Business Central 2026 release wave 1 (BC28.1): Control the lifecycle of report layouts (Layout Status)

Hi, Readers.
Dynamics 365 Business Central 2026 wave 1 (BC28.1) is generally available. More details: Cumulative Update Summary for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (May, 2026)

I will continue to test and share some new features that I hope will be helpful. In this post, I would like to talk about Control the lifecycle of report layouts.

Control the lifecycle of report layouts:

Report layout administrators gain full control over the lifecycle of report layouts by assigning statuses such as Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, or Retired. These statuses ensure that only approved layouts are available to users, reducing errors and improving compliance with internal standards. By managing layouts through clear stages, businesses can streamline governance, accelerate approvals, and maintain consistency across reporting. Ultimately, this feature enhances operational efficiency and supports better decision-making through reliable, well-managed layouts.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/control-lifecycle-report-layouts?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

Business Central includes many built-in layouts that you can use on your reports. Other layouts might be added as part of extensions. In addition, you can create your own report layouts, either from scratch or based on an existing layout.

With this wave (BC28), Report layout administrators can set the status of report layouts to control their lifecycle stages.

Layout Status
Specifies the approval status of the layout. Only Approved layouts are available for selection on report request pages.

This field is not editable. We need to select Actions->Layout Status, and then click on the status that needs to be updated.

For example,

The following statuses are available:

• Draft: Layout is under development and not available to users.
• Pending approval: Layout is awaiting approval.
• Approved: Layout is approved and available to users.
• Retired: Layout is phased out and no longer available.

Great, give it a try!!!😁

PS:
1. Similar to Edit info, we cannot change the layout status for the layout provided by an extension.

2. This feature allows you to modify the status of multiple selected layouts simultaneously.

3. What’s new: Enhanced document reporting

4. This field was added in version 28.0, but it is not available.

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU