Weekly Review: Business Central AL Development – May 10–16, 2026

Highlighting posts and resources from the Business Central development community — May 10–May 16, 2026

A quieter week in the community, but it’s all about BC 28.1. Stefano Demiliani previews GPT-5.3-chat as the default Copilot model plus an AL API for agent model selection, Steven Renders maps the full 28.1 feature set, and Yun Zhu drills into Layout Status governance for report layouts. On the tooling side, Gerardo Rentería ships AL Object Visualizer for VS Code and Teddy Herryanto reminds developers to turn on al.inlayhints.parameterNames.

Recent Posts (May 10–16, 2026)

➡️ 1. Dynamics 365 Business Central Agents: Announcing New Updates

📇 Author: Stefano Demiliani
🗓️ Date: May 10, 2026
🌎 Link: demiliani.com
📝 Summary: A heads-up out of #BCDAYIT: BC 28.1 lets you deploy custom Business Central agents to production environments, and Copilot in BC will gradually switch its default model to GPT-5.3-chat between May and June. The Agents page is getting a new UI control to see which model each custom agent is using and to override it, and an AL method is shipping soon so you can set the model programmatically. Stefano’s recommendation: when the model selector appears in your tenant, re-test each agent to confirm behavior hasn’t drifted with the new model.

➡️ 2. Quick Tip: What’s in Business Central Update 28.1

📇 Author: Steven Renders
🗓️ Date: May 13, 2026
🌎 Link: thinkaboutit.be
📝 Summary: Steven’s rundown of BC 28.1 (application build 28.1.49886, platform build 28.0.49873). Headline addition is the Expense Agent (Anthropic-backed, billed at 50 Copilot Credits per receipt) paired with a new Expense Management module — US English only at preview, AU/NZ/UK in July. Agent Designer graduates to production environments with an evaluation tool, report layouts get a lifecycle status (Draft / Pending / Approved / Retired), and the Troubleshooting MCP Server for AL reaches general availability. Plus 100+ application fixes worth scanning — deferral amount miscalculations in Subscription Billing (625237), non-deductible VAT on negative purchase credit memo lines (629410), inventory posting infinite loop (630351), and SMTP connector silently dropping attachments when AddAttachment fails (630911).

➡️ 3. Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 (BC28.1): Control the Lifecycle of Report Layouts (Layout Status)

📇 Author: Yun Zhu
🗓️ Date: May 15, 2026
🌎 Link: yzhums.com
📝 Summary: Layout administrators can now assign each report layout a Layout Status — Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, or Retired — and only Approved layouts show up on the request page. The field is read-only; you change it through Actions → Layout Status and the action supports multi-select. Yun calls out two gotchas: the status field shipped in BC 28.0 but wasn’t functional until 28.1, and you can’t change the status of layouts provided by an extension (same restriction as Edit Info).

➡️ 4. Visualize Your AL Objects in a Tree View, Filter and Navigate Directly in VS Code

📇 Author: Gerardo Rentería
🗓️ Date: May 16, 2026
🌎 Link: gerardorenteria.blog
📝 Summary: Gerardo’s new AL Object Visualizer VS Code extension reads the first lines of each .al file to detect object type, decorates the Explorer tree with configurable Unicode badges and colors per type (via alObjectVisualizer.objectTypes in settings.json), and adds a grouped statistics panel with a regex-capable filter. alObjectVisualizer.folderGroupingDepth (0–3) controls how deep the grouping goes — flat-by-type at 0 for a quick inventory, up to three subfolder levels for layered repos. Click a type node and a Quick Pick opens with all files of that type (filename + object ID + name) for direct navigation. Available on the VS Code Marketplace.

➡️ 5. BC Friday Tips #72 Inlay Hints

📇 Author: Teddy Herryanto
🗓️ Date: May 15, 2026
🌎 Link: thatnavguy.com
📝 Summary: VS Code can show inline parameter names and return types right next to your AL procedure calls — no hover, no jump-to-definition, no memorizing parameter order. Flip on editor.inlayHints.enabled (Teddy uses "offUnlessPressed" to keep the editor clean), plus al.inlayhints.parameterNames.enabled and al.inlayhints.functionReturnTypes.enabled. Especially useful when reading or editing procedures with long parameter lists.

Community Resources

Official Resources

• Microsoft Learn: Business Central
• BC Release Plan
• BC Launch Event Videos

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.

Follow on Social Media

• Twitter/X Hashtags: #MSDyn365BC | #BusinessCentral

Stay Connected

The Business Central AL development community stays active with valuable content on AL development, upgrades, integrations, and tooling improvements. Following #MSDyn365BC and #BusinessCentral on Twitter/X is a great way to catch new posts as they’re published.

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.