Business Central 2024 wave 2 (BC25): Use improved features for report documents (New Word add-in……)

Hi, Readers.
The public preview for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 release wave 2 (BC25) is available. Learn more: Link.

I will continue to test and share some new features that I hope will be helpful.

Use improved features for report documents:

Business value:
Developers and power users can use more of the features that Word provides for document layouts. These improvements reduce time spent on designing layouts for documents and let more power users work with document layouts.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2024wave2/smb/dynamics365-business-central/use-improved-features-report-documents?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

You use report documents in Business Central when you need to send a document such as a quote, order, or invoice to your customers or suppliers. There are four types of layouts that you can use on reports: Word, RDLC, Excel, and external.

PS: Word layouts are based on Word documents (.docx file type). Word layouts enable you to design report layouts by using Microsoft Word. A Word layout determines the report’s content – controlling how that content elements are arranged and how they look. A Word layout document will typically use tables to arrange content, where the cells can contain data fields, text, or pictures. More details: Word layouts

With this wave (BC25), the following improvements are available for the Word layout feature:

You can use sections in Word layouts even when you use the WordMergeDataItem property. This unlocks the ability to change layout properties, such as margins, orientation (portrait or landscape), or columns inside your Word layout. Also, you can use different watermarks for different parts of the layout. For more information, go to Using sections in a Word layout.

WordMergeDataItem Property: Specifies the root-level DataItem that is used to generate separate reports for multiple records.
When you specify a dataitem in the WordMergeDataItem property, the Business Central server will do a “Mail merge” between that data item (and the ones below it) and the Word layout when rendering the report using the Word layout.
The following example is showing how the WordMergeDataItem property is used on the “Standard Sales – Invoice” report when rendered with a Word layout.
Here, the Word layout will be applied to each element in the Header dataitem.

Thus, if you have defined a different first page, page numbers, totals at the end, and similar report design elements in the Word layout, they’ll be “reset” for each element in the Header dataitem.

For inserting a section break. Go to Layout > Breaks.

PS: You can add page breaks, but Word for the web can’t add section breaks yet.

From the Report Layouts page, you can download a Word layout template for a report. The layout template makes it easier to convert an RDL layout or a customer-supplied Word file into a Word layout for a report.

In Business Central 2024 wave 2 (BC25), Microsoft added two new actions, Update and Export Layout and Export Report Schema.

Update and Export Layout: Export the selected layout file using the current report dataset design (docx file).

Export Report Schema: Export report schema as a Microsft Word Custom Xml document (xml file).

PS: In BC v24.4:

A new Word add-in lets you control conditional visibility of text, tables, or table rows/columns.

Checkout the unofficial mini tutorial on aka.ms/bcwordsamples

PS: Dynamics 365 Business Central Word Add-in (Preview):

Great, give it a try!!!😁

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Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU