bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/style/labels-declared-at-object-scope.md
Jesper Schulz-Wedde b11f3ec506 Improve PR-review parity: suggestion blocks, missing KB articles, privacy cross-ref
Adds the contract field, skill instructions, and two knowledge articles
that BCAppsBCQuality's PR-review agent needs to match (and exceed) the
coverage of the embedded review agent in BCAppsCampAIRHack:

skills/do.md
- New optional findings[].suggested-code field. Documents what it MUST
  contain (a literal line-replacement payload) and when to emit it.

microsoft/skills/review/al-code-review.md
- Instructs both the agent self-review pass and rolled-up sub-skill
  findings to populate suggested-code when the fix is mechanical.
- Lists examples (dead code removal, Count > 0 -> IsEmpty, object-scope
  Label) that map to issues observed in the parity comparison.

microsoft/knowledge/style/telemetry-event-id-stable-unique.{md,bad.al,good.al}
- New knowledge article: telemetry event IDs must be stable, unique,
  and non-placeholder. Closes a gap surfaced by the parity comparison.

microsoft/knowledge/style/labels-declared-at-object-scope.{md,bad.al,good.al}
- New knowledge article: Labels must live in the object-level var
  block, not in procedure-local var blocks. Closes the second gap.

microsoft/knowledge/privacy/no-pii-in-telemetry-message-string.md
- Adds an explicit note that changing DataClassification alone does not
  make embedding PII into the message string acceptable, plus links to
  the two adjacent privacy articles. Resolves the privacy advice the
  parity comparison flagged as ambiguous.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-05-27 15:45:49 +02:00

2.2 KiB

bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
all
style
label
scope
procedure
translation
localization
xliff
al
w1
all

Declare Labels at object scope, not inside procedure var blocks

Description

Label is the AL declaration that participates in the translation pipeline: the build extracts every Label declared in an object into the .xlf file shipped to translators, and the runtime substitutes the localized value when the object is loaded. Translation tooling discovers Labels by walking the object's top-level declarations.

Labels declared inside a procedure-local var block are still compiled as Label values, but their participation in localization is fragile: depending on the BC version, the build pipeline, and the translation toolchain in use, procedure-local Labels may be missed during XLIFF extraction, may be re-emitted with auto-generated keys that change between builds, or may not be addressable by reviewers triaging translations. The reliable, supported pattern is to declare every Label in the object's top-level var block.

The same rule applies to all object types that own behavior: codeunits, pages, tables, reports, queries, and their extensions. For shared messages used by multiple objects, declare the Label in the most appropriate owning object and reference it — do not duplicate the literal across procedure-scoped declarations in several places.

Best Practice

Move every Label to the object's top-level var block. Use the appropriate suffix (Msg, Err, Qst, Lbl, Tok, Txt) on the variable name so reviewers and the translation team can see at a glance what role the string plays. Pair non-translatable strings (URLs, JSON/XML fragments, integration tokens) with Locked = true, as covered by label-locked-for-non-translatable.md.

See sample: labels-declared-at-object-scope.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Declaring Label inside a procedure-local var block — procedure Lookup() var GreetingMsg: Label 'Hello %1'; — couples the translatable string to one procedure, hides it from object-level review, and depends on a translation pipeline behavior that is not part of the AL language contract.

See sample: labels-declared-at-object-scope.bad.al.