Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is undergoing another update. If it feels like a chameleon in the business world, it’s not surprising. Microsoft frequently updates Business Central (BC) in response to the ever-changing business environment, enabling customers to scale as their business needs evolve. Keep reading to learn what’s included in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Release Wave 1.

What is Business Central?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a business management program for small and medium-sized businesses that automates and simplifies operations. Business Central is highly scalable and customizable, with a wide range of functions that allow businesses to manage finances, supply chain, manufacturing, shipping, projects, services, and other operations. Companies can add features relevant to their industry or location of operation by selecting apps from industry-leading ISVs and customizing them to meet their specific business requirements. Business Central is quick to install and simple to configure. Simplicity drives creativity in product design, development, implementation, and usability. 

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 2024 Release Wave 1 plan includes all new functionalities available to customers between April 2024 and September 2024. This article provides a product overview and information on what is new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

The 2024 release is a significant step forward for Microsoft's Copilot investment. The company is expanding its Copilot capabilities to help people streamline their business processes and perform tasks faster. Developers are already enhancing their efficiency with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, and these world-class development tools will continue to innovate for AL developers. With this release, they can add more details to the application metadata to improve the Copilot experience. 

By automating regulatory activities, Microsoft will let firms focus on their core business while maintaining compliance with numerous government requirements. Usability is always a priority, and this update improves efficiency with selection-aware, context-based actions. 

So, What’s Hot in BC 2024 Release Wave 1?

Adapt faster with Microsoft Power Platform: Workflows are easy to set up in Business Central. New templates cover more scenarios out of the box, allowing you to automate more operations and become more productive. 

Application: This release includes improvements to project and service management features. In the finance sector, we improved the consolidation experience. 

Country and Region: Business Central's global availability has increased! It is now available in over 155 countries and regions. 

Development: Microsoft continues to invest in areas that improve productivity for developers working with GitHub, Visual Studio Code, and the AppSource marketplace. AL GO for GitHub introduces new code refactoring tools, a straightforward path to functional and performance testing, and support for ISVs and custom code. 

Governance and administration: Business Central adds self-service features to help administrators manage more granular access to environments and audit critical admin operations. Microsoft 365 Audit Log offers even more options for enforcing data privacy with customer-managed encryption keys and Azure Lockbox. 

Legislation: This update includes new functionality for retrieving VAT dates while previewing posting transaction results. This edition now includes the sustainability notebook, which can help you with sustainability reporting. 

Reporting and data analysis: Microsoft is expanding the capabilities of Analysis mode, and Power BI and Excel Layouts are now available. 

Service and platform: Microsoft continues to invest in its service foundation, focusing on high availability, performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance. 

Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Release Wave 1: Investment Areas

Adapt faster using the Power Platform

The seamless connection of Business Central and Power Platform enables you to boost organizational efficiency by automating repetitive operations. Use Power Automate templates to create workflows that improve your business operations for your specific needs. Investment in tight integration with Power Platform will continue to make it more powerful and provide more ways to use your company data efficiently. For example, you can use the Power Platform's Copilot cloud flow features to develop linked business workflows and experiences. Furthermore, you can accomplish this using simple natural language terms. 

Application 

Microsoft prioritizes client requests and market trends to determine what gets into each program edition. For example, it has invested in assisting customers in using Copilot to streamline their business operations. 

Building on Previous Successes

In the last few releases, Microsoft invested in multi-company capabilities since many firms utilize Business Central to manage multiple companies across borders. It will continue to improve the experience of managing numerous firms through Business Central, investing throughout the application to improve inventory management, service, and project management experiences and integrations with other Dynamics 365 services. 

Copilot and AI Innovation 

According to the most recent business trends poll, nearly nine out of ten employees want to embrace artificial intelligence to minimize repetitive work chores. However, until recently, AI was a commodity that few small and medium-sized businesses could fully invest in. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot allows professionals to complete their daily tasks with the support of cutting-edge AI. With Copilot in Business Central, customers can provide their employees with intuitive AI tools to help them do more with less effort without becoming data scientists. 

