Control Panel

The Control Panel, titled Prism for AL, is the window Prism for AL opens with. It is where you open workspaces, manage the package cache, change settings, and see your version and license. Each workspace you open gets its own Workspace window.

Opening it

Start Prism for AL. The Control Panel opens with the Home page.
From a workspace window, select File › Control Panel or press Ctrl+P.

Prism for AL Control Panel with its rail of pages and the page area — The rail of pages on the left, and the selected page beside it.

#	Name	Description
1	Home	Shows the Home page: open a new or recent workspace.
2	Features	Shows the Features page: learn about Prism's features and review your progress.
3	Package cache	Shows the Package cache page.
4	Environment	Shows the Environment page: the AL settings in your Visual Studio Code user settings, and system information such as the operating system and .NET runtime. Its icon turns red when Prism cannot find or read your Visual Studio Code user settings file. See Environment page.
5	About	Shows the About page.
6	Settings	Shows the Settings page. It sits at the bottom of the rail, below a separator.
7	Page area	Shows the page selected in the rail.

While Prism runs background operations, a button above Settings shows how many are running; select it to see them. Messages that need no answer appear in a notification box at the bottom right of the window.

File menu

File

Open

Opens a workspace; the same commands as the open buttons on the Home page.

Workspace…: Opens a workspace file (*.code-workspace), as Open workspace file… does.
Folder…: Opens a folder with app.json and *.al files, packages, or projects in subfolders, as Open folder… does.
Package…: Opens a package file (*.app), as Open package… does.
Service…: Opens a solution from a running Business Central service, as Open from BC… does. See Open from BC window.

Close Open Workspaces

Closes all open workspaces. With the setting Confirm closing workspace on, Prism asks first. Disabled while no workspace is open.

Exit

Closes Prism for AL (Alt+F4).

Help menu

Help

Learn

Opens this manual in your default browser. To open the manual page for the page you are on, press F1.

Feedback…

Opens the Feedback window.

Log

Prism writes diagnostic messages to rotating log files, and keeps the messages of the current session in memory.

Open Log: Opens the current log file in your default text editor (Ctrl+L).
Open Session Log: Opens the entries logged since Prism started this time (Ctrl+Shift+L).
Open Last Command Log: Opens the entries logged since you last ran a command (Ctrl+Alt+L).
Wipe Log File: Empties the current log file after you confirm; earlier log files stay as they are.
Log Level Information: Selects the normal log level.
Log Level Debug: Selects the debug log level.
Log Level Verbose: Selects the verbose log level, which logs the most.

Troubleshoot

If a workspace does not open as expected, for example when some modules are unresolved, we may ask you to record it. A recording is a .wrec file with everything Prism reads to open the workspace except the .al files. Prism shows the new file in File Explorer, next to a .redaction.txt report of what it left out. Attach the recording to a message in the Feedback window.

Optimize Prism Package Cache Performance

Copies to the clipboard a PowerShell script that excludes Prism's package cache folder from Microsoft Defender scanning. Run it in PowerShell as an administrator; it speeds up package caching considerably. See also Package cache page.

Enter License…

Opens the Activate license window.

Get Trial License…

Opens the Trial license window. Enabled only when no license is installed, the license is not valid, or your trial has expired.

End-User License Agreement

Places the End-User License Agreement PDF on your desktop and shows it in File Explorer.

Third-Party Licenses

Places an Excel sheet of the third-party components Prism for AL uses, and their licenses, on your desktop and shows it in File Explorer.

OpenJDK

Shortcuts

Key	Action
`Ctrl`+`1` … `Ctrl`+`9`	Open the first to ninth recent workspace.
`F1`	Open the manual page for the page you are on.
`Ctrl`+`L`	Open the log.
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`L`	Open the session log.
`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`L`	Open the log of the last command.
`Alt`+`F4`	Exit Prism for AL.

When Prism starts

While Prism starts, a card over the Control Panel reads Initializing Prism... with what it is doing and a progress bar. When reading the package cache takes long, the card asks whether you have excluded the package cache folder from anti-virus scanning; Help › Optimize Prism Package Cache Performance gives you the script, and the Package cache page lets you trim the cache.

Preview builds

A preview build is a pre-release of the next version of Prism for AL. It shows an amber PREVIEW badge in the title bar, its window title ends in — Preview, and its version number ends in Preview. Features in a preview may change before the next stable release. When you run a stable version and a newer preview exists, the Home page's Version block offers it.