Whether you’re a Business Central customer or looking to licence it to digitise your business processes, you’ll be pleased to know that Microsoft’s 2023 first release is here.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central has long been a powerful all-in-one cloud-based software that enables organisations to take better control of finances, inventory, production, supply chain, and business data—all in one place. Plus, with its seamless integration with other Microsoft products, you can unlock even greater capabilities and insights for your business.
All these capabilities get enhanced along with the introduction of new features with this Business Central 2023 first release. This first wave of releases comes packed with exciting new features and capability enhancements to help businesses boost their productivity, efficiency, and bottom line.
Explore the highlights here:
1. AI-Powered Copilot to Generate Marketing Texts Effortlessly
The new Dynamics 365 Copilot for Business Central is a real game changer. It’s an AI-powered marketing text generator for items in Business Central. Intended for marketers and sellers who author marketing texts and product descriptions, Copilot streamlines content creation.
By reducing time spent on manual copywriting, Copilot expedites time-to-market for online products. It also adds creativity and consistency to the marketing text, making it more engaging and compelling for the targeted customers. Using product information like size, colour, and category, the AI suggests texts that users can further edit. Users can also fine-tune the length and tone of voice for more effective marketing.
Available for preview in Business Central, this feature needs to be enabled in Business Central. It’s the world’s first AI copilot natively integrated into CRM and ERP. Since the underlying AI behind Copilot can access powerful language models and datasets to analyse and generate natural English language, users can get high-quality responses with the desired level of personalisation with minimal input.
Copilot will not only add efficiency and productivity to your copywriting efforts but also help you avoid manual errors in copywriting, mitigate the lack of creativity, and overcome writer’s block with intelligent AI-generated drafts.
2. Analysis Mode for Efficient Data Analysis and Pivoting Within Business Central
Data analysts and decision-makers can easily lose precious time and productivity when switching between multiple applications while analysing complex data.
Microsoft has the solution to this problem— the new Analysis mode.
Now you can say goodbye to the hassle of using external applications to generate reports while using Business Central. With Analysis mode, end-users and data analysts can interact with data directly from list pages within Business Central, saving valuable time and effort. Since you no longer need to rely on other applications to generate reports, it gives you the power to do more and be more productive than ever before.
But that’s not all. This feature allows you to perform even more tasks within report objects, Excel, Power BI, or any other data analysis application. You can easily customise your workspace by adding additional tabs for different tasks or views based on your preferences.
Public Preview from April 2023
3. Boost Productivity and Learning With Optimised Action Bar on All Pages
Productivity counts for new users when learning how to use Business Central. Personalising actions helps remove distractions and reduce the time it takes for people to get the hang of Business Central. As a result, you can save time and boost productivity while also reducing overhead costs.
Improvements in the Modern Action Bar introduced in the 2022 second release make that possible. Now the action bar will appear at the top of all pages with personalised actions to allow users flexibility and extra options to work in Business Central in ways that best suit them. Not only will this enable you to help new users get started quickly but also tailor the actions to your unique organisational needs.
Public Preview from March 2023 | General Availability from April 2023
4. Native Master Data Management to Set up and Sync Data Across Companies
Organisations that use Business Central often manage multiple companies. The frequent acquisitions also require companies to onboard new entities in Business Central. This means Business Central users often have to manage multiple datasets and face challenges to unify and standardise those datasets.
This new master data management feature in Business Central eliminates this hassle and simplifies data management. This functionality allows you to move a setup from one company to another in the same environment and keep the data synchronised across all companies after the move. Users will also have the flexibility to define the tables and fields to synchronise and set up more advanced synchronisation coupling criteria.
This feature benefits businesses by unifying the data across multiple companies and updating all linked datasets as soon as changes are made. This helps break down silos and avoid update delays so everyone works with the same data.
Public Preview from March 2023 | General Availability from April 2023
5. Power Automate Templates to Simplify Approval Workflows
Approval workflows are integral to modern business processes. And the more cumbersome and complex they are, the slower the operations and decision-making become.
To make complex approval processes more simplified and flexible, Microsoft’s 2023 first release brings new capabilities to create Business Central approval workflows with Power Automate templates. They can even use Power Automate for approvals on mobile devices and in Microsoft Teams for improved productivity.
In addition to the easy creation of approval workflows with Power Automate integration, this new feature will also improve visibility and control over the entire process. Admins and workflow owners can track the status and receive notifications in real time. What’s more, it will also automate selecting and assigning approval roles, defining levels of approvals, and specifying fallback approvers.
Public Preview from April 2023 | General Availability from May 2023
5. Resolve Issues Quickly With Actionable Errors Messages
Errors messages are roadblocks to productivity while using Business Central. A missing setting or information can trigger error messages that may get you stuck.
To resolve these scenarios and help users get back to work quickly, the 2023 first release wave will add actions to error messages. This feature makes the information on those messages more comprehensible and comes with a new Copy details link that allows users to copy troubleshooting information. That makes it easier to identify the issues and fix them on the fly.
Public Preview from April 2023 | General Availability from May 2023
6. Additional Localisations and Region/Country Support
With Microsoft 2023 first release for Business Central comes support for additional localisations and regions/countries. The update will deliver Swedish localisation as an extension, offering a data upgrade from the old localisation to the new one.
Additional countries and regions supported are Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Macau (SAR China), Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, San Marino, Sao Tome & Principe, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Public Preview from May 2023 | General Availability from June 2023
Note
The features listed here are planned for release from April 2023 through September 2023. However, the delivery timelines may change, and the listed functionality may not be released. For more information, go to Microsoft policy. Also, read our 2023 first release highlights for other Dynamics 365 applications and Power Platform.
