What's New: Developer Changes for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016

Below are the details of new features and functionality that are available in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 and have been added to the product since Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015. It also describes features that have been deprecated since Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015.

Will come up with detail later in my future posts.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 introduces changes to the upgrade, development, deployment, and administration experiences compared to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015.

Redesigned C/AL Editor

The C/AL Editor in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Development Environment has been redesigned to give you more coding capabilities. Coding in the new C/AL editor is like before except you benefit from new features such as IntelliSense, name completion, change tracking, improved syntax highlighting and colorization.

Record Permissions and Apply Permissions Sets to User Groups

Administrators can record new permission sets in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016. Recording permissions is based on the code coverage functionality. You can access the various windows and activities in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client or the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client that you want users with this permission set to access. You must carry out the tasks that you want to record permissions for. Then, you can apply the new permission set to a group of users.

Events in C/AL

By implementing events in C/AL code, you can design applications to react to specific actions or behaviour that occur. Events enable you to separate customized functionality from the application business logic. By using events in the application where customizations are typically made, you can lower the cost of code modifications and upgrades to the original application.

Event Channels on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Events

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 introduces event channels on events that occur on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instances.

• In addition to the Windows Application log, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server events are recorded in specific Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server logs in the Applications and Services Logs of Windows.


• You can use Event Viewer to view trace events.


• You can use FilterXpath parameter of the Get-WinEvent Windows PowerShell cmdlet to filter events for a specific Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance.

Multiple Namespaces on XMLports

You can define multiple namespaces on XMLports that import or export data as XML. This improves the ability to create XMLports that are compatible with the XML schemas that are used by the systems that consume or provide the Microsoft Dynamics NAV data.

Updating Custom Report Layouts by Using Upgrade Codeunits

You can update custom report layouts by creating upgrade codeunits to handle changes in report datasets that affect the report layouts. Upgrade codeunits enable you to programmatically update multiple custom report layouts in the database to changes in report datasets

Filter Pages for Filtering Tables

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 includes the new C/AL data type FILTERPAGEBUILDER. You can use the FILTERPAGEBUILDER data type and its functions to create a filter page that enables users to set filters on one or more tables.

C/AL Try Functions for Handling Errors

Try functions enable you to catch and handle errors that occur when running the application. You can use try functions to catch errors and exceptions that are thrown by Microsoft Dynamics NAV or .NET Framework interoperability operations.

HyperlinkHandler Function Type in Test Codeunits

You can write HyperlinkHandler functions in test codeunits to test hyperlink URLs that are passed to the HYPERLINK function.

Object Metadata Virtual Tables

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 includes the following virtual tables that contain metadata about Microsoft Dynamics NAV objects.

• Codeunit Metadata virtual table


• Page Metadata virtual table


• Report Metadata virtual table


• Table Metadata virtual table

New CLIENTTYPE Options Added

With Microsoft Dynamics NAV the CLIENTTYPE function has been expanded to support Microsoft Dynamics NAV Tablet client, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Phone client and running the app in Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client, which is Desktop mode.

Column Layout on Role Centers

It is still possible to define groups as previously, and thereby keep the design of existing Role Centers. But when these Role Centers are displayed on larger screens, there is an automatic switch to a 4 column layout. When developing new Role Centers, it is now possible to not define any groups and let the dynamic layout handle the switch from 1 to 2 to 3 column layout, depending on the screen size.

Camera and Location

With Microsoft Dynamics NAV an API for integrating to a camera and getting GPS coordinates is available. The camera option is implemented in the application as functionality available when using Incoming Documents on, which you can see on, for example, the Accounting Manager profile.

Sizing Settings for Control Add-ins

To control that the sizing of the control add-ins is always optimal on all display targets a number of new settings are available to you when writing the manifest code.

Structure for Resource Files in Manifest

Microsoft Dynamics NAV supports resource files to be described in the manifest file with or without a relative path allowing you to organize and maintain resource files the way you prefer.

Tooltips on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client

The ToolTip Property and the ToolTipML Property have been added on ActivityButtons and ActionContainers of the subtype HomeItems to support displaying descriptions in the navigation pane.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Integration

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 introduces a new and improved integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 includes a default integration setup that is supported by several objects, including tables, pages, and codeunits. You can customize these objects to extend the integration to other Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities and change processes like synchronization.

Additional Numeric Data Types Supported in Aggregations by Queries, FlowFields, and SIFT

In earlier versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, data aggregations (such as sum and average) on tables by Query objects, FlowFields, and SumIndexField Technology could only be done on Decimal data type fields. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 you can use Decimal, Integer, BigInteger, and Duration data types in aggregations.

Timestamp Field Available in Tables

Each table in Microsoft Dynamics NAV includes a hidden timestamp field. The timestamp field contains row version numbers for records as maintained in SQL Server. In earlier versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the timestamp field could not be used in tables. In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, you can expose the timestamp field in tables, write code against it, add filters, and so on, similar to any other field in a table.

SQL Server Authentication

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 supports SQL Server authentication between the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance and the Microsoft Dynamics NAV database in SQL Server. Previously only Windows authentication was supported.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database Support

You can deploy a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database to Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database is a cloud service for data storage that is a part of the Azure Services Platform.

Automatic Deployment of Add-ins From the Database

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 now makes it possible to automatically deploy add-in assemblies (including client control add-ins, .NET Framework interoperability, and language resources) directly from Microsoft Dynamics NAV database to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance or client as required.

Running NAS Services with Administrator Rights

In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, you can set up NAS services to run with administrator rights, which grants the NAS service the same permissions as the SUPER permission set without having to add the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server service account as a user in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Tenant Configurations Stored in Application Database

In a multitenant Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server deployment, the configuration information about the tenants that are mounted on a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance is now stored in the application database (table dbo.$ndo$tenants) instead of a tenant.config file for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance.

When you want to mount or dismount a tenant, you only have to mount or dismount the tenant on one of the server instances for an application database because other server instances will automatically detect and apply the changes.

Loading Application Assemblies When Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Instances Start

You can configure a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance to compile all the business application assemblies and load them to cache memory when the server instance is started. The assemblies are then retrieved from memory when requested by a Microsoft Dynamics NAV client. This improves the response time after restarting a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instance.

Automatic Company Initialization during Data Upgrade

When upgrading data to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, this task is automatically performed for you by the upgrade process.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows Client Available in 64-Bit Version

On a 64-bit Windows operating system, the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client is available in 64-bit version and 32-bit version. By default, when you install the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client, the 64-bit version is used. The 64-bit version is better when you have to run several large reports. However, there are some components, such as COM, which are not supported on 64-bit applications. Therefore, you can also run the 32-bit version of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client if it is required.

Multilanguage Captions Compile as Unicode

When you compile application objects, Microsoft Dynamics NAV stores the objects in Unicode encoding. If the application objects contain Multilanguage captions, Microsoft Dynamics NAV uses the code pages that are relevant for the languages that you have specified.