Yesterday was the start of the long-awaited launch event for Microsoft Dynamics Business Central version 18, or should I say Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 2021 Release Wave 1. For those of you that didn’t attend the virtual launch event, it’s not too late, you can either read my synopsis here, or you can still register and watch the recording of the event. Here is the link: https://events1.social27.com/msdyn365bclaunchevent2021w1/page/pre-signup
Lots of great news was shared, and some exciting new features, as well as some long awaited features. The launch features were divided into 3 main categories of themes, Onboarding processes have been improved to help customers onboard quicker, Better together with Microsoft sees better integration with other Microsoft products, and Best of Breed business solutions for all the new features added to the product and the expansion into new geographies. Let’s have a look at some of these announcements.
Great news!
Previously in Business Central the largest Database that was supported was 30GB, with a max size per tenant of 80GB. There was a lot of misinformation with regards to the size limits, and Microsoft actually allowed an additional 40GB of document storage space that did not count towards your 30 or 80 GB limits (off course this information was not widely shared in case you didn’t know about the extra 40GB not counting towards your limits). However, from version 17, if you went over the size limit you could purchase additional storage, but this came at a considerable cost of USD40 per Gig, and prohibited larger customers from cloud migrations. With version 18 it was announced that new storage plans are now available with version 18, which means that Customers will not have to pay more for storage, and that the storage limit of 80GB is no longer an issue. I will do a separate blog post on this very soon, explaining all the details, so watch this space.
New Features
Lots of exciting new features were briefly discussed, and some was even briefly shown. Some great new customer onboarding features to ease the customer onboarding process. Great new integration features between Business Central and Microsoft Teams to add to the collaboration story. Not a lot of emphasis on the launch event about the Application Builder and Solution Developer being made available to all customers at no extra charge from version 18, but this I still feel was a really important announcement that goes along with version 18. No longer will customers need to pay in order to be allowed to do their own development on Business Central, which is great news for those customers that have their own internal development and IT teams. In the Q&A session this did spark some questions about how to control customer environments going forward, so watch this space for more updates on this. Also deserving an honourable mention is the new Dimension Correction Tool, giving users the ability to correct Dimensions on posted transactions, meaning that they no longer have to reverse old entries and post corrective entries. Off course there is just too much to mention here, I will include a link to the version release notes at the end of this mail.
Long Awaited Features
Finally, starting with version 18, you will now be able to extend Reports. Previously this was not possible, and users would have to create a copy of a standard report, and make changes they wanted there, and maybe this is something that should have been in the product some time ago, but this was not as easy as it sounds. Technical difficulties stopped the BC team from being able to achieve this earlier, but it is finally here, and you can now extend Reports in BC version 18. Because this is so long awaited, this towers above the other long awaited features, but here are a couple more things you can expect from this release: Use one-dimensional barcodes in reports means that you can now add barcodes to invoices etc. You are able to return complex data types from functions, and they have finally added the ability to extend base tables in the system by adding your own custom keys. Once again, more on all these new features will follow in emails and blog posts to come.
Other information to share
I’ve included the new Dynamics April 2021 licensing guide in this email for you all to have a look at, off course this is not a complete guide, and should you have any questions about Licensing, please feel free to contact our Licensing expert, Lee Olsen if you have any questions. He can be reached on lee.olsen@liquidtelecom.com
New Territories
Great news for us off course is that Microsoft is expanding the countries where Business Central is available in our region, it can be clearly seen that MEA as a big focus for this release, and during 2021 release wave 1 we will see these countries become available.
Release notes
For more details on the above, and a lot more on what has changed in the Wave 1 release of 2021, please visit the following link:
Wrap up Thanks for reading the notes on the new release, my colleagues I will be doing detailed Blog posts on all the sessions, and we will keep it as short as possible to ensure it makes an easy read, and you can get an update as quickly as possible.
