Dynamics 365 Business Central: Controlling user access to Designer

Hi, Readers.
Last week, we discussed how to control access to Page Inspection details. This time I want to continue to discuss how to control user access to Designer.

Designer in Dynamics 365 Business Central provides an easy and convenient way to make immediate changes to your design by dragging and dropping the components on the page.

Designer is currently only available from a Dynamics 365 Business Central Sandbox and On-Premises.
SaaS Production: No Design button.

Every time you start designing, you’re effectively creating a new extension. Your changes are immediately visible to other users.
Yes, Designer is a great feature. But to be honest, I don’t think all developers of Business Central like this feature.

Note:
1. Extensions created using Designer are discarded when an environment is upgraded or moved to another node.

2. Designer cannot be used by multiple users at the same time in sandboxes.

3. In the client, users can change many of these settings for their workspace only by using personalization.

Accessing Designer is controlled on a user or user group basis by the D365 EXTENSION MGT permission set. If a user is assigned this permission set, then Designer is available for the user in the client.
So, to prohibit a user from using Designer, just remove the user from the D365 EXTENSION MGT permission set.

D365 EXTENSION MGT:

Object Type	Object ID	Object Name	Read Permission	Insert Permission	Modify Permission	Delete Permission
Table Data	2508	Extension Deployment Status	Yes
Table Data	2000000152	NAV App Data Archive	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000153	NAV App Installed App	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000162	NAV App Capabilities	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000163	NAV App Object Prerequisites	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000169	NAV App Tenant Add-In	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000200	NAV App Tenant Operation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Table Data	2000000206	Published Application	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000207	Application Object Metadata	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000208	Application Resource	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000209	Application Dependency	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Table Data	2000000212	Installed Application	Yes	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect

If you don’t have D365 EXTENSION MGT permission set, the following message will be displayed when you choose Design.

Sorry, something went wrong and designer could not be started. Please try again later, or contact your system administrator.

Test Video:

PS:
For the On-Premises version, you can easily remove Design button from Business Central.

First, find “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BC172\navsettings.json” file and open it. (BC172 is instance name)

Then add “Designer”: false to the end.

Finally, restart your Application Server. The Design action will be removed. (Please do not just restart BC instance in Business Central Administration, it will not take effect.)

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for your reading.

ZHU