If you’re already invested in the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) as a best-in-class business administration application, read on because you’ll love this news!
Business Central already gives small and medium-sized organizations the flexibility and tools to manage finances, supply chains, manufacturing, shipping, projects, and more. It’s quick to set up and simple to configure, and product development, design, implementation, and usability advancements are driven by simplicity.
And, with Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central Release Wave 2 2023, there are many enhancements to build on what you already love and help you increase your productivity – and profits.
Business Central Release Wave 2 for 2023: What’s in it for you?
- With this version, Microsoft increased its commitment to Copilot. Copilot’s coaching gives consumers more tools to streamline their workflows and finish things faster. Copilot in Visual Studio Code and the AL experience are already popular among developers, and there will be more developments in those areas.
- It’s now easier for many businesses operating in various Business Central environments to combine financial data and form cross-company alliances.
- The time needed to onboard new clients has decreased. It’s simpler to comprehend why some mistakes happen, and the messages include advice on how to fix the problem so that you may keep working. By automating regulatory activities, Microsoft assists enterprises in concentrating on their core businesses while maintaining compliance with numerous governmental laws.
Usability is always a priority, and with this update, essential hints for quicker keyboard access increase productivity when working with lines in documents. You can also access editable fields quickly without diving down.
- A focus on productivity allows consultants and developers to access the Visual Studio Code editor or a debugger linked to the source code in the GitHub repository directly from the Business Central web client.
Business Central Release Wave 2 2023 includes the following updates:
Quick adaptation with Microsoft Power Platform: In Business Central, workflows are now simpler to set up. Templates handle additional scenarios immediately to help you automate more tasks and increase productivity. Additionally, you can use the Business Central Power Automate connector to consume business events.
Application: Intercompany and consolidation functions mean you can use multi-company capabilities more widely. Several optimizations and enhancements have been made to Business Central’s supply chain features to help you manage your inventory and warehouse operations more effectively, like a granular warehouse setup for production and tasks and improved picking process, fulfillment ideas, and SKU management.
Country and regional: Microsoft has increased the service’s accessibility globally. More than 130 nations and territories are now able to access Business Central.
Development: A complete switch to Visual Studio Code, where Microsoft continues investing in areas that increase developer efficiency. By ensuring that AL GO can manage these tests for clients, VARs, and independent software vendors (ISVs) who manage dependencies, there are processes for testing dependent extensions without manual intervention.
Governance and management: Business Central offers many extra self-service options to assist administrators in managing more specific administrative permissions.
Regulations: Improved support for local regulations and new audit formats for digital reporting.
Onboarding: Field tooltips offer more valuable connections to content that explains values that are too complex for a brief paragraph to handle, such as ‘Learn More.’
Productivity with Microsoft 365: You can now unfold a card without first downloading the Business Central Teams app, increasing the effectiveness of collaborative business operations in Microsoft Teams.
Reporting and data analysis: Enhancements to reports, the Analysis mode, and an overview allowing you to examine all Business Central reports.
Service and platform: The core components remain critical, emphasizing performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance.
Microsoft investment areas
User encounters
Business Central provides many user interfaces to access data from any location or device at any time. It has several robust and simple capabilities, whether you need to enter data quickly, casually change records, or analyze relational data.
Development
The stage is set for adding namespace support to the platform and application so that AL developers will be more empowered and productive. Additionally, developers can conceal specific variable data to secure internal data so no one else can access it when debugging.
Developers have more control over data analysis and reporting. For instance, you can choose how to incorporate content from Power BI and turn off Analysis mode on pages.
Support for ISV app transactions via a CSP channel now moves into the private preview stage. At the same time, ISVs’ ability to directly transact via AppSource using credit card purchases enters the general availability phase.
Application
This edition’s new supply chain features will make managing things in your warehouse more effective, flexible, and accurate. You can receive complete availability information for inventory levels, locations, processing stages, and other elements influencing available amounts.
Additionally, you can independently set the appropriate amount of warehouse handling for external, internal, and inbound flows.
The new features include intercompany transactions, financial data consolidations, approval workflows, and automatic general ledger allocations. Without managing files, you can combine financial data for companies across several Business Central environments.
Regional and National
Localization driven by partners enables expansion to more locales. Microsoft partners develop localization apps that are pertinent and post them to AppSource. Business Central is accessible to service clients in many nations and regions globally, with built-in language options.
Data reporting and analysis
Access insightful information on the operation of your business thanks to report discoverability. You can perform on-the-fly embedded data analysis with increased features for Analysis mode, and the Power BI experience has new and better reports.
You’ll be more productive if you don’t have to open another app to find the information you require.
Governance and administration
Business Central administrators now have more capabilities for managing environments, apps, and data migrations. The objective is for administrators to be independent, able to meet the needs of their clients, and capable of handling a wide range of administrative situations.
Faster adaptation with Power Platform – two key areas
- How users and decision-makers perceive Power Automate approval workflows: expanding the connector’s actions, adding help for outside business events, and more templates for Teams-based automated flows.
- The embed experience for Power BI: more control tools for end users investigating the BI features in Business Central and partners who offer in-context dashboards and reports.
In addition, there are enhanced dynamic capabilities for connecting Power Platform with Business Central online based on partner input.
AI Innovation and Copilot
Until recently, AI was a commodity that only a few SMBs could afford to invest in. Companies are now embracing AI to eliminate repetitive chores from their professions.
Professionals can perform daily tasks with cutting-edge AI thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot. You can empower your employees with Copilot in Business Central to complete more tasks with less effort – without becoming data scientists.
Platform and service
This release ensures users experience fewer disruptions, Business Central feels faster overall, and some scenarios and web services are substantially faster. Microsoft continues to invest in the foundations of its service by focusing on performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance.
Sign-ins for interactive users are now more reliable, and users have fewer session disruptions, which improves the entire experience. Users will experience reduced database locking and increased performance impact of table extensions through optimized language (AL) runtime.
Optimize productivity with Dynamics 365 Business Central – and outsmart the competition
People and teams work more efficiently when productivity applications are paired with business apps.
Business Central effortlessly interacts with top-tier Microsoft 365 tools and services, including Outlook, Excel, Word, OneDrive, and Teams, to bring data into the workflow, giving you real-time insight into your operations – and upping your game.
Ready to Learn More
If you’d like to learn more about the scope of Business Central capabilities delivered during this release wave, contact Basileia Consulting Group (BCG) by calling 949-329-3524 or via our contact form.
Our expert team can evaluate your needs and requirements and recommend the best solution for your company.
About the Author
Basileia Consulting Group assists other ERP software resellers and consultants with challenging implementations. To better ensure the successful adoption of ERP software across the entire company, we expanded the scope of our service offering eight years ago to include the complete suite of Microsoft business tools. We have established a name for ourselves in the industry as the people your software partner should contact whenever things go wrong.
