Event-Driven Architecture: How to Create Custom Business Events in Business Central

-

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 use it to notify our Business Manager whenever a user logs in.

References

Configuration

I'll create a new project in Visual Studio Code using AL Go.
I'll create a simple Enum Extension.


Then I'll create a codeunit which will hold my custom Business Event.
In this codeunit, firstly I've defined my Business Event using the "External Business Event" decorator which takes the name, description, category and version as parameters.
And then as I am targeting it to be triggered when a User logs in so I'll subscribe the event and then call my custom method inside it.


And that's it!
Once you deploy your extension to Business Central, your custom event will be available to be subscribed.
I've written a simple flow on Power Automate to consume it.
I'll choose the trigger "When a business event occurs" from the Business Central connector and sign in to the appropriate tenant.


In the drop-down I can see my custom Business Event.


Then I'll add an action to send an email based on this trigger.
We can see that the parameters that we added on the custom Business Event are available here to be used.
I tried to add some documentation to these parameters but I couldn't figure out a way to get it to work.


And the end result ----


Source

Conclusion

An event-driven approach makes your setup more flexible, easier to manage, and better prepared for future changes.
In Business Central, adding a custom event is super simple and once you’ve done that, connecting it to something like Logic Apps becomes very easy.

What’s great is that you don’t need to write complex code or worry about breaking things later. If your process changes down the line, you can just update the logic that listens to the event; no need to touch the core functionality.
That means less stress, cleaner code, and a much more maintainable system in the long run.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leverage Postman for Streamlined API Testing in Finance and Operations

-
Image
Introduction Postman is a tool for testing APIs. It lets you send requests, automate tests, and share your work with your team.  We're going to connect Postman to our Finance and Operations environment so we can test out standard or custom APIs. I've already covered automating the testing in Postman in my blog here  so once the connections are in place you'll be good to go! Pre-requisites Postman Finance and Operations Environment Configuration We'll start with creating an App Registration in Azure Portal. Go to the Azure Portal (of the same tenant of your FnO Environment). Search for "App Registration" and click on "New Registration". Add a name for your new app and click on "Register." Once it is completed, you'll be taken to the Overview of the app. Here, click on the "Add a certificate or secret" under the "Client Credentials." Add an appropriate name and select the expiration date of the certificate as necessary...
Read more

Integration with Finance and Operations - From Basics (Part 2)

-
Image
Introduction Finance and Operations provides two major ways to interact with tables (or data entities) for external system using APIs; namely Custom Services and Data Entities. Data entities in D365 Finance and Operations simplify data management by grouping data from multiple tables. They make it easier to import, export, and integrate data with other systems. Custom services in D365 Finance and Operations allow developers to create web services for specific business needs. They enable external systems to interact with D365 F&O by exposing custom logic and operations. This helps in integrating and automating processes with other applications. In the previous blog, we saw how we can use Data Entities to create APIs. In this blog, we'll see how we can use Custom Services to create APIs. References Custom Service Development Exposing an X++ Class as a Data Contract Using Data Contracts Pre-requisites A Finance and Operations Environment Postman connected to FnO Enviroment (If you...
Read more