Business Central 2022 Wave 1 – Multiple Report Layouts in Reports and Report Extensions

With each update of Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft enhances what is often referred to as the base application and enhances the development environment. Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 1 has several exciting new features in the development environment. One of the exciting features is the option for multiple report layouts within a single report or report extension. This provides report developers the option to add alternative layout options in a single report or report extension.

In earlier versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central, you could only embed a single layout of each report layout type (RDLC or Word) in a report or report extension. If there were a need to have additional layouts, the layout was setup as Custom Report Layout. In Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 1 a new Rendering section has been added; you can now include multiple layouts of different or the same type.

Rendering Section

To enable multiple layouts, you must use the Rendering section of a report object. Inside the Rendering section, you define one or more layout sections. In each layout section, you specify details about the layout file path and name, a Caption property, and a Summary property, which is displayed to the user on the Report Layouts page in Dynamics 365 Business Central.

The default layout is defined with the DefaultRenderingLayout report property. Note: This DefaultRenderingLayout property cannot be set on report extension objects, only on report objects.

DefaultRenderingLayout Property

When a report with multiple layouts is loaded, the report layouts are visible on the Report Layout Page. The layout is selected on the Report Layout Selection Page.

Note: The old properties for defining RDLC, Word, and the default layout, still exist but cannot be used in combination with the new rendering section. A report author must use one or the other.

See What’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central for additional information.