LS Central 21.4 Release Notes

About This Release

Released - March 23, 2023

This version is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022, release wave 2, cumulative update 5, 21.5.53619.53819.

Important Notices!

New or Enhanced Features

Fixed Issues

Hotfixes

Important Notices!

Breaking changes in release 21.4

For information about breaking changes in previous releases, click here.

Deprecation of Windows Authentication for Web Services in LS Central version 22.0

Windows authentication is currently one of the authentication methods used for web service authentication in LS Central. The Windows authentication is based on Business Central Windows Authentication code. The Business Central Windows authentication code is marked as OnPrem and can therefore not be used by applications where Target=Cloud in the app.json file. Setting Target=Cloud is a requirement to make apps Universal Code Compliant.

Therefore, the option to use Windows authentication for web services will be removed in LS Central version 22.0. This does not effect SaaS customers as the only authentication method supported in SaaS is Oauth authentication. On-premises customers must switch from Windows authentication to either Basic authentication (Web Service Access Key) or OAuth authentication before upgrading to version 22.0.

Upgrading to the New Comments Module

If you have been using dining reservations and Bookings, you must go to Comment Setup and follow the steps required to move existing comments to the new structure. The potential size of the database tables involved makes the upgrade process not feasible for this purpose. The upgrade process takes care of moving existing Hotels comments to the new structure.

Changes to Primary Keys in Essential Tables in Hotels

Changes to primary keys affect the following tables, a period (.) was added after the table name:

Table	Replaced by
LSCHT Detailed Rev Entry	LSCHT Detailed Rev Entry.
LSCHT Hotel Res. Entry	LSCHT Hotel Res. Entry.
LSCHT Res. Payment Entry	LSCHT Res. Payment Entry.
LSCHT Room Blocking Entry	LSCHT Room Blocking Entry.
LSCHT Room Type Block	LSCHT Room Type Block.
LSCHT Detailed Rev Entry Log	LSCHT Detailed Rev Entry Log.
LSCHT Reservation History	LSCHT Reservation History.
LSCHT Hotel Reservation Log	LSCHT Hotel Reservation Log.

To support localization of VAT %, the system now uses temp Sales Header (Document Type Quote) and Sales Line to get the Detailed Revenue Entry VAT%.

Obsolete Code Marked With Tag 19.0 and Below Removed

Our solution gets bigger with every release, but we intend to clean up by removing obsolete code in major releases as soon as the code has been marked obsolete for at least a year.

In release 21.0 we removed constructs like procedures and events, but there are no breaking schema changes yet, like Tables and Table fields.

Recommended action: Check if you are using a feature that has been marked obsolete for more than a year. The warning should state the reason and the alternative that is intended to be used.

OnPrem-only Procedures Are Now Obsolete

All procedures and objects that are marked #if _IS_SAAS_, previously marked [Scope('OnPrem')], will become internal.

From 21.0 these procedures and objects will be marked Obsolete for OnPrem extensions, until they will finally become internal in 22.0.

If your extension is using any of these, they will now get a warning.

Recommended action: If you have an OnPrem extension, check if there are any warnings. Usually, there are alternative procedures available, but partners can also request that a list of these is made public through the same flow as event requests.

Autotest Object Names Now Have an LSC Prefix

In version 17.4 we added an LSC prefix to LS Central, but this was not done for our Autotests extension, which we include in our releases.

From version 21.0, autotests will have a prefix as well.

Recommended action: If you are using or extending the LS Central Autotests extension, be aware of this change.

Integration Event Triggers Are Now Internal/Local

In rare cases, it has been technically possible to trigger some of our events from an extension.

These cases are usually an oversight, since the internal/local keyword was missing for the IntegrationEvents so they became public, by default.

This has prevented us from adding new arguments to existing events, and therefore unnecessarily forcing new versions for events where a breaking change would not have been needed.

Recommended action: This should not require any work. There is a chance that somewhere an upgrade might fail, if it is calling an event function, for example in POS Transaction Event, which usually has no effect. Instead, the events are intended to be subscribed to, with an EventSubscriber.

Click here for a printable version of this notification.

OAuth web service authentication

As documented by Microsoft, OAuth2 is the authentication option for Business Central SaaS and Basic authentication has been deprecated, see here:

LS Central version 26.0 supports the use of Service2Service OAuth2 authentication when using LS Central as a web service client, for example when POS (web service client) is calling web services on Head Office (web service server).

