Business Central Musings

While reviewing options to alter existing queries, I felt trap to the fact that now queries do not need a new page to display results, but can be connected to existing List pages.

Below, highlighted are all queries connected to Customer List page.

For example “Blocked Customers” query is located in _Exclude_Microsoft Dynamics 365 SmartList extension

Source code can be found in Microsoft open source github for BC:

The way we connect the query with the List page is through QueryCategory property as it’s been described in more detail here, and here.

Moving on the views now, we can create at run time a view by activating the Filter pane and saving the filtering:

But, what’s cool, you can create a view in code.

For example, if you develop a solution and you want your extension to come with already defined views, then here is what you would do:

1. Create a new profile:

In VS Code, create a new al file and include this code:

profile CUSTOM_VIEWS_QUERIES
{
    Caption = 'CUSTOM VIEWS and QUERIES';
    RoleCenter = "Business Manager Role Center";
    Customizations = TestView;
}

2. Create a new page customization object:

pagecustomization TestView customizes "Customer List"
{
    views
    {
        addfirst
        {
            view(View1)
            {
                Caption = 'Test View 1';
                Filters = WHERE("Balance" = filter(.. 100));
            }
        }
    }
}

Compile the project containing the new AL file, and publish the extension.

In BC, switch to the new profile, CUSTOM_VIEWS_QUERIES and we can see now under Customers, 2 views:

• Bobs – > created at run time
• Test View 1 -> created via code

For creating views at design time, read more here.

Lastly, let’s add a custom query to the Customers List.

In your AL project, create a new AL file and create a new query.

query 50100 Test_Query
{
    QueryType = Normal;
    QueryCategory = 'Customer List';
    Caption = '__Test Query';
    TopNumberOfRows = 10;
    elements
    {
...

To make some sense being located on Customer List page, the dataitem chosen should contain primary key of the table supporting the list, meaning Customer.”No.”.

If you don’t want to go through creating a new query, just copy an existing query on Customer List, like Blocked Customers, and replace the top part with the code above.

Build and publish. Now the new query is displayed in the Customers drop down list of queries:

In the Dynamics NAV times, we would have added queries by adding an action and execute the page supporting the query, or we would have added the page supporting the query in the menusuite.

Now, with one line of code (QueryCategory property) we allow a query be executed from all the list pages defined with QueryCategory.

As we saw, views can now be coded, which makes your extension versatile and easy to use.

Awesome job, Microsoft.