Business Central introduces a redesigned No. Series module in BC24 together with the Business Foundation app. In this article you will learn what has changed and how to use the new module to refactor the old code.
- What Is It?
- What Changed?
- How To Use And Refactor?
- Copilot With No. Series?
What Is It?
The new “No. Series” module is an independent and separate module from the Base App. It introduces new objects and a modern way of using “No. Series”. It’s the first module “extracted” from the base app thanks to the Business Foundation. This approach does not introduce breaking changes.
The Business Foundation is a new layer, and it is the way to extract code from the Base App to make it more manageable.
Learn more about the Business Foundation here:
What Changed?
These module comes with several changes:
1) UI Improvements.
A factbox was added with Open Lines and Relationships.
New “ShowAll”/”Show Expiring” Actions.
2) New App and new Objects.
When downloading BC24 symbols you will see the new app “Business Foundation”.
When you use AL Explorer you can group by Module and see all the objects for the module. Also, it has it’s own Namespace “Microsoft.Foundation.NoSeries”.
Among others, two new important codeunits added:
– No. Series.
– No. Series – Batch.
And a new interface for any custom No. Series implementation. Add your own logic with “No. Series – Single” interface.
How To Use And Refactor?
The old codeunits will receive a similar warning:
“Codeunit ‘NoSeriesManagement’ is marked for removal. Reason: Please use the “No. Series” and “No. Series – Batch” codeunits instead. Tag: 24.0″.
This one in particular has been split into two codeunits:
“No Series” and “No. Series – Batch”.
“No. Series” has these methods:
And “No. Series – Batch” with these:
So, what is the use of “No. Series – Batch”?
As you can see, it has similar methods as “No. Series”. But you should use it when you need several No. series, this codeunit is optimized for performance. And use “SaveState” method to apply the changes.
The GetNextNo method loses the ModifySeries parameter in favor of a new method called “PeekNextNo”.
Which will get the next number without modifying the series.
You can even use another overload without dates:
For example, this is how you would refactor the widely used “InitSeries” method. Which has been deprecated in favor of a more readable way. Although it requires a few more lines of code.
Points to consider for the newly introduced “No. Series”:
- No breaking changes.
- Legacy code obsoleted in BC24, removed in BC27.
- Legacy code remains functional until removed.
- All Microsoft code uses the new “No. Series” functionality.
Start refactoring as soon as possible, follow this guide for further help:
Copilot With No. Series?
A new feature is coming soon to “No. Series”, and that is Copilot. Which will enable you to create No. Series automatically and more.
It’s still in progress, have a look and contribute here:
[BC Idea]: Number Series Copilot · Issue #659 · microsoft/BCApps · GitHub
In the second part of this video, you will find the whole explanation about the new No. Series module.
That´s all. Hope you find it helpful.