What’s New in Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is evolving and accepting future technology to enhance its performance and efficiency. We know that the way of doing smooth business is becoming more complex day by day, and we need system upgrades or updates to eliminate such challenges. This is where Microsoft plays a vital role—releasing Business Central updates twice a year.

In April 2024, Microsoft released several updates related to AI, the Power Platform, and enhancing standard features, along with making D365 BC more productive than ever. In this blog, we are going to discuss several key points that Microsoft has released recently.

Updates around Business Central with Power Platform

The integration of Business Central with the Power Platform is powerful and resolves critical business challenges. Some of the latest developments around the Power Platform are:

Build Virtual Tables to Get More BC Data in Dataverse

You can build custom virtual tables or synthetic tables to centralise data collected in Business Central using Dataverse and other Dynamics 365 solutions. These virtual tables eliminate the boundaries of the system to offer transparent data in the desired Dynamics application.

Streamline Approval Process using Power Automate

Enhance the entire data approval process by leveraging the capabilities of Power Automate. In this update, you get to see added templates to simplify the entire experience using Power Automate. You cannot define any approval manually, but you can specify the flow of execution.

Search for the Matching Record in Power Automate

With several updates, the transition from Microsoft Flow to Power Automate has made this solution more powerful than ever, with added intelligent upgrades. Currently, we have a Find Records tool that enables users to find one record that matches a certain set of parameters, like a unique record ID.

Now, Microsoft has introduced a new tool called Find One Record that enables users to find a particular record that matches their given parameters.

Core Functionality Updates

Microsoft has released numerous functionality updates to enhance its existing performance. These updates will help businesses optimise processes and improve productivity. Some of the core Business Central updates are:

Increased Usability for Services and Projects

Supercharge productivity with enhanced usability of different tools related to project and service management. This is the common pain point for Business Central users, as they are facing a bit of complexity with accounting, project management, and service management. You can easily access the desired data and automate the process of sharing documents once they are received.

Integrate D365 Field Service with BC

Businesses that offer field or professional services are most likely to benefit from this update. They can now easily establish a connection between Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service to manage resource consumption, financial tasks, and core service processes. Also, it enables you to track work orders, process efficient invoicing, and track all field service executives.

Set up Currencies with Employee Transactions

Track and set up employee accounts for expense and reimbursement processes, regardless of international currencies. Receive receipts, track financial transactions, and reimburse expenses without worrying about the exchange rate. You can use the currency code to set up the desired currency before the start of transactions and get reimbursement in a specific currency. You can spend in dollars but get the reimbursement amount in euros.

Send Invoices of Same Project to Multiple Customers

Businesses struggle to send invoices for a project to multiple customers based on the work done or different tasks. This is a challenging and precise task to follow. However, the late update in Business Central has resolved this issue. Now, you can define Bill-to-Customer No. and Sell-to-Customer No. for each project and generate the invoice accordingly.

Automate Reminders in Collections

Simplify the process of collecting by automating the entire process. From creating, issuing, and sending reminders, you can update customers with each notification. Automation in the collection process reduces the burden of workload and offers a better overview of fully managed processes.

Automate Financial Consolidation

Businesses have to pay attention to financial consolidation when it comes to international currency, as it is based on a fluctuating exchange rate. To simplify the entire process, access the Set-Up Business Unit Currencies page to track the exchange rate of diverse currencies. You can even manually set up the exchange rate based on the average rate, closing rate, and last closing rate.

Connect Shopify with Business Central

Connecting Shopify with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central empowers the business to control pricing, order status, inventory, billing, and payments in real-time. When you have current data on your e-commerce store, you can accelerate its growth. You can connect these two applications using the Shopify Connector and sync the data for a unified approach.

AI and Copilot Updates

Microsoft has also released different updates to enhance the performance of Copilot assistance. Also, Microsoft has released various AI updates for its other products as well. Some of the updates are:

Get Copilot to Understand Field Information

Business Central is a vast solution, and understanding its complete coverage of diverse tools and functionalities is a bit difficult. Here comes the best usage of Copilot. As it is available in the sidebar or on the screen, you can access it to understand anything about the solution, whether it is related to field information or learning a new tool. This generative AI-powered solution powers up the user's productivity and maximises creativity.

Generate Compelling Product Information

Create and modify product information using AI to make it more engaging as well as relatable to different sets of users. Copilot eliminates the manual efforts a user puts into writing product information with automation. You can get the best description based on the prompts you enter in Copilot. In short, it frees you from handling different tasks so that you can focus on growing business revenue.

Understand Data More Efficiently

Copilot centralises customer data to identify trends, customer demands, and market fluctuations. It analyses the data and gives the output in simple sentences within Business Central dashboards. Also, you can give commands, like showing customers a repetitive purchase from a London location, to get the data within seconds.

Simplify Sales Documentation with Copilot

Copilot eliminates repetitive and manual tasks with automation to simplify efforts and enhance the overall sales documentation process. Copilot understands different inputs that include prompts, text, and files and generates different sales lines. Such sales tasks include sales orders, sales quotes, and sales invoices.

AI Powered Communication with Copilot

You can communicate with Copilot through chats in natural language to fetch and utilise important data. It can help you find exact data within seconds, get a tool explanation, guide through core capabilities, and understand compliances without compromising your data security.

Governance and Administration Updates

Businesses have to follow different governance and administration norms to perform smooth work in any region. Microsoft understands this and releases an update to support businesses with international transactions. Some of the updates are:

Manage Partner Access Per Environment

There are numerous times when a user has to work with multiple environments along with the collaboration of different partners. With this update, users will be able to control partner access to environments. In short, it simplifies collaboration with partners in each environment.

Give Consent to Microsoft Support

Data is an essential asset that needs to be secured efficiently. With the new update, Microsoft allows you to give consent so that your data can be accessed from a particular environment. As an administrator, you can create a lockbox policy with the information related to your data and apply it to Power Platforms and Dynamic 365 solutions. With your consent, we can only access your data for issue resolution whenever you raise a ticket.

Embedded AppSource Marketplace Page

Microsoft AppSource Marketplace is a platform where you can get add-ons, business applications, and plugins to enhance the current capabilities of your Business Central. It is a platform where Business Central users can find solutions for their issues and integrate related applications with a single click without looking anywhere. Generally, it is available as a web app, but with the new update, you can use embedded Microsoft AppSource within Business Central.

These are some of the major updates or upgrades Business Central has gotten. For more updates categorised by specific business, feel free to write us an email at info@dynamicssquare.co.uk or you can call us at +44 207 193 2502 to get any kind of Business Central Support.