Getting Started with AL Development in Business Central
A practical starting point for developers who want to understand AL development and begin building extensions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
What is AL?
AL is the development language used to customize and extend Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Developers typically build extensions rather than changing the standard application directly, which helps keep customizations maintainable and upgrade-friendly.
Why learn AL?
AL lets you work with Business Central data and user experiences through objects such as tables, pages, reports, codeunits and extensions. It is especially useful when you need to adapt Business Central to a company's business process.
Your first AL extension
A typical extension project contains an app.json manifest and AL source files. A simple page extension can look like this:
pageextension 50100 MyCustomerExt extends "Customer Card"
{
layout
{
addlast(General)
{
field("My Field"; Rec."No.")
{
ApplicationArea = All;
}
}
}
}How to approach AL development
- Understand tables and table extensions.
- Learn list, card and document pages.
- Practice page extensions and actions.
- Learn codeunits, events and error handling.
- Build RDLC or Word reports.
- Explore APIs and external integrations.
- Build complete projects and publish them as portfolio work.
Recommended Dynexal learning path
AL Tables in Business Central — learn how Business Central data structures are created and extended.
Creating List and Card Pages in AL — build practical Business Central user interfaces.
Page Extensions in Business Central — customize standard pages without modifying the base application.
Explore all Dynexal Tutorials — continue learning with practical Business Central topics.
What's next?
Start with a small extension, test it in a development environment, and gradually move toward integrations and production-ready solutions. As you progress, practice building complete projects that demonstrate tables, pages, reports, APIs and Business Central integrations.