This project primarily welcomes contributions of two types:
- PRs for pre-approved issues, which are based on BC Ideas (http://aka.ms/bcideas) that have been picked as candidates for code contribution projects.
- PRs based on approved issues, which address smaller non-customer reported improvements and fixes.
In either case, an approved issue in state "ready for implementation", must exist, before a PR can be created. PRs without link to approved issues will instantly get rejected.
⚠IMPORTANT⚠: This is not the right place to report product defects with customer impact to Microsoft! Issues created in this repository won't get picked up by the Microsoft engineering team and issues reported in this repository do not fall under SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and hence have no guaranteed time to mitigation, just as provided fixes won't get backported to all supported versions of the product.
If your customers are experiencing product defects or you have discovered a severe issue in the product, please follow the steps outlined in "Technical Support for Dynamics 365 Business Central" to get your issue routed to the right team at Microsoft and to get it treated with the right priority.
In the case that you would like to contribute code to this project, you first must establish what kind of contribution we're dealing with:
A) A small bug fix, product improvement, paper cut, conveniences customers just can't live without, things you've been fixing for years and from version to version, things you are now forced to create as per tenant extension and which you can't monetize or things you're just tired of fixing over and over again...
B) New capabilities or implementations of larger changes to the existing application platform.
Let's take a look at what it takes to contribute with A):
- Create a new issue by clicking "Create issue I want to address": Before a PR can be created, it is required to have an issue registered, which has been approved for development by Microsoft. This is done to ensure that community members aren't wasting their time on writing code, which later cannot be accepted.
- Wait for approval: Now that your issue is registered, Microsoft will triage your issue and either approve or reject it.
- Get issue in "Ready for Implementation" state: Before a PR can be created for an approved issue, the issue must be ready for implementation. An issue receives that state from Microsoft, when it is ensured that it is understood what an issue will address and how that is done. In other words: the issue must be in a groomed state before development can be begun. This is again to ensure, that the developer doesn't waste time on implementing solutions, which later cannot be accepted in that form.
- Create one PR per issue: Now a PR can be created. It is important that the PR is linked to an issue. PRs which aren't linked to approved issues will get rejected. The PR will now have to pass integration and is then ready for code review.
- Get code review approval: Before the code can be deployed into production, it must pass code review by other members of the community and by Microsoft. This ensures that quality of the code is on par with Microsoft's and the community's standards.
- Final validation: Before the code can be deployed, Microsoft will do a final validation of the PR and issue. Should the change be mentioned in the release notes? Did some of the initially planned work spill over? Is the work on the issue truly done/done?
- Deployment: You've reached the end! When PR is completed and merged, the change will ship with an upcoming release of the product.
If you would like to add new capabilities to the product as described in B), the process is similar to A), except that you should not create an issue yourself here on GitHub. Instead, follow the following process:
- Find or register your idea on BCIdeas: Start by searching for existing approved issues here on GitHub; every BCIdea which is approved for open source contribution exists as an approved issue here on GitHub. If you cannot find an approved issue, look for existing ideas on BCIdeas, which cover the scenario your were thinking about implementing; ideally ideas with some votes. If you find an idea you'd like to use as open source contribution issue, inform Microsoft that you intend to do a contribution and a product manager will tag the idea, leading to the creation of an approved issue here on GitHub. In the less likely event that you don't find any idea which points in the direction of the feature you intended to work on, you can go ahead and log a new idea, describing the new capability you would like to add to the product. Don't forget mention that the idea is suitable for open source contribution.
- Wait for approval: If you created a new idea, a Microsoft product manager will revise the idea. If the idea is aligned with the strategy of the application platform and is considered feasible to implement, the idea will get approved and marked as "open for contribution". Once the idea has "open for contribution" mentioned as part of idea title, an issue will be created and approved immediately in this repository.
- Find allies: If you reused an existing idea, check Application Functionality group on Business Central Yammer portal for any input from other partners (just search for idea title). There you can also find partners in crime (= other developers with same issue) that can help with the development or review of your future PR.
- Assign the GitHub issue to yourself and get the issue into "Ready for Implementation" state: The rest of the process is identical to the process described in A). You must now work with Microsoft and the community to get the issue into a state, where implementation can be begun.
That's it! This is the process you must follow to contribute with code to this project. Just a few more hints:
With your first contribution, you are required to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.
When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repositories using our CLA.
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.
If you are a beginner at contributing, start by following the GitHub guidelines.
If you are new to developing for Business Central, visit Developers Learning Catalog.
Do not hesitate to contact the any of the maintainers in case you have any questions regarding the contribution process!