Highlighting posts and resources from the Business Central development community — March 8–14, 2026
This week’s roundup covers nine posts spanning BC28 preview features, AI-powered development workflows, and practical AL tooling. BC28’s new semantic search codeunit landed alongside posts on designing agents for production, automating telemetry triage with Azure Logic Apps, and connecting Business Central to Copilot Studio via the built-in MCP Server Configuration. We also saw the AL Development Tools ship a standalone MCP server for coding agents, new DateFormula-based posting windows that eliminate manual monthly date updates, a practical guide to GitHub Copilot’s modes in AL projects, and a case for treating context engineering as the real lever for AI-assisted BC development.
Recent Posts (March 8–14, 2026)
➡️ 1. Using the Standalone MCP Server Provided as Part of the AL Development Tools
📇 Author: Stefano Demiliani
🌎 Link: demiliani.com
📝 Summary: Stefano walks through the launchmcpserver command added in v17.x of the AL Development Tools .NET package — al launchmcpserver <projectFolder> starts an HTTP MCP server (default port 5000) that exposes al_build, al_debug, al_publish, al_setbreakpoint, al_snapshotdebugging, and al_symbolsearch as tools any AI coding agent can invoke. The post covers installation via dotnet tool install, optional parameters (--port, --transport, --ruleset), and live examples of setting breakpoints and building projects from an agent chat.
➡️ 2. I Built an AI That Turns Business Central Telemetry into GitHub Issues (Automatically)
📇 Author: Silviu Virlan
🌎 Link: svirlan.com
📝 Summary: Silviu builds an end-to-end pipeline — an AL extension that deliberately triggers RT0012 (database lock timeout), a daily Azure Logic App that queries Application Insights via KQL, an AI model that reads the offending .al source code, and automatic GitHub Issue creation with root cause analysis, an actionable checklist, and prevention tips. The whole stack deploys with a single az deployment group create via Bicep, and expanding to all RT* performance signals is one KQL filter change.
➡️ 3. BC28: AL Developers Can Use Semantic Search on Data and Metadata
📇 Author: Yun Zhu
🗓️ Date: March 11, 2026
🌎 Link: yzhums.com
📝 Summary: Yun Zhu covers Codeunit 2000000025 “Semantic Search” arriving in BC28 with methods SetMaxResults, SetSearchTarget(RecordRef), and FindSimilarByField() for running vector-style similarity searches against Business Central data and metadata from AL code. The catch: the codeunit is currently Scope = 'OnPrem', so it can’t be called from cloud extensions yet.
➡️ 4. Where GitHub Copilot Actually Saves Time in AL Projects
📇 Author: Steven Renders
🗓️ Date: March 12, 2026
🌎 Link: thinkaboutit.be
📝 Summary: Steven walks through each Copilot mode (Agent, Chat, Ask, Edit) with concrete AL examples — generating codeunit boilerplate, scaffolding test codeunits with automatic app.json dependency resolution, exploring HttpClient patterns via Chat, and refactoring procedures with Edit mode’s diff view. The post is candid about limits: Copilot occasionally produces incorrect AL syntax and struggles with complex business rules, posting routines, and dimension handling.
➡️ 5. Designing Agents for Business Central
📇 Author: AJ Kauffmann
🗓️ Date: March 13, 2026
🌎 Link: kauffmann.nl
📝 Summary: AJ clarifies what the Agent Design Experience (formerly Agent Builder Playground) actually is — a sandbox simulation tool for prototyping agents, not a production deployment platform. The post covers the full conversion workflow: export the agent as XML, create a new AL project with the Agent template, feed both to a coding agent, and publish the resulting extension. Tips include enabling the edit-instructions page in your agent app and extending the ConfigurationDialog setup page with additional groups.
➡️ 6. Context Engineering – The Thing Almost Nobody Is Actually Talking About
📇 Author: Vjeko
🗓️ Date: March 14, 2026
🌎 Link: vjeko.com
📝 Summary: Vjeko argues that context engineering — not prompt engineering or model selection — is the real lever for AI-assisted AL development. Referencing Andrej Karpathy and Anthropic, the post makes a BC-specific case: models lack implicit Business Central training data, a single codeunit like Sales-Post consumes ~158K tokens, and “context rot” from bloated context windows degrades output quality. The takeaway: curate precise, focused context instead of dumping entire projects into agent prompts.
➡️ 7. Exploring Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Business Automation in Business Central
📇 Author: Marcel Chabot
🗓️ Date: March 13, 2026
🌎 Link: aardvarklabs.blog
📝 Summary: Marcel walks through Business Central’s MCP Server Configuration page — connecting it to Copilot Studio, selecting API entities (Items, Customers, Sales Quotes), and assigning Read, Create, Modify, and Bound Actions permissions for each. The post covers end-to-end agent setup: configuring the MCP connection, testing conversational item queries through Copilot Studio, and security considerations like building purpose-specific APIs that limit exposed fields rather than surfacing standard APIs wholesale.
➡️ 8. Allow Posting From/To DateFormula: No More Monthly Date Updates from Business Central v28
📇 Author: Mohana
🗓️ Date: March 13, 2026
🌎 Link: mohana-dynamicsnav.blogspot.com
📝 Summary: BC28 adds Allow Posting From DateFormula and Allow Posting To DateFormula fields to General Ledger Setup and User Setup — standard DateFormula types processed via CalcDate that automatically calculate posting windows each period. The fields are mutually exclusive with the existing static Date fields: setting one clears the other via validate triggers. Example: set <-CM> / <CM> for automatic monthly posting windows.
➡️ 9. AL Language Extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central – Versions
📇 Author: Gerardo Rentería
🗓️ Date: March 8, 2026
🌎 Link: gerardorenteria.blog
📝 Summary: Gerardo maintains a comprehensive reference page tracking every AL Language extension version from 15.0 through 18.0. The latest v16.0 entry covers key additions including the MaskType enum property for concealed field display, the UserControlHost PageType, ALTool compile command support for CI/CD pipelines, editable fields in page customizations with AllowInCustomizations property values, and the new Summary system part for Card and Document pages.
Community Resources
Official Resources
GitHub Repositories
- microsoft/BCApps – Repository for collaboration on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central applications.
- microsoft/BCTech – Business Central technology samples.
- microsoft/ALAppExtensions – Repository for collaboration on Microsoft AL application add-on and localization extensions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- microsoft/AL – Home of the Dynamics 365 Business Central AL Language extension for Visual Studio Code.
- StefanMaron/MSDyn365BC.Code.History – Contains the Microsoft Business Central Code. Updated each month.
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Note: This review is compiled from publicly available blog posts and community resources. Links to external blog posts are provided for your information only and do not constitute endorsement or validation of their content. Publication information and availability are subject to change. Always verify information against official documentation for production use.