How to Setup Business Central 2019 release wave 2 Preview?

Hi all,

In the last article, we discussed that Business Central 2019 Release Wave 2 Preview is available to download via Dockers.


If you as a partner have access to Microsoft Collaborate "Ready To Go" program then follow steps below.



Step 1 - Update your ContainerHelper to 0.6.2.9.

Open Powershell (64-bit client), as shown below.
Please don't use the 32-bit client (x86).

Run command to install Container Helper - Install-Module -Name navcontainerhelper -Force

Step 2 - Create a new container using powershell command as below.

$imageName = "bcinsider.azurecr.io/bcsandbox-master:us"
$containerName = "<ContainerName>"
$auth = "UserPassword"
$credential = New-Object pscredential '<admin>', (ConvertTo-SecureString -String '<Password>' -AsPlainText -Force)
$licenseFile = "<licensefile>"

New-BCContainer -accept_eula `
                -imageName $imageName `
                -containerName $containerName `
                -auth $auth `
                -credential $credential `
                -licenseFile $licenseFile `
                -updateHosts `
                -includeAL `
                -memoryLimit <3G>

Change Parameters which are highlighted in Red - 
<ContainerName> - Name of Container that you want to assign to the container.
<admin>      -- UserName to Login in container.
<Password> -- Password to Login in container.
<licensefile> -- Path of License file in your local machine.
<3G>             -- Memory that you would like to allocate to Docker Container.

Step 3 -  Container Ready.

In a few minutes to hours based on how much you use dockers, containers should be ready. At this point, PowerShell cmdlet may error out and ask you to authenticate before execting Powershell scripts.

The Authorization command should be something like -
docker login "bcinsider.azurecr.io" -u "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" -p "xxxxxxxxxx"

After the command is completed system will generate a message and details as below. Once completed please save details for future use.

Step 4 - Login to Client.

Web client 😋, as there is no more any Windows client and Development Environment with next release.

As you can see its a Sandbox environment as shown below.

Step 5 - Check Installed Extension.

Open Extension Management Page to see how many extensions are installed. If you don't know you will see two extensions BaseApp and System Application.

With this version, base Microsoft is also as an extension.

Step 6 - Download the VSIX.

Download file from the URL that we have as a result of Docker Creation message in Step 2.

Once Downloaded Install that VSIX File from VS Code  Extension Menu as shown below.

Step 7 - Create a New Extension.

Create New Extension using AL:Go!

You will be prompted with a new window to select Target Platform. Select 4.0 from the menu.

Select Your Server in the next selection and key in username and password that you specified while generating  Docker container step 2.

The system will generate launch.json and you will see a file like below.

Step 8 - Check Dependencies for the Extension.

Open App.json and you will see new parameters with values.

• Platform - 15.0.0.0 which is for next release.
• Dependency 1 - Base Application with version 15.0.0.0.
• Dependency 2 - System Application with Version 1.0.0.0.

And three files in .ALPackages - 

• Microsoft_BaseApp_15.0.34648.0.app
• Microsoft_System Application_15.0.34648.0.app
• Microsoft_System_15.0.34329.0.app

Step 9 - Verify table names in SQL.

If you login to SQL Server from Dockers and expand Table names in the database you will see all Microsoft base app are with extension ID as highlighted below.

In example Base App Extension ID is  "437dbf0e-84ff-417a-965d-ed2bb9650972"

Hope this article helps you to setup Wave2 docker container.

Let me know your views on this article as a comment.

Regards,
Saurav Dhyani
www.sauravdhyani.com