New or Enhanced Features

LS Central

New Centralized Comments Structure for Restaurants, Bookings, and Hotels

With centralized comments you can register comments to a source record in the Back Office and in the POS. A source record is, for example, a dining reservation, a dining table entry, a POS transaction, an activity reservation, or an activity group reservation.

Comments have a priority that controls the font style of the comments, making it possible to highlight important comments.

Comments can be assigned comment categories. They are an important tool to:

group comments together.
assign a default priority to comments.
link attributes to comments (attributes function as predefined comment options, for example allergies).
specify whether comments should be sent to the kitchen.

Related Comments

Source records can be related to records in other sources. A dining reservation can, for example, be related to an activity and an activity reservation. The activity reservation may be related to an activity group reservation and other activities. An activity group reservation may have multiple related sources, such as activity group members, activity reservations, activities, and dining reservations.

When you view the comments for a source record, you also see the comments that have been registered for the related source records. This way there is no need to move comments between sources and this ensures that comments are not overlooked, because they were registered to the "wrong" source.

Comments in the kitchen

When a KOT is created for an order that has comments marked to be sent to kitchen (including related comments), these comments are displayed or printed with the KOT. You can also send comments to the kitchen after KOTs have been created.

Upgrading

Addition for the New Centralized Comments in the LS Central Demo Data Company

With the new Comments functionality, there is a configuration package with all related POS data ready to import into the LS Central Demo Data Company.
The package includes POS setup data, such as POS commands, tags, data tables, panels, menus, data grid, lookup, button pad controls, and fonts.
Note: This data is for profile ##DEFAULT plus the additional POS commands and tags.

LS Retail Partners have access to the package via the LS Retail Portal, Demo Material (login required).

Default Qty. to Receive not Respected by Retail Purchase Order

When Default Qty. to Receive is equal to Blank in the Purchase & Payables Setup page, and if the item has variants, the fields Qty. to Receive and Qty. to Invoice cannot be filled.

Mobile Inventory: Cycle Counting Worksheet

The Cycle count filter has been removed to include all lines in GetInvWorksheetBuffer.

New Web Service: Get Sales History for Member Contact

A new web service to get member contact's sales history has been implemented.

POS

UI-Blocking Functionality on POS While Actions Are Finishing

Usually, when you click buttons in the POS, the buttons are processed by the server and are “non-blocking”, which means you can keep interacting with the POS.

In this release, a new feature was added which enables users to mark POS Menu Lines or POS commands as “blocking”. This means that while they are being processed, the user will have to wait for it to finish. By default, the POS keeps being non-blocking but can be set to “always block” in the POS Interface Profile. Visually, this feature is indicated with a loading cursor and the screen gets a little dimmer, until a message is displayed if the action takes too long. The time it takes for the message to appear can also be customized in the POS Interface Profile.

Web Templates Created by LS Retail Are Delivered Automatically and Are Read-only

The Web Templates implementation has been changed to facilitate easy delivery and versioning of Web Templates created by LS Retail.

LS Retail Web Templates are now marked as Base and their source code a part of LS Central. This process is automatic, and no actions are needed. This eliminates the use of data packages to deliver the Template code and ensures the Web Template code is always in sync with each release. The Base Web Templates are read-only, but it is possible to extend them by copying the Template code into a new Web Template with a new name and change the source code like before.

If a Web Template is not a Base template, the process is unchanged, the database blobs store the source code, and customers can change the code in any way they like.

In summary:

Base Web templates are now delivered with the code as a part of LS Central delivery.
Editing of Base Web Template has been disabled (read-only mode).
Copy functionality for Web Templates has been introduced to enable users to customize or extend Base Web Templates more easily.
All Web Templates functionality remains the same. The changes only affect to Base Web Templates delivered by LS Retail.

Replenishment

New Name for Replenishment Role Center

The LS Replenishment Role Center has been renamed Replenishment Role Center.

