It’s here! Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 release wave 1 (Version 22) was released earlier this month and is now generally available. Read below for an overview of what’s new.
Copilot and AI Innovation
According to Microsoft’s recent survey on business trends, nearly 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce repetitive tasks in their jobs. But until today, AI has been a commodity that few SMBs could truly invest in.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot enables professionals to perform their day-to-day work with the assistance of cutting-edge AI by their side. With Copilot in Business Central, customers can empower their workers with intuitive AI tools to get more done with less effort, without needing to become data scientists.
The 2023 release wave 1 introduces Business Central’s first Copilot capability: AI-generated product descriptions, adding to Microsoft’s catalog of AI-powered features such as cash flow forecasting and late payment prediction.
Adapt Faster with Microsoft Power Platform
In 2023 release wave 1, Microsoft continues to improve the way Business Central integrates with Power Platform. They continue to offer features that make it easier for Business Central users to get started and gain efficiency working with Power Platform.
In this release it will be easier to set up approval workflows from within Business Central, helping users automate more of their processes and be more productive.
Additionally, Microsoft will deliver sample apps to help all Power App makers get started faster with their Power App development. They will also make it easier to distribute enabled makers to build more portable Power Apps and Power Automate flows by allowing flexibility for environments and companies. This will enable partners and customers to experience rich Power Apps and Power Automate flows.
Application
Application spans the functional capabilities of Business Central and contains the features that help customers manage their businesses. In 2023 release wave 1, Microsoft is continuing to modernize financial and operations processes to give customers more advanced features as they grow their businesses.
Accounting processes for multiple companies
In the financial management area, Microsoft is focusing on making it easier to manage accounting tasks for multiple companies in an intercompany setup. The Intercompany Postings feature has been improved to make it easier to set up, get a better overview, and make the intercompany transaction processes more seamless and flexible.
Accounting period-end processes and analysis
In addition to dimensions, you can add data for analytics using Statistical Accounts. Statistical accounts let you enter numerical data for general ledger (G/L) transactions that you can use for analyses.
When you manage the accounting for businesses that have a high volume of transactions, it’s now easier to get an overview of progress in the period-end process. The G/L Settlement allows bookkeepers to apply general ledger entries during reconciliation tasks.
Inventory and warehouse scenarios
Microsoft continues to work on various aspects of their inventory features. They’ve improved the set-up and demo data and made it simpler to configure inventory features. Microsoft has a better data migration story and is continuing to make processes seamless in different areas. For example, they’re building out warehouse and item tracking capabilities.
Continuous customer-requested improvements
This release also contains several features and feature enhancements that Microsoft implemented in response to some great ideas that the community has submitted on their aka.ms/bcideas page.
Onboarding
Onboarding quickly to a cloud-based solution like Business Central can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. By getting up to speed in a short amount of time, companies reduce costs and improve their overall financial performance. Fast adoption of Business Central makes it easier for companies to make informed decisions, respond to changing market conditions, and drive their business forward. Business Central offers a unique opportunity for companies to self-onboard with a customized trial that’s tailored for their business domain.
A successful self-onboarding experience also helps build trust and establishes a positive relationship between the company and the reseller, leading to repeat business and referrals. With the ability to create customized trial experiences, partners can demonstrate their expertise in Business Central and highlight the specific value that the solution can deliver to each customer.
Governance and Administration
Microsoft is supplying administrators of Business Central with the tools they need to manage their environment and apps. The goal is for administrators to be self-sufficient, able to solve their customer needs, and handle a wide variety of administrative scenarios.
In this release, Microsoft adds even more capabilities to drive self-service and automation. Administrators can transfer environments from one organization to another in a controlled way while preserving the data. Microsoft will be adding options to manage updates to ISV apps and will introduce the ability to manage per-tenant extensions in the admin center in addition to ISV apps. Idle sandbox environments will expire after 45 days of inactivity to free up capacity for creating new environments. Administrators can choose to opt out of the expiration period. Microsoft will enhance the tool that performs the migration of Business Central data from on-premises to the cloud. Administrators will gain additional capabilities to deal with customizations and the ability to include or exclude tables during the migration process.
Productive with Microsoft 365
People work smarter and teams perform better when business apps are combined with productivity apps. Business Central seamlessly integrates with best-in-class Microsoft 365 apps and services such as Outlook, Excel, Word, OneDrive, and Teams to bring data into the flow of work.
The current capabilities include:
- Respond to inquiries faster by attaching quotes and invoices from Outlook.
- Share, analyze, or bulk-edit records in Excel.
- Start a conversation about a record in Teams or rally the team around key datapoints.
- View, share, and co-author business documents using OneDrive for Business.
- Author beautiful reports and other templates in Word.
The 2023 release wave 1 builds upon Microsoft collaborative apps story in Teams to drive broader product engagement and access to data across the organization.
This release will focus on:
- Enhanced adaptive cards in Teams with an optimized thumbnail view and better permission experience.
- New settings page for configuring security control for Teams Cards.
Reporting and Data Analysis
Data-first is a guiding principle for reporting in Business Central. This wave offers features and capabilities that give you access to all your data in an easily consumable way. In a world of big data, predictive analytics reporting is no longer a set of predefined reports to cover a historical view of the business, but how you organize and use your data to react to key events, big and small, to optimize the business.
This release provides enhanced analysis capabilities by letting you group, filter, and pivot data on lists directly in Business Central.
If you want to check your numbers or create simple reports, you can enable data analysis on any list and start analyzing data by using one or more analysis tabs. Each analysis tab gives you a range of options:
- Choose the columns to show
- Use date hierarchies
- Set data filters
- Pivot your data
- Mark cells for quick statistics
- Export data
The analysis tabs are saved on the list, so you can use them whenever you want.
You can check out the full release plan here.
Contact TrinSoft to learn more about the latest Business Central release.
