This is the most exciting addition to Business Central 2021 Wave 2 (v19)

Microsoft has finally fixed the biggest challenge with the web client, join me in this video for a bit of unfiltered celebration and excitement for something as mundane as keyboard buffering.

https://youtu.be/F9LSjyOKGbs

In this video, Erik shares what he considers the most exciting addition to Business Central 2021 Wave 2 (version 19) — and it’s not a flashy new feature or a major architectural change. It’s the fix for lost keystrokes in the web client. For years, power users have been frustrated by the web client dropping keyboard input during processing delays, and Microsoft has finally resolved this long-standing issue.

The Problem: Lost Keystrokes in the Web Client

Since the very first IBM PC over 40 years ago, personal computers have had a keyboard buffer — a fundamental mechanism that stores what you type even when the program receiving your input falls behind. The default keyboard buffer for decades held 30 characters. If you typed beyond that while the program wasn’t accepting input, you’d hear a little bell indicating the buffer was full. But the keystrokes up to that point were never lost.

Microsoft broke this paradigm with the Business Central web client. Whenever processing took place — for example, when moving from one line to the next in a list or journal — there was a gap during which any keystrokes you entered would simply be thrown away. They were never recorded, never processed.

This caused real problems for real users:

  • Customers calling in saying “the system is slow” or “the system isn’t doing what I’m typing”
  • Errors caused by the system falling behind the user’s input
  • Users getting stuck on the old Role Tailored Client (the Windows app) because they considered the web client unusable for data entry
  • Constant comparisons to “the old days” when things worked better

Why This Matters More Than You Think

It’s easy to think that in our modern world of integrations, EDI, web shops, and APIs, nobody sits and types hundreds of lines into a general journal or a sales order anymore. But the reality is quite different. There are still many users who spend eight hours a day entering data into Business Central — whether that’s in the general journal, sales orders, purchase orders, or warehouse documents. For these power users, fast and reliable keyboard input isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s essential to their productivity.

The Fix in Action

Erik demonstrates the fix using the General Journal, showcasing one of the hallmark keystroke sequences that Business Central (and its predecessors NAV, Vision, Dynamics) users have relied on for years: F8, Arrow Down, F8, Arrow Down, F8, Arrow Down — copying the value from the field above while creating new lines in rapid succession.

In previous versions of the web client (versions 13 through 18), this sequence would lose keystrokes. The system simply couldn’t keep up, and any input entered during processing transitions was discarded. Now in version 19, the keystrokes are properly buffered and processed, even when typing at high speed.

This applies not just to F8, but to all rapid data entry scenarios — typing quantities, prices, account numbers, and any other fields where power users with their numeric keypads are lightning fast.

Removing a Barrier to Web Client Adoption

One of the significant consequences of this fix is that it removes a major reason people stayed on the old Windows Role Tailored Client. When users complained that the web client was throwing away their keystrokes, there was no real defense — it was genuinely broken for fast typists. Now that this is resolved, one of the last compelling arguments for clinging to the legacy Windows client has been eliminated.

Erik goes so far as to say that Microsoft could have released version 19 with nothing else but this fix, and user satisfaction would have measurably increased. That’s how impactful this change is for the daily experience of data entry users.

A Note on the Source Code

While this video focuses on a platform-level improvement rather than AL development, here’s what a basic AL extension project looks like for those getting started with Business Central development:

namespace DefaultPublisher.WhatsNewinBC25;

using Microsoft.Sales.Customer;

pageextension 50100 CustomerListExt extends "Customer List"
{
    trigger OnOpenPage();
    begin

    end;
}

The app.json configuration defines the extension’s metadata, including the runtime version and application target:

{
  "id": "27b30fa5-54ff-41af-9ef5-bcd41dfc5377",
  "name": "WhatsNewinBC25",
  "publisher": "Default Publisher",
  "version": "1.0.0.0",
  "platform": "1.0.0.0",
  "application": "25.0.0.0",
  "idRanges": [
    {
      "from": 50100,
      "to": 50149
    }
  ],
  "runtime": "14.1",
  "features": [
    "NoImplicitWith"
  ]
}

Conclusion

Sometimes the most impactful improvements aren’t the headline features — they’re the fixes that address daily pain points affecting thousands of users. The keyboard buffer fix in Business Central 2021 Wave 2 (v19) is exactly that kind of improvement. It restores a fundamental expectation of computer interaction that has existed since the dawn of the PC era, dramatically improves the experience for power users who live in the web client all day, and removes one of the last major objections to migrating away from the legacy Windows client. It’s a quiet change with enormous real-world impact.

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