From the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central / NAV blogs: NAV on Azure; Docker images; Premium experience; Outlook add-in

In this week's Microsoft Dynamics NAV & D365 Business Central blog roundup:

• Microsoft Dynamics NAV on Azure: SQL Server on Azure VM best practices
• Retrieving NAV Docker images from the registry API
• Enabling premium experience in Business Central sandbox containers
• Extending the Outlook add-in experience in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Microsoft Dynamics NAV on Azure: SQL Server on Azure VM best practices

On his blog, Stefano Demiliani stated that when it comes to installing Microsoft Dynamics NAV on Azure, there are two choices: use an Azure virtual machine (VM) with SQL Server installed or use Azure SQL.

Demiliani stated that in most Azure-based NAV deployments, people are choosing the SQL Server on an Azure VM option.

However, too often I see that the installation is done like an on-premise SQL or without considering some important best practices and SQL performances are poor.

So, in his post, he offered six tips from his experience to help you improve the performance of the SQL Server when it runs on an Azure VM. If you apply at least three of these tips, Demiliani stated that your SQL Server on Azure VM (and your NAV database) could satisfy your performance requirements.

You can read his recommendations here.

Retrieving NAV Docker images from the registry API

On The NAV Blog, Richard Robberse stated that it can be helpful to know which NAV Docker images are available on Microsoft's public Docker repository.

There are a couple ways to do that: you can either browse this website, which will only show the most recent 100 tags, or by using PowerShell. For the latter, you have to use the Docker Registry HTTP API, he stated.

Although Robberse thought that would be easy, since the registry was publicly accessible, he realized that wasn't the case through the API.

To make your life a little easier, I've created two PowerShell functions and two simple helper functions to forget about this hassle.

You can read about them here.

Enabling premium experience in Business Central sandbox containers

On the Dynamics NAV Team Blog, the team stated that a few people have discovered that manufacturing, production, and other functionality, which is only available when using the premium plan, isn't available when they're running a Business Central sandbox container.

The reason for this is that this is controlled by the User Plan and by default the admin user has the essential plan. In Business Central, the plan is something that is controlled by what plan you purchase and you will not be able to add or modify records in the User Plan table.

Since Business Central sandbox containers are for development and test, users have to be able to develop and test against the premium as well as the essential plan, according to the team.

In their blog post, the team explained how to assign the premium plan to your default super user in the NavContainer. They also explained how to create a number of test users and assign user groups and permissions to those users so you can test your app using the different users.

You can find out how here.

Extending the Outlook add-in experience in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics NAV

On the Dynamics NAV Team blog, the team stated that Dynamics 365 Business Central offers users the ability to use the product within Microsoft Outlook clients using Outlook add-ins.

There are two add-ins that come out of the box with Dynamics 365 Business Central: The Contact Insights add-in and the Document View add-in.

From an email within Outlook, Contact Insights lets a user go straight to the contact, customer, or vendor card that's associated with the sender or recipient of the email message. Then the user can view or edit information about the contact as well as create and send documents directly in Outlook.

Given an email that contains a document number within the body of the message, the document view allows the user to open that document directly within the context of the email message, according to the team. Then the user can edit the document (if it is still a draft), post or email it to the customer.

You can read more about it here.