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. The new design has a look-and-feel that resembles the Debugger regarding breakpoints.

Tip
You can use the old version of the C/AL Editor by running the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Development Environment from a command prompt and setting the useoldeditor parameter.

Administrators can record new permission sets in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017. 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.

For more information, see User Groups and How to: Create or Modify Permission Sets.

By implementing events in C/AL code, you can design applications to react to specific actions or behavior 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.

For more information, see Events in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 introduces event channels on events that occur on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instances. Event channels provide a way to collect and view event data from a specific provider, which in this case in Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, and for a specific type of event, such as admin, operational, or debug. The implementation of event channels offers the following enhancements to event logging and viewing:

• 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.
  This provides an advantage over the Windows Application log which contains events from several providers, not just the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server. You also have the option to disable logging to the Windows Application log.
  
• 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.
  

For more information, see Monitoring Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Events.

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.

You define namespaces in the new Namespaces Property of the XMLport object. Each namespace is defined by a prefix and the namespace, which is typically a URI (uniform Resource Identifier). You then apply the prefix to specific elements of the XMLport by setting the new NamespacePrefix Property.

For more information, see Using Namespaces with XMLports.

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 that cannot be resolved by users from the Microsoft Dynamics NAV client. For more information, see Updating Custom Report Layouts by Using Upgrade Codeunits.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 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. A filter page contains one or more filter controls, where each filter control can be used to set filters on a specific table. Similar to report request pages in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV client, filter pages are generated at runtime and run in a modal dialog box.

For more information, see Creating Filter Pages for Filtering Tables and FilterPageBuilder Data Type.

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 thrown by Microsoft Dynamics NAV or .NET Framework interoperability operations.

For more information, see Handling Errors by Using Try Functions.

You can write HyperlinkHandler functions in test codeunits to test hyperlink URLs that are passed to the HYPERLINK function. This is similar to other handler function types for handling UI interactions in application testing.

For more information, see How to: Create Handler Functions.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 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
  

For more information, see Virtual Tables

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. This allows showing, for example, pages differently depending on the display target. For more information, see CURRENTCLIENTTYPE Function and DEFAULTCLIENTTYPE Function.

The mechanism behind the column layout on the Role Center specifically for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client has been changed. 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.

When building Role Centers it is recommended to avoid using the Group type to group the parts that make up the Role Center, and instead create all parts directly underneath the Container type. This will optimize the layout to be more dynamic and thereby fit more display targets.

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. For a code example of how to integrate with the camera option, see How to: Implement the Camera in C/AL. For a code example of how to get GPS coordinates, see How to: Implement Location in C/AL.

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. For more information, see Manifest Overview.

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. For more information, see Manifest Overview.

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.

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 2017 you can use Decimal, Integer, BigInteger, and Duration data types in aggregations.

For more information, see Understanding Query Totals and Grouping, FlowFields, and SumIndexField Technology (SIFT).

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 2017, 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.

For more information, see How to: Use a Timestamp Field.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 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.

For more information, see How to: Configure SQL Server Authentication in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

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.

For more information, see How to: Deploy a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Database to Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 introduced the automatic deployment of Microsoft .NET Framework Interoperability and control add-in assemblies from the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV clients. Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 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. To accomplish this, you import the add-in files as a compressed (.zip) file into the database. You perform this by using page 9820 Control Add-ins or using the New-NAVAddin cmdlet, Set-NAVAddin cmdlet, Get-NAVAddin, or Remove-NAVAddin cmdlets from the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 Administration Shell. The add-ins are then stored in system table 2000000069 Add-ins.

For more information, see How to: Install a Windows Client Control Add-in Assembly and How to: Set .NET Framework Types to Run on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows Client or Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server Computers.

In earlier Microsoft Dynamics NAV versions, to run NAS services, the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server service account had to be added as a user in Microsoft Dynamics NAV and assigned the required permissions to perform the operations. In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017, 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. This feature is supported for NAS services in a single tenant (non-multitenant) and multitenant Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server deployment.

For more information, see Configuring NAS Services.

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.

This change is especially useful in application deployments where multiple Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instances serve the same tenants. It is now easier to add Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server instances to load-balance or scale an application deployment. Instead of having to mount tenants manually, new server instances will automatically inherit the tenant configurations from the application database and mount tenants automatically. Also, 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.

For more information, see Multitenant Deployment Architecture.

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.

For more information, see the Compile and Load Business Application setting in Configuring Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server.

Previously, when upgrading data from an older version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to the latest version, you had to manually run codeunit 2 Company Initialization on each company in the database. When upgrading data to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017, this task is automatically performed for you by the upgrade process.

For more information, see the Upgrading Data.

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. For more information, see Running 32-Bit Microsoft Dynamics Windows Client on 64-Bit Windows.

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. For more information, see Developing Multilanguage-Enabled Applications.