Preview BC25: Word add-in to the rescue

In the last releases the product team did a really good job on the “no-code” option for reports. They introduced the “Analyse view” and Power Bi reports out of the box.
But that is only for analyzing your data. What was missing is a “no-code” option for Word reports.
Now in Business Central 2024 wave 2 (BC25) they are adding a Word add-in to the product! Addin this option is really great. So consultants and customers don’t need to write any code to perform actions.
Currently the Word add-in provide these actions:
– Hide an empty table
– Hide empty table row
– Hide empty table column
– Hide field if zero

Installing

If you want to make use of the new Word add-in you have to download it from appsource:
Dynamics 365 Business Central Usage Analytics (microsoft.com)

Once it is installed you get an extra option in your ribbon:

And of you can go to start!

Hide empty table

If you want to hide a table if there are no rows or columns in your data-item you can use this option.
In your document you have to create a table with a repeater in it like below:

On that whole table you then please the control “Hide Table If Empty” and when you render the document the table will be removed if the data-item is empty.
NB: This will also work on a nested table!

Hide empty table row

This control is about if you want delete a row based on an field that is empty.

This control has to please inside the repeater and on the field that you want to control if it is empty or not. If it is empty it will delete the row.

For example you can have a purchase order with one value on the “Item Reference No.” and one without:

The report will generate as follow:

Hide empty table column

In this case if you want to remove a column that is empty you can use this control.
The control must be placed in the header and not in the repeater. Then when all columns are empty the column will be deleted:

Example:

On generation:

Hide field if zero

Currently the last option. If you have a decimal field and if it is zero you can use this field. This field is working inside the repeater but also on a stand alone field:

Then on generation the field is empty:

13-09-2024:
If you combine the “Hide Field is Zero” and “Hide empty table column” the report will not generate. This is reported by Microsoft as a bug and probably next week this will be fixed and rolled out.

Conclusion

I think Word add-in is a really great feature! Just to give the consultants and customer more control about their reports without a developer and difficult RDLC reporting. Hopefully those option are only the start to give even more control on the Word Lay-out reporting. But this is a very good start!

You can also look here:
https://aka.ms/bcwordsamples