Once upon a time we had application servers, forms, and timers. Nearly two decades ago we moved to the job queue and it, or various iterations of it, has been the stalwart of automating routine tasks in NAV and Business Central ever since. It’s difficult to imagine doing it any other way.

The job queue is not without its problems, though. This is especially true in high transaction, high automation SaaS environments where we have less control and less visibility into what is going on behind the scenes. Jobs don’t always start on time. Scaling can cause jobs to stop altogether for hours at a time. Platform hotfixes can completely change performance without you knowing about them ahead of time. The wrong jobs take priority. When companies get big enough to need to process tens of thousands of tasks per hour, and not impact other users in the system, we can’t always count on the job queue to deliver.

In this session you’ll learn how to leverage various timer and event driven Azure components, in combination with Business Central API calls, to achieve a more consistent automation experience.

Key topics include:
• An overview of the traditional job queue and its limitations in modern SaaS environments.
• Introduction to Azure components (such as Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and Event Grid) that can replace or augment the job queue.
• Best practices for integrating Business Central API calls with Azure services to achieve seamless automation.
• Strategies for monitoring, scaling, and optimizing automated tasks to ensure high performance and reliability.