bcquality/custom/knowledge/mcp/bc-mcp-company-header-must-match-exact-company-name.md

bc-version	domain	keywords	technologies	countries	application-area
all	mcp	businesscentral mcp bc-mcp-bridge company header display-name config troubleshooting	al mcp	w1	all

BC MCP Company Header Must Be the Exact Navn Field, Not Vist navn

Description

~/.bc-mcp.config.json's company value is sent as the literal Company HTTP header to the BC MCP endpoint. It must exactly match the company's Navn field in Business Central's company list — not the Vist navn (display name) field. The two are often different strings for the same company, and BC's own company picker UI shows the display name more prominently, making it the natural (wrong) one to copy.

Incident (2026-07-31)

CURABIS's own businesscentral MCP server failed after "working all evening" with a generic client-side "connection timed out after 30000ms" — no useful error surfaced to the developer. Root cause: company was set to "CURABIS ApS" (the Vist navn), while BC's actual Navn field is "Curabis ApS". BC's own API rejected the mismatched header with a fast, clear 400 error — but bc-mcp-bridge.js had a separate bug (bc-mcp-bridge-must-surface-non-2xx-responses-before-sse-parsing, same incident) that swallowed the error body, turning a sub-200ms server error into a 30-second client-side hang with no diagnostic.

Verification

If businesscentral MCP fails, check BC's company list page (Virksomheder / Companies) and compare the Navn column — not Vist navn — against ~/.bc-mcp.config.json's company value, character for character. Do not assume the value that "looks right" from the picker UI is the one the API needs.

Anti-Pattern

// WRONG: copied from BC's company switcher, which shows Vist navn
{ "company": "CURABIS ApS" }

Compliant

// CORRECT: copied from the Navn column on the company list page
{ "company": "Curabis ApS" }

Scope

Every machine with ~/.bc-mcp.config.json configured — this is a machine-local file, not something Mode B can fix centrally. The template (bc-mcp.config.template.json) carries an explicit warning about this distinction as of 2026-07-31, but a machine already onboarded before that date needs its existing file checked manually.

Follow-up (2026-08-03) — a correct header does not guarantee the request resolves

The Internal_CompanyNotFound symptom recurred on 2026-08-03 on two independent developer machines, both with company already set to the correct Navn value ("Curabis ApS") per this rule. The header-mismatch cause above was confirmed absent both times — yet the error still occurred, intermittently, within the same working day.

This means a correct Navn-matching header is necessary but not sufficient: the same-looking error can have a second cause unrelated to the header value. When this happens, the header-match check (Verification, above) has nothing left to find — do not keep re-checking that same field.

Ruled out on 2026-08-03, with evidence — do not re-investigate these:

• Stale client process. A theory that a long-running bc-mcp-bridge.js process was running pre-fix code from before its 2026-08-01 update, and that restarting Claude Code would pick up the fix. Falsified same day: a full machine reboot (strictly stronger than a Claude Code restart — kills every process, clears all in-memory state, re-establishes every network connection) left the exact same error unchanged immediately after. An earlier apparent "it works after a restart" observation was very likely coincidental with an intermittent server-side state, not causal.
• MCP Server Configuration misconfigured. Verified via BC UI screenshot: CURABIS_DEV configuration is Aktiv (Active) = on, Standard (Default) = on, with the expected tool set and permissions present.
• Company record wrong or Navn mismatched. Verified via BC UI screenshot of the company list: Navn = Curabis ApS exactly (matches config character-for-character), Vist navn = CURABIS ApS (confirming why the original 2026-07-31 mix-up was easy to make), setup status Completed.

Conclusion: with the header confirmed correct, the MCP configuration confirmed active/default, and the company record confirmed correct — all via direct BC UI inspection, not inference — and the error still recurring intermittently, immune even to a full machine reboot, this is not a client- fixable condition. Escalate to Microsoft support with the evidence bundle (exact error text, ~/.bc-mcp.config.json values, both BC UI screenshots, and timestamps of both failing and working calls) rather than continuing local troubleshooting. Root cause of the intermittent failure itself remains unconfirmed — likely a BC/SaaS-side condition outside CURABIS's visibility.

Follow-up (2026-08-07) — toggling the MCP Server Configuration correlates with recovery

New observation, distinct from the 2026-08-03 "MCP Server Configuration misconfigured" theory above — that theory tested a static state (confirmed Aktiv/Standard both on) and correctly ruled out misconfiguration as the cause. This follow-up is about a save/toggle action on that same page, not its resting state, so it does not contradict the earlier ruling.

Observed sequence (2026-08-07, MID): Internal_CompanyNotFound on a List_ActiveTasks_PAG6102900 call. Restarting VS Code (respawns the bc-mcp-bridge.js process) and retrying: failed again, same error — consistent with the already-falsified restart theory above. Then, without any other change, went into BC → Konfiguration af MCP-server → CURABIS_DEV and toggled the Standard field off, saved. Retried: worked immediately. MID reports having seen this same pattern — retry after restart fails, retry after touching this config page succeeds — on prior occasions, not just this one.

What this does and doesn't establish:

• This is a repeated but still informal observation (n≥2, not a controlled test), and the direction of the toggle (on→off vs off→on) has not been isolated — MID's own assessment is that the direction "is probably irrelevant," which would point at the save/republish action itself (busting some server-side cache tied to session or company resolution for that MCP configuration record) rather than at which value the field ends up holding.
• It has NOT been tested against a proper baseline (e.g., retrying the plain API call 5-10 times with no config touch at all, to rule out that the error would have cleared on its own within the same window — it is already documented as intermittent, so some coincidental clears are expected regardless of any workaround).
• It does NOT yet override the Microsoft-support-escalation guidance above — it is a candidate operational workaround, not a confirmed fix, and definitely not a root cause.

Suggested next occurrence: before escalating to Microsoft, try one save-cycle on the CURABIS_DEV MCP Server Configuration page (toggle either field and immediately toggle it back, or leave the toggle as work requires — direction untested) and retry once. If this keeps working across several independent recurrences, it graduates from "candidate" to "confirmed workaround" and this section should be tightened accordingly — and it becomes useful supporting evidence for the Microsoft escalation itself (a config-page save on CURABIS's side masking a server-side symptom points at BC's MCP session/cache layer, not at CURABIS's setup).