Daily Sales Calculation for Replenishment Calculation Type Stock Levels and Like for Like

You now have the option to calculate the Daily Sales in the Replenishment Item Quantity (RIQ) for items that have been assigned with the Replenishment Calculation Type Stock Levels or Like for Like. You can enable the option by using the Calc. Daily Sales for Stock Levels and Calc. Daily Sales for Like for Like settings in the Replen. Setup, and the subsequent setups are just the same as the Average Usage calculation type. You just need to assign a Replenishment Sales Profile to the item, or just specify a default Replenishment Sales Profile to be used by all the items.

For more information see Calculation Type – Stock Levels and Calculation Type – Like for Like in the LS Central Help.

Validate Changed Quantity in the Replenishment Journal Against the Order Multiple and Transfer Multiple

You can now validate the manually changed quantity in the Purchase and Transfer Replenishment Journal against the Order Multiple and the Transfer Multiple that have been assigned to the item. You can enable the validation by using the Replen. Journal Quantity Warning settings for the Order Multiple and Transfer Multiple, available in the Replen. Setup page. Once these settings have been enabled, the system displays a warning when the manually changed quantity in the Replenishment Journal is not in full multiple.

The Order Multiple validation works for the Quantity field in the Purchase Replenishment Journal, and the Transfer Multiple validation works for the Quantity field in the Transfer Replenishment Journal and the Quantity to Cross Dock field in the Purchase Replenishment Journal.

For more information see Order Multiple and Transfer Multiple Validation in the LS Central Help.

Restaurants

Allow Price Modification of Deals Through eCommerce

It is now allowed to modify the price of a deal when the order is created through the Commerce Service. The deal has to allow price modifications and the web request needs to set PriceModified to True. This feature is only available through the web services.

Negative Adjustment on Recipes to Statement Posting

The statement-post codeunit has been adjusted to allow negative adjustments also for recipes.

Self-Service Kiosk: Responsive Layouts

The Self-Service Kiosk was designed for the typical fast food ordering screen which is common in portrait mode with the screen resolution of 1080x1920.

Now the Self-Service Kiosk detects the screen aspect ratio and applies styling accordingly. This makes it possible to run the Self-Service Kiosk on a wider variety of hardware.

Shopify Improvements

Fulfillment Rewrite for New API Interface

Fulfillment has been changed to support the latest Shopify API.

Meta Data

It is now possible to send XML data as meta data with the product data.

In Shopify Admin, go to Settings - Metadfields - Products.
Create meta fields before or after Items have been sent from LS Central. All fields must have name space lsretail and content type Single line text.

Fixes - Shipping Agent mapping without Shipping Agent Service Code.

Shopify and Magento stores in same Company. When sending web hook messages for Order status, shipping and Payment, Integration Event is used to send those messages to Shopify if store is found in Shopify Administration setup.

LS Central Modules

Analytics for LS Central

New Name for LS Insight

LS Insight has been renamed Analytics for LS Central.

Bookings for LS Central

New Name for LS Activity

LS Activity has been renamed Bookings for LS Central.

Member Details Updated for All Future Activity Bookings

Now if you change either mobile phone number or email address for a member contact who has an assigned Group Reservation (Main group member), an Activity Reservation, or Activity, the mobile phone number and email address are updated in all future assignments of the related entries.
Note: Only activities that had the same previous phone number or email or a blank phone/email are updated. Phone number is not assigned on any of these entries, only the mobile phone.

New Functions in Activity API "LSC Activity WS"

New functions to update the Reservation/Activity status have been added to the new Activity API, LSC Activity WS (Rest supporting). To enable the new API, open the Activity Web Setup page, click the Related action, and select Web Services. The new functions require enabling Web Service Integration in the Activity Setup - Web Integration FastTab.

Hotels for LS Central

Hotels is a separate app, extending LS Central.

Guest List per Period

A new page has been added that allows users to extract a guest list for a specific period and down to property. The page is available through Reports in the Hotel Back Office Role Center.

Improved Discount Page and New Actions

It is now possible to choose a second available discount for reservations. New actions, Select discount to apply and Clear Discount have been added to the New Reservation page.

New actions have also been added to pages Rate Change and Upgrade/Upsell, so it is now possible to apply or not apply available discounts for a modified reservation.

Nationality Report and Country in Guest List

Country has been added to the guest list and the nationality report has been updated to use data from the guest list instead of the reservation level, only looking at guests that have arrived at the hotel (with reservation status Inhouse or Checked-out).

