Code Compass

Introduction After a new Business Central system goes live, it’s important to know if users are actually using it the way they should (Go-Live is just the beginning). Tracking usage statistics helps us understand how well the system is being adopted and where improvements might be needed. To make this easier, I’ve created a small utility that automatically collects user activity data and builds a report from it. This saves time and gives a clear picture of how the system is being used to the management. Here’s what it does: There’s a setup page where you can choose how stats are collected and skip certain users (like consultants or support team members who create test data). A configuration page lets you pick which tables to track. You can also set how often stats should be gathered using a frequency field; it even sets up the background job for you. A report which summarises the generated data in a neat matrix. With this tool, keeping an eye on system adoption becomes simple and autom...

Introduction Events are notifications that signal something has happened in the system. A record getting created, updated or deleted, a sales order getting posted, etc are all examples of events. An event driven architecture provides asynchrony and decoupled communication between different components of the system supporting flexibility, scalability and modularity. In Business Central, we have two main types of events - Business and Integration. Integration Events are related to things within Business Central. They are use for extending the functionality of the Base Application without modifying it directly. Business Events are related to things outside of Business Central. They are used for notifying external systems (e.g., via Power Automate or Logic Apps) regarding any changes that happen within Business Central. Microsoft allows us to create custom Integration and Business Events based on our requirements. In this blog, we'll see how to create a custom Business Event and...

Introduction Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that makes it easier for applications to provide information to large language models (LLMs). You can think of MCP like a USB-C port for AI —just as USB-C offers a common way to connect devices, MCP provides a standard way to link AI models with different data sources and tools. MCP uses a client-server setup , where different parts work together to share data: MCP Hosts – Programs like Claude Desktop, IDEs, or AI tools that need access to data. MCP Clients – Connect directly to servers to request and send data. MCP Servers – Small programs that provide specific functions through MCP. For this proof of concept (PoC) , I used two key parts of MCP: Resources – A way for MCP servers to share data, which clients can read and use to give better responses. Tools – Functions that let servers do tasks, such as pulling data from other systems or running commands. I built both the MCP server and client inside Cursor , writing all...