It’s that time of year, Microsoft just revealed the list of what’s coming in Business Central 2022 Wave 2, v21 – Check it out in this video:
In this video, Erik Hougaard walks through Microsoft’s official release plan for Business Central 2022 Wave 2 (version 21), reviewing each announced feature and sharing his opinions on what matters most. He covers application changes, development improvements, governance updates, Power Platform integrations, reporting enhancements, and some exciting UX improvements — including a long-awaited company switcher across environments.
Understanding the “Wave” Concept
Before diving into the features, Erik clarifies a point that still confuses many people: the concept of a “wave.” Twice a year, Microsoft increments the major version number for Business Central. However, not all functionality ships on day one. Features continue to roll out over the following months through minor version updates.
For example, when version 20 shipped in April, it didn’t include everything planned for that wave. Updates continued through 20.1, 20.2, 20.3, and beyond. The best version of any wave is the final minor release — for version 19, that would be 19.5, because that’s when Microsoft completed everything they planned. Anything beyond that (19.6, 19.7, 19.8 for on-premises) is purely maintenance.
Application Changes
Better Bank Reconciliation for Checks
With version 20, Microsoft merged the two bank reconciliation modules. This continues that effort, particularly relevant for North America where checks remain commonly used.
Extended Text Functionality for Resource Lines
A straightforward improvement that’s likely important for users working with resource-based documents.
Financial Reporting Replaces Account Schedules
Erik is particularly excited about this one — and takes a small bit of credit for having advocated for years that “Account Schedules” was a terrible name. The origin of the name traces back to the Danish version of Navision, where the word roughly translates to something like a planner or chart. It could have been translated as “account sheet” or many other things, but “account schedule” won out — arguably the worst option — and it stuck for 30 years.
Now Microsoft is renaming Account Schedules to “Financial Reporting,” which makes far more sense to users who don’t know the historical context. Beyond the rename, Microsoft also promises to modernize the editing and viewing experience for column and row layouts, making the relationship between editing and viewing financial reports less confusing.
Other Application Features
- New web date fields on documents and entries
- Reverse payment recognition journal entry
- Use multiple remit-to addresses for vendors
Country and Regional Availability
Microsoft is expanding Business Central availability to more than 50 countries worldwide. Erik notes this is truly impressive — he struggles to think of any other accounting platform with this kind of global coverage. Additionally, Belgium and other EU countries are getting improvements related to Intrastat reporting.
Development Features
Promoted Action Groups and Action References
The current promoted actions system has long needed an overhaul. The existing promote mechanism carries a lot of legacy baggage from the Windows client era, with awkward group numbering and limited flexibility when promoting actions outside the three easily promotable groups.
Key details:
- The platform will remain backward-compatible by keeping existing promoted actions working
- A page must be consistent — it uses either the old or the new model, not both
- A code action will be available to convert existing pages from the old model to the new one
Use ByRef and XMLport Parameters in OData
This addresses a gap where SOAP web services were clearly superior to OData. With SOAP, you could define an XMLport with nested structures, use it as a parameter on a function, and when exposed via SOAP, the XMLport structure became a proper object in the metadata. This capability didn’t exist in OData — until now.
Erik notes a curious omission: there’s still no mention of being able to pass a JSON object directly to an OData action. Currently, passing JSON structures requires serializing them as strings, which is cumbersome. He hopes this might come in a future update.
Access Database Row Version from AL Code
Previously, row version data was only accessible through ETags on APIs. Now the Business Central platform makes this data accessible directly from AL code. The database tracks a global number called “row version” across all tables, and developers will be able to read it programmatically.
Write Faster Upgrade Code
Upgrade code units run during app installation when upgrading from a lower version, handling tasks like populating new fields or restructuring data. Microsoft promises to make this process easier, particularly for scenarios like moving a field with data from one table to another.
Missing from the List: Visual Abstractions
Erik points out an interesting discrepancy. The overview page for this wave mentions “adding visual abstractions on top of AL code” and “better and more efficient management of AL packages across projects and workspaces.” However, none of these appear in the detailed feature list. This could mean a visual page designer, a report designer, or dependency visualization — but it’s not specified yet. Erik recommends bookmarking the page, as this list will evolve over time.
