Business Central - Feature Management
Microsoft’s focus on self-serve is very evident in what they have been releasing consistently for a few years! They are allowing customers to know what is coming up through the built-in Feature Management.
Allowing customers to be able to try something new before it is released, shows that Microsoft believes in their product(s). Microsoft is even putting out some if not all of their AL Codes via GitHub. This Feature Management function allows you to install a specific feature in a sandbox environment to test it out. Now, you can turn it on in a production environment but I would recommend that you should try new features within a sandbox or test environment before you even attempt to put it into production. Follow the same implementation procedure by utilizing a sandbox/test environment, user testing, documentation, and training.
If you’ve made it this far, then you are curious in trying this out. From Business Central, search for “Feature Management”.
You will be presented with a long list of features that may be enabled already and some are not. Notice the different columns:
Feature: Name of the feature update
Learn More: A link that references the highlighted feature in detail
Automatically enabled from: Expected to be automatically enabled for everyone and can no longer be disabled.
Enabled for: Specified who it is enabled for. You have two options - None or All Users
Get Started: Temporarily enabled for your session only until you log out and log back in. This only affects you and no one else
Current Company Status: Specifies if the feature is enabled for the current company you are on
If there is an option to “Try it out”, you can do so by clicking on the Try it out link; this will open a new tab, temporarily allowing you to try out the feature until you log out and log back in.
If you find a feature that you would like to try, please ensure that you are on a sandbox environment, under the “Enabled for” column, choose the All Users option. This will enable the feature for everyone within that sandbox environment.
Please note that when enabling the features, it is at your own risk. Please ensure that you are testing the feature completely within a sandbox/test environment before implementing it on your production. This option is very helpful, allowing you to test and document the process before it is released generally to all users.
Otherwise, enjoy trying out new features!
