example, provide explanations for AL errors or suggest how to resolve a failure pattern, using context from our project. For now, it is available as a preview (April 2026) and is enabled through configuration in Business Central’s Copilot Studio. It is another step toward AI‑assisted development directly inside our IDE.
Running objects by fully qualified name
Version 28 extends the AL language to support namespaces and fully qualified object names. This means it is now possible to instantiate or run a standard object by specifying its name with the module prefix (PublisherName.ModuleName.ObjectType "Name"). For example, you can run Codeunit 80 “Sales‑Post” using: Codeunit.Run('Microsoft.Sales.Posting."Sales-Post"');
Or open page 4 “Payment Terms” with: Page.Run('Microsoft.Foundation.PaymentTerms."Payment Terms"');
Even the Record/RecordRef types expose a new property, FullyQualifiedName, to obtain the full name including its namespace.
What does this mean? Primarily, it improves developers’ ability to work with solutions that combine multiple modules or apps. Namespaces provide a clear structure to avoid naming conflicts between different extensions. They also allow invoking objects unambiguously even when several apps define objects with the same name. This feature also enables new patterns for dynamic invocation (e.g., storing references to objects by their fully qualified name and executing them under certain conditions), offering greater flexibility in modular extension designs. (Available starting with 2026 Wave 1).
Support for AI agents in AL development
In line with the “AI‑first” vision, Business Central 28.0 introduces tools to evaluate and leverage AI assistance during the development phase:
- BC‑Bench: This is a benchmarking tool included in the AL development kit that allows developers to objectively measure the performance of an AI coding agent (for example, GitHub Copilot) when performing AL coding tasks. What does this mean? BC‑Bench provides a set of standardized tests inspired by real‑world scenarios (e.g., fixing a bug in AL code, writing test cases, refactoring a function) and evaluates how the AI agent performs in those tasks, comparing results and resolution times. Value for developers: It provides quantitative and repeatable metrics on the usefulness of tools like Copilot in our specific context, instead of relying solely on subjective impressions. For example, BC‑Bench might show that the agent correctly automates X% of the steps in a refactoring task, or that it cuts unit‑test writing time in half. This helps teams trust (or distrust) with data which areas are worth enhancing with AI, promoting a more evidence‑based adoption of these tools in technical teams. BC‑Bench will be available with the GA of 28.0 (April 2026).
- Resources for Copilot extensions: Another new feature (GA scheduled during the 2026 wave) is the set of improvements for managing AI resources in extensions integrated with Copilot. Since Business Central already allows developers to build extensions with Copilot/AI capabilities (for example, assistants that generate text or analyze data within BC), version 28 adds options to monitor and govern the use of these AI resources inside our extension. This includes quota configuration, tracking of AI service calls, and tools to optimize cost and performance in embedded‑AI scenarios. In summary, Microsoft is providing support so partners can incorporate AI into their solutions in a controlled, scalable way that aligns with companies’ data‑governance policies.
Business Central 28 boosts AL development
As we can see, Business Central 28.0 focuses on modernizing the AL development environment and delivering a qualitative leap in productivity and technical capabilities for partners. Among the most notable changes are the removal of legacy mechanisms (e.g., the old pricing engine, now fully replaced by the price list architecture), under‑the‑hood optimizations such as the FlowFields improvement, and the new capabilities for testing, search, and AI usage that we have just detailed.
The message is clear: Microsoft continues to bet on an extensible, intelligent, high‑performance cloud ERP, and developers should take advantage of these new capabilities to simplify our implementations.
Since BC 28.0 is still in a preview version, it is highly recommended to create a sandbox environment with the preview and start validating your extensions against the new release. In fact, 28.0 makes this easier by allowing sandbox environments to be upgraded to preview versions more seamlessly, enabling early upgrade simulations. Check whether your code works with the changes (e.g., obsolete events, renamed or relocated standard objects) and get familiar with the new tools. The time invested now will ensure a smooth migration when the final version arrives in April.
In short, BC 28 marks an important step toward a faster, smarter, and more developer‑friendly Business Central. Don’t forget to try out these new features in your development environment as soon as possible to make the most of them and ensure your solutions are ready on day one. Let’s get to work with BC 28.0!