AboutTitle and AboutText: Better Teaching Tips in Business Central

Teaching tips are one of those tiny user experience touches that can save you a lot of training time. In Business Central, the AboutTitle and AboutText properties let you add those “What is this?” callouts directly on pages, fields, actions, and more.

I like these properties because they scale well: You can put a small hint on a single field or provide a higher-level explanation for an entire page—without writing any code.

What Are AboutTitle and AboutText?

• AboutTitle is the large header shown in the teaching tip.
• AboutText is the body text shown under the title.

They’re most commonly used to:

• Explain what a page is for (especially list pages that new users land on)
• Add context to “mystery fields” (settings, posting options, toggles)
• Clarify what an action will do before a user clicks it

Why You Should Care

• Reduces “What does this do?” interruptions
• Helps new users learn workflows in context
• Makes customizations feel more “native” and self-documenting
• Lets you improve user experience for customizations and extensions

How It Works (And When It Doesn’t)

You can set these properties at different levels (and each one creates a different “type” of teaching tip):

• Page-level: on the page or pageextension
• Control-level: on fields, groups, parts, actions/action groups, etc.

A few rules of thumb that matter in real projects:

• You must set both AboutTitle and AboutText or the teaching tip won’t appear.
• Teaching tips are a Web client feature—if the current client isn’t the Web client, these properties are ignored at runtime.
• Not every page type will show a page-level teaching tip (for example, Role Centers and certain dialog-like pages don’t display them).
• If a page runs in lookup mode, the teaching tip may not show automatically (but it can still be reached from the page caption).
• Visibility matters: If a control ends up Visible = false, its teaching tip won’t show.
• For fields, teaching tips show most reliably for repeater fields or fields in the page content area (not cues).
• For actions, teaching tips are most reliable in primary action areas.
• Teaching tips will not appear if the user has disabled them in their settings.

Also, where you place the property affects whether users will actually see it:

• For fields, teaching tips are most useful in the content area or repeaters.
• For actions, teaching tips are most reliable when the action appears in the primary action areas users interact with (not every action surface renders them).
• For embedded parts, the tip effectively becomes part of the hosting page’s tour.

Example: Add Teaching Tips with a Page Extension

This example adds:

• A page-level teaching tip
• A field-level teaching tip

namespace dvlprlife.abouttitle1.abouttitle;

using Microsoft.Sales.Customer;

pageextension 50150 "Customer Card Tips" extends "Customer Card"
{
    AboutText = 'Use this page to maintain **customer master data** and review key settings before posting documents.';
    AboutTitle = 'About the customer card';

    layout
    {
        modify(Name)
        {
            AboutText = 'This is the *display name* used on documents and reports. Keep it consistent with what your customers expect.';
            AboutTitle = 'Customer name';
        }
    }
}

A couple of small notes:

• AboutText supports simple rich-text formatting (for example **bold** and *italic*).
• Keep the copy short—one or two sentences is usually plenty.

Example: Change (or Hide) an Existing Teaching Tip

If the base application already has a teaching tip, you can still adjust it in an extension.

• To change the content: Set AboutTitle/AboutText on the same page/control.
• To hide it entirely: Set the About properties to an empty string.

pageextension 50101 "Customer Card Tip Overrides" extends "Customer Card"
{
    layout
    {
        modify("Phone No.")
        {
            AboutTitle = '';
            AboutText = '';
        }
    }
}

Example: Add Teaching Tips to a Page and an Action

You can also add teaching tips directly in a page object and its actions.

namespace dvlprlife.abouttitle1.sample;
page 50151 "DVLPR Sample Size Card"
{
    AboutText = 'Create and maintain **sample size** records. Use Code to uniquely identify the record, Description to explain it, and Size to store a numeric value.';
    AboutTitle = 'Sample sizes';
    ApplicationArea = All;
    Caption = 'Sample Size Card';
    PageType = Card;
    SourceTable = "DVLPR Sample Size";
    UsageCategory = None;

    layout
    {
        area(Content)
        {
            group(General)
            {
                Caption = 'General';

                field(Code; Rec.Code)
                {
                    AboutText = 'A unique identifier for this sample size record.';
                    AboutTitle = 'Size code';
                }
                field(Description; Rec.Description)
                {
                    AboutText = 'A short description that explains what this code represents.';
                    AboutTitle = 'Description';
                }
                field(Size; Rec.Size)
                {
                    AboutText = 'A numeric value representing the size.';
                    AboutTitle = 'Size value';
                }
            }
        }
    }

    actions
    {
        area(Processing)
        {
            action(SampleAction)
            {
                Caption = 'Sample Action';
                AboutText = 'This is a sample action that does nothing.';
                AboutTitle = 'Sample action';

                trigger OnAction()
                begin
                    // No operation
                end;
            }
        }
    }
}

Tips for Writing Good Teaching Tips

• Write for the moment the user is in: “What is this used for?” beats long process documentation.
• Avoid repeating captions: The title should add meaning, not restate the field name.
• Be intentional about where you add tips—too many can feel noisy.
• If you’re building something for multiple languages, plan ahead for localization (don’t bake assumptions into English-only wording).

Wrapping Up

AboutTitle and AboutText are a quick win when you want to make pages and controls easier to understand—especially for users who are new to a process or seeing custom fields for the first time.

My suggestion: Start with one page that generates the most questions, add a few high-impact teaching tips, and iterate based on feedback.

Learn more:

• AboutText property
• AboutTitle property

You can find the full code for the example on GitHub.

Note: The code and information discussed in this article are for informational and demonstration purposes only. Always test in a sandbox first. This content was written referencing runtime version 10.0+ of the AL Language.