Business Central 2025 wave 1 (BC26): Search, navigate and use app symbols as context for GitHub Copilot (Searchable downloaded symbols and using them as context in Copilot Chat)

Hi, Readers.
The public preview for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 release wave 1 (BC26) is available. Learn more: Link.

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

Search, navigate and use app symbols as context for GitHub Copilot:

Business value:
You can now search AL objects from downloaded symbol packages from within Visual Studio Code. This makes it much easier to find related objects, whether for inspection, troubleshooting, or as inspiration. It can even be used as context when using GitHub Copilot to get better suggestions based on existing code.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2025wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/search-navigate-use-app-symbols-as-context-github-copilot?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

This is also mentioned in AL Language extension changelog Version 15.0:

Objects from downloaded symbol packages can now be added as context when using the Github Copilot Chat extension (prerelease version 0.24.2024121201) and Visual Studio Code Insiders (version 1.97 and later). It will also be possible to search and navigate to objects coming from downloaded symbol packages via the ‘Open Symbol by Name’ functionality (Ctrl + T). Additionally, the performance of searching workspace symbols has been improved to support the now larger amount of available symbols.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-dynamics-smb.al/changelog

The AL Explorer provides a tool that allows you to explore, navigate, and better understand objects in extensions. You can drill down into object details, dependencies, and extension points, without looking at the code. With the AL Explorer, you have an overview of high-level structures of extensions that can help you specify new features, or do light troubleshooting.
AL: Explorer: Ctrl + Shift + F12

After running this command, you will open AL Explorer. You can easily see an overview of all objects in a given app scope—for example, a whole workspace or selected project—and you can search in object names, and group objects by type.

More details: Business Central 2023 wave 1 (BC22): AL Explorer and AL Home in Visual Studio Code AL extension

With this wave (BC26), we have a new way.

PS: Github Copilot Chat extension (prerelease version 0.24.2024121201) and Visual Studio Code Insiders (version 1.97 and later)

We can now search objects from downloaded symbol packages via the ‘Open Symbol by Name‘ functionality (Ctrl+T).

Then enter the keyword you want to search, for example, Customer Card.

After selecting, you can open the standard AL file (standard code). This makes it much easier to find objects, and open the source, if the symbols include source code.

PS:
1. Instead of using Ctrl+T, you can also manually enter the number sign (#) in the search box to start your search.

2. Wildcard search (* and ?) is not supported at this time.

More details: Business Central 2024 wave 2 (BC25): Wildcard search (* and ?) in AL Explorer

It also empowers GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code. You can open the source for selected, related symbols to use as context for Copilot Studio when you write your own code, to get better suggestions.

And you can also use special keyword #sym to specify files.

After entering keyword #sym, press Enter to jump to the search bar.

Great.

More details:

The performance of searching workspace symbols has, furthermore, been improved to support the larger amount of available symbols.

Test video:

Great. Give it a try!!!😁

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU