Troubleshoot straight from the Web Client

In Business Central 2023 Wave 2 (Version 23) you can troubleshoot instant from the Web Client. 

There are two ways to open Visual Studio Code from the Web Client:

1. From Page Inspector:

• Run Page Inspection from the Business Central Web Client page.
• Select Explore Page in Visual Studio Code.
• Specify whether you want to create a new project or use an existing one.

2. From Help & Support Page:

• Navigate to Help and Support and select “Attach debugger to this session”.
• Select to open a Visual Studio Code instance and specify project details.

Regardless of which of these paths you use, VSC then starts work.

First, the app.json and launch.json are created and all the required symbols are downloaded. Once you have started the Page Inspector function, the relevant objects are then opened in Explorer:

When downloading the symbols, all dependencies of the object from which you started the function are taken into account. This means that you may either get additional .alpackages or you may be missing something here. To do this, simply check the app.json as usual and extend it if necessary.

After Visual Studio is Code you are getting asked if, and which way of debugging you want to start:

In this example i chose the “old school” with the regular attach. To prove that the debugger instantly works i created a common example:

The code you see, whether via the debugger or by opening an object, is subject to the same rules as usual. This is usually determined by the resource exposure policy.

A super helpful function that is available both in SaaS and OnPrem. You should definitely try out this function and use it in the future.