A new AddCountryToGuestlist() method was added to hotel upgrade codeunit.

New Filter on Hotel POS

The Hotel POS now has a new parameter, OPENPOSTRANS, to the #HTL-FRONTDESK command to show a list of all reservations that have open POS Transactions in the hotel. Double-click a transaction and the POS opens.

Room Type Avail. Info Page Improved

The Room Type Avail. Info page has been improved to show occupancy rates by room type and totals by property. In the Property Totals row the accent is:

Less than 50% - Green (Favorable)
Less than 80% - Dark Yellow (Ambiguous)
Less than 100% - Red (Unfavorable)

Pharmacy for LS Central

Pharmacies is a separate app, extending LS Central.

Delete Order / Line and Return to Gateway from Incoming Orders

Incoming Prescription Orders can now be changed from Direct Addressed to normal Prescription in one action.

Incoming Orders Recognizable on Customer Prescription List

Incoming orders are now shown as Favorable (Green) in the Customer Start Service subpage and can be confirmed for processing by selecting the function Confirm Incoming Order in the Functions menu. The Confirm Incoming Order function is only available, if an incoming order is in focus.

Pharmacies Commands Cleanup

Used Pharmacies commands are now registered automatically when Pharmacy Admin Tasks are run.

Price Comparison on Generic Substitution

Now you can print a label with the Issued Item information and the Replacement candidates from the Item Substitution page.

Supporting Functionality

Hardware Station for LS Central

Improved Print Buffer REST Function

The Print buffer REST function in Hardware Station has been improved with more detailed error messages and better logging.

Other

POS Commands

The following POS commands are new in LS Central 21.4:

COMM_CATEGORY	Lookup Comment Category
COMM_EDIT	Edit comment
COMM_EDIT_OPTION	Change comment option
COMM_LINE	Commands for comment lines in data grid
COMM_NEW	Create new comment
COMM_NEWCATLOOKUP	Create new comment with Category lookup
COMM_NEWOPTION	Create new comment with category and option
COMM_SENDTOKDS	Send comments to Kitchen
COMM_SHOW	Show comments - main grid, related grid
COMM_SHOWSALES	Show comments in Sales POS
PROMOCODE	Promo code entry for Bookings

See POS Commands in the LS Central Help and the corresponding Excel list with filters for a complete list of POS commands.

Demo Data Company: New Scheduler Jobs

Three new Scheduler jobs have been added to the LS Central Demo Data Company. The jobs are:

UPD-MEMBER-INFO - Update Member Information
UPGR/DOWNGR-MEMBER - Update/Downgrade Management
EXP-MEMBER-POINTS - Exp. Member Point Entries

The three jobs are doing the same as actions in Member Process Order Entry.

LS Central Help: Rebranding and Restructuring

Rebranding in the LS Central Help includes the changes listed below. Note that the Help uses the short form of module, app, and functionality names:

	Old name	New name (short version)
LS Central Modules	LS Activity	Bookings
	LS Insight	Analytics
	LS eCommerce	eCommerce
	LS Forecourt	Forecourt
	LS Hotels	Hotels
	LS Pharmacy	Pharmacies
	LS Staff Management	Staff Management
Consulting Modules	LS Duty Free	Duty free add-on
	LS Cruise	Ferry add-on
LS Central Apps	LS Central AppShell	AppShell
	LS Retail Mobile Inventory	Mobile Inventory
	LS Retail Mobile POS	Mobile POS
Supporting Functionality	LS Commerce Service	Commerce Service
	LS Data Director	Data Director
	LS Hardware Station	Hardware Station
	LS KDS	Kitchen Display Service
	LS Update Service	Update Service

See Product Overview for details.

Note: This structure is also reflected in the organization of the LS Central Release Notes, version 21.4 and onwards.

The LS Central Help is currently being updated to comply with the company's rebranding of product, module, and app names. The rebranding is most noticable in LS Insight becoming Analytics and LS Activity becoming Bookings.

In the navigation menu, the Help topics are now divided into four main groups, the same as in the Product Overview.

