Dynamics 365 Business Central: Why are customer pictures round and item pictures square?

Hi, Readers.
Today I would like to discuss a simple topic, why are customer pictures round and item pictures square in the Business Central client? I was recently asked this question by a BC beginner.

Let’s see more details.
Customer Picture: Round

When the customer has no pictures, a silhouette of a person is shown.

Item Picture: Square

When the customer has no pictures, a silhouette of a item is shown.

The same is true for Tiles and Tall Tiles view.

But when you export the pictures, you will find that they are all square.

Why is there this difference? First of all, it’s not just Business Central. All personal photos, especially profile pictures, are often round due to a combination of aesthetic and practical reasons. Round shapes are generally considered more visually pleasing, easier on the eyes, and better suited for the smaller screens of mobile devices.

If you are a developer and look at the BC standard code, you can see the difference.

Customer (18) -> Image (140, Media):

Item (27) -> Picture (92, MediaSet):

You can see that the round customer image sets the ExtendedDatatype Property, Person.

ExtendedDatatype Property: Sets the extended data type of a control.

Value	Available or changed with	Description
Person	runtime version 1.0	The client handles the field as media representing a person and will display this in the signature rounded styling. When the media field is empty, a silhouette of a person is shown.

This is the difference between them. For example, the picture of Contact is also round because it is a person.

Please note that the ExtendedDatatype Property cannot be customized, so unless we add a new field, there is no way to display a round image for the item.

The property ‘ExtendedDatatype’ cannot be customized. AL AL0246

And, please note that because the original image is square, the above properties will not affect the layout of the image if it is printed directly. More details: How to add Media or MediaSet data type (Pictures) to a report

Very simple, give it a try!!!😁

PS:
1. How to set the extended data type of a field (ExtendedDataType Property)

2. ExtendedDatatype = Barcode: Business Central 2023 wave 2 (BC23): Print and scan barcodes (No customization)

3. ExtendedDatatype = RichContent: Business Central 2023 wave 2 (BC23): Use the built-in rich text editor to enter data

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU