Oh no! Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central "shut the back door" on Customer, Vendor, Item, and Employee Templates

Last year in my MSDW article “The "back door" to Item, Customer, and Vendor Templates in Dynamics 365 Business Central that is worth another look”, we took a look at how to get around the limited number of available fields when creating a Customer Template, Vendor Template, Item Template, or Employee Template (CVIE). This “back door” method used Configuration Templates to expose the extra fields that were not available when using Save as Template and was pretty clever if I do say so myself.

Enter Business Central 2021 Release Wave 2, which started rolling out in October 2021, and so much for this clever work-around. As you may have already discovered, this “back door” access to the CVIE templates is now closed. But as the wise woman says, “When one door closes, another one opens.” (Or was that a window?)

This release closed the door on our ability to select customer, vendor, item, and employee templates through the Configuration Templates list page. So, I’m back and ready to share the Righter Way™ to configure your templates going forward. If you had taken advantage of the previous work-around, don’t worry! Another door has opened, and we can now add additional fields and values to CVIE template pages through Personalization or Design in BC. While not every field may be available, I would like to think that you will be able to add what you need. Note that Personalization and/or Design may not be accessible by all users, as determined by your system administrator via your particular system permissions.

Let’s look at what has changed and what has stayed the same in the following areas:

• Customer Templates
• Template List Pages
• End-user functionality
• System Admin capabilities

I will use the Customer Template as an example, but the same will apply to vendor, item, and employee templates as well. Hang tight, there is a lot to absorb here.

What in Customer Templates stayed the same?

When using the function to save a Customer Template from a Customer Card, there is no change: when the Customer Template opens, one can enter a template name, enable/disable, delete, fill, and modify fields as needed.

What in Customer Templates changed?

1. The Code field is now available on the Customer Template page. (This can be changed if allowed by the No. Series setup.)