Section	Description
LS Central	Contains help topics for LS Central Base, including BackOffice, Point of Sale, Replenishment, Restaurants, and more.
Modules	Help for Analytics, Bookings, Staff Management, Hotels, Pharmacies, and eCommerce.
LS Central Apps	Help for AppShell, Mobile Inventory, Mobile POS, and ScanPayGo.
Supporting Functionality	Help for Commerce Service, Data Director, Hardware Station, and Kitchen Display System.

Fixed Issues

LS Central

Item Status Check

The order of how Item Status for Item is checked has been changed. Now the system finds the last status and checks if that item is blocked for sale.

New Fields on the Customer Order Setup Now Obsolete

In the Customer Order Setup table, the fields Item Journal Template and Item Journal Batch are not used and have been made obsolete.

POS

EFT Error Recovery Fix

An issue regarding an edge case for the EFT error recovery, where a recovered transaction was not successfully used as payment on the POS, has now been fixed and hotfixes have been created for previous versions.

Issue With Changing a User by Scanning an MSR Card

An issue where changing a user or doing a manager override by using an MSR card was not working properly. This has now been fixed.

Search Bar Issue of Misplaced Click

An issue that caused the click event to click the button in the background of the pop-up grid has been fixed.

Data Table #MPOSTCODE & #MCITY

City and Post Code lookup in the MEMBERCONTACT POS command can now be changed to handle long strings and to populate County as well as City, Post Code, and Country/Region Code.

The current City and Post Code fields are too short to be able to handle long strings, so two new internal fields have been added to the Member Contact table: 5110 - "City Search Internal" and 5111 - "Post Code Search Internal".

These fields should be used instead of the short fields in the POS Data table lines for POS Data table #MCONTACTEDIT for the #MCITY and #POSTCODE lookups. When these lookups are used, values of the City, Post Code, Country/Region Code, and County fields are copied to the respective Member Contact fields after lookup on #MCITY or #POSTCODE.

No action is required unless you want to be able to handle full-sized strings.

Replenishment

Quantity on Sales Order Issue in Master Child Replenishment

An issue in Master Child replenishment calculation, where the Sales Order's quantity from the Child locations were not considered in the Replenishment Item Quantity (RIQ) calculation of the Master location, has been fixed.

Replenishment Item Quantity Calculation with Replenish as Item No.

When a query was enabled for the Replenishment Item Quantity (RIQ) calculation, its Daily Sales was not considering the sales history of the item that was set up as the Replenish as Item No.. This has now been fixed.

Restaurants

Deal With Unavailable Item Brings Up Modifiers

If deal items have current availability 0, an error pops up just after a deal is selected.

POS command AVAILABILITY_MODE shows the status on the button in the <#AVAILABILITY_MODE> tag.

Error Message When KDS Printing Fails

The "KDSStatus" now displays the correct error message when printing fails. The error message is displayed with a banner with a five-minute timeout instead of a field in the POS footer.

Fixes in Self-Service Kiosk

Background border around language selection button
When the flag images used were of different sizes, a border was displayed. This border has now been removed.
Recipes with the same ingredient in deals
If a deal had more than one recipe and the recipes had the same ingredient, it was not possible to exclude the common ingredient from just one of the recipes. This has now been fixed.
Start order button fix
When an order is started in the Self-Service Kiosk on a terminal with only one hospitality type and no language translation selection, the transaction is started directly.

Search Command Issue

Search for Phone No and Name is now possible from Search Command, and it is possible to add a button with POS command HOSP-SEARCHORDER to search by Order No.

Standard vs eCommerce Differences in Discount Calculations

A new field, Use Bill-to Customer, has been added on the POS Functionality Profile Card.
When activated, the calculation of the Customer Price will use the Bill-to Customer No. field on the Customer Card to calculate the price, similar to standard Business Central.

LS Central Modules

Pharmacy for LS Central

B2B Prescription Picking Error

A new page for B2B picking control has been added (avoid FMD control).

Dose Label not Correctly Printed from the Pick Panel

Function call has been added to print a dose label from the Pick Panel.

Inactive Subscribers

Inactive subscribers have been fixed or removed.

Supporting Functionality

Hardware Station for LS Central

Printer not Reconfiguring Correctly on Retry

An error in Hardware Station has been fixed, where a printer receiving an OPOS error restarted with the default configuration values and did not reconfigure itself until the Hardware Station was restarted.

Hotfixes

See the LS Central Help for information about hotfixes that have been released since the previous release.