Governance and Administration
- Better communication for admins — Notifications moving to the Microsoft 365 Message Center and Service Health Dashboard. Erik is of two minds: it’s good for consolidation, but it was also nice having a dedicated Business Central admin center for this.
- More visibility into outages — Making it easier for users and administrators to learn about declared outages affecting their environments.
- Restore deleted environments — Previously, you had to call support to restore a deleted environment from backup. Now Microsoft implements a soft delete: environments remain recoverable for seven days before permanent deletion.
- Service-to-service authentication with the Admin API — Something Erik feels should have been working for a long time already.
Power Platform Integration
- Power Apps and Power Automate support for document attachments — Attachments in OData feeds have been unnecessarily complicated; hopefully this improves things.
- Personalization of the Automate action group
- Show/hide Power BI parts on lists
- Power BI apps with dimensions — Dimensions have been one of the most difficult things to work with in Power BI reporting. Microsoft has updated demo data to better demonstrate dimension-based reporting scenarios.
Onboarding Improvements
Microsoft is heavily focused on onboarding because new customers are coming onto the platform faster than new people are joining the partner channel. Getting customers to do more for themselves is critical.
Setup Pages for Apps via app.json
When you install an app today, nothing obvious happens — some apps spam the Role Center with notifications, which Erik finds annoying. Others require users to search for setup pages by guessing what they might be called.
Now, apps can specify their setup page in app.json, and users can click “Setup” directly from the Extension Management page. This is similar to how mobile apps handle onboarding. The setup page can even double as a welcome/registration wizard on first run, then serve as the actual configuration page for subsequent visits.
Here’s an example of a basic app.json structure — in version 21, you’ll be able to add a setup page reference here:
{
"id": "a200c67e-58ec-4b14-84c9-4f3a621ca557",
"name": "WhatsNewInBC26",
"publisher": "Default Publisher",
"version": "1.0.0.0",
"brief": "",
"description": "",
"privacyStatement": "",
"EULA": "",
"help": "",
"url": "",
"dependencies": [],
"screenshots": [],
"platform": "1.0.0.0",
"application": "26.0.0.0",
"idRanges": [
{
"from": 50100,
"to": 50149
}
],
"resourceExposurePolicy": {
"allowDebugging": true,
"allowDownloadingSource": true,
"includeSourceInSymbolFile": true
},
"runtime": "15.0",
"features": [
"NoImplicitWith"
]
}Improved App Installation Flow
Previously, users who installed an app from AppSource were guided to initiate the installation, but then had to navigate to the Extension Management page to check deployment status. In this wave, the installation experience is improved so users can wait for the installation to complete and be guided directly to the app’s setup page.
Reporting Improvements
- Excel report layouts — Version 20 introduced Excel report layouts, but the way structures were flattened into a single data section caused problems. Now Microsoft is creating new reports designed specifically with Excel output in mind, including batches and global dimensions.
- Send reports from the request page — Currently, sending reports to the report inbox requires a convoluted schedule-then-send workflow. Now you can send directly from the request page.
- Layout selection in the report dialog — Erik notes he made a video about exactly this concept (selecting a layout when running a report), and it appears Microsoft is implementing this properly.
User Experience Highlights
Legacy List Views Are Hidden
Legacy views — list views created by developers in previous versions by placing them on Role Center pages — are being hidden. They displayed side-by-side with modern views on list pages but offered a degraded experience with fewer options compared to modern views.
Fluent UI Design Elements
The web client is being updated with Fluent UI design elements across application pages and system controls to lower the learning curve through visual familiarity.
Switch Company Across Environments
Erik saves the best for last. A new company switcher lets you see and switch between all companies across all your environments — production, sandbox, and more — from a single interface. This is a huge improvement over the current workflow of opening new tabs manually. It hearkens back to the classic client days when you could press Ctrl+O and switch company instantly. The new switcher may even support opening companies in new browser tabs for side-by-side work.
Summary
While the feature list initially appeared short, Business Central 2022 Wave 2 packs meaningful improvements across the board. The standout items include the long-overdue renaming of Account Schedules to Financial Reporting, the overhaul of promoted actions for developers, OData parity with SOAP for XMLport parameters, the cross-environment company switcher, and significant onboarding improvements for app installation. Erik emphasizes that this is an evolving document — Microsoft will continue adding items to the release plan, so bookmarking it and checking back regularly is recommended. Follow-up videos on individual features will come as the release solidifies.
