Mark fields as read-only when customizing UI

Important

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Enabled for Public preview General availability
Users, automatically Sep 8, 2023 Oct 2, 2023

Business value

Business Central offers a powerful suite of user interface (UI) customization tools that empowers customers to quickly optimize the experience for individual users, for each role, or for the entire organization. Customers often ask their supporting partner to simplify how data is presented on a page, to improve readability and optimize data entry. Now, customers can self-serve by making fields non-editable directly in the UI, adding to the existing UI simplification capabilities such as hiding or moving fields on the page.

Feature details

Business Central now includes the following:

  • Make fields non-editable: When customizing the UI, use the context menu to specify that a field should be read-only. You can always undo your customization later. Setting the editable state of a field is not a security feature and should only be used to optimize pages for readability and efficient data entry. This enhancement does not allow making fields editable if the application developer has specified that a field should be read-only.

  • Choose the scope of your change: Personalize your own workspace or roll out the change safely for one or more roles (profiles) starting with a sandbox or directly in production.

The field customization menu that now includes Lock editing or Unlock editing options.

Try it out

To experience making fields read-only, sign in to Business Central and follow this example (or similar):

  1. Navigate to the Profiles (Roles) list and choose Customize Pages for your current profile.
  2. When the new tab loads, navigate to the Item card or another page of your choice.
  3. For any editable field, bring up the field customization menu and choose Lock editing.

See also

Customize pages for profiles roles (docs)