This wave builds on using Copilot capabilities to improve productivity for a more extensive range of SMB tasks. 

Country and Regional 

Business Central is now available in an increasing number of nations and areas. Partner-led localizations primarily drive this expansion. Partners develop and maintain apps for specific countries and regions and publish them on AppSource. Business Central can service consumers in over 155 countries and regions worldwide thanks to its built-in language solutions. In addition, Microsoft provides updates for all regulatory features in countries where Microsoft is responsible for localization. 

Development 

Microsoft created the groundwork for introducing namespace support to the platform and application to empower AL developers and boost efficiency. Namespace support simplifies app structure, improves object names, and prevents identifier collisions. As apps evolve, the need for refactoring becomes unavoidable. Microsoft has added the ability to transfer ownership of a database and its data between extensions. Additionally, developers can hide specific variable data so that other parties cannot access it while debugging, thus protecting internal data. 

When it comes to data analysis and reporting, developers have greater control. For example, you can disable Analysis Mode on pages and select how to incorporate content from Power BI. 

Consultants and developers can quickly launch Visual Studio Code in a production or sandbox environment to examine and comprehend objects across installed extensions, read code for owned extensions, and troubleshoot—all without explicitly configuring Visual Studio Code. Similarly, profiling in the client and Visual Studio Code is improved to make it easier to identify database-related performance issues. 

AppSource publishers can sell through CSPs, and improved handling of AppSource runtime packages allows publishers and resellers to design and troubleshoot apps with different dependencies. 

Governance and Administration 

Microsoft offers Business Central admins new options for managing environments, apps, and data migrations. The goal is for administrators to be self-sufficient, capable of addressing their customers' needs, and capable of handling a wide range of administrative scenarios. Here’s how:

• More granular administrator roles give administrators greater control over their access. 
• Improved procedures for minor update releases. 
• Ability to integrate Business Central and Power Platform environments to reliably configure integrations and apply Power Platform environment settings to Business Central. 
• The option to cancel Cloud Migration replication runs. 

Legislation 

Business Central upgrades regulatory features in response to popular requests for enhancements and changing local authority regulations. Microsoft automates various processes to provide customers peace of mind, allow them to focus on their primary business, and ensure that features follow government standards. For example, you can automate the process if local requirements compel you to create vouchers that serve as proof of transactions and provide a complete audit trail. Business Central can automatically generate and link vouchers to general ledger entries, allowing accountants to be confident that they are compliant without having to do any additional actions.

The retention policy features will enable you to determine how long you want to keep vouchers before cleaning them up, giving you more control over the quantity of data you store. 

Microsoft is trying to make regulatory features a standard component of Business Central to deliver enhancements that are out of the box in the nations and regions where they are required. For example, the E-documents module serves as a framework for sales and purchase invoicing operations, and partners can easily extend it by developing country-specific e-invoicing applications. 

Reporting and Data Analysis 

Data has become a vital resource, the foundation for decision-making and advancement in all areas. Recent breakthroughs in AI technology and data analytics tools have allowed businesses to condense complex information into usable insight, unveil hidden patterns and trends, and uncover previously unknown correlations.

Data analysis offers vital insights enabling firms to optimize their strategy, improve customer experiences, find potential hazards, acquire new insights into the minutiae of their operations and environments, and innovate in unimaginable ways. 

As data continues to fuel innovation and generate revolutionary advances, SMBs must embrace its potential to remain competitive and shape a more efficient and sustainable future. 

The reporting strategy focuses on integrating universal BI and analytics into the Business Central experience to easily integrate in-context, rich, and immersive BI and analytics content from first and third parties into Business Central. With flexible self-service features, you can easily access and exploit your data for maximum value. 

User Experiences 

Business Central provides diverse user interfaces, allowing users to work with their data from anywhere and on any device. There are three user interfaces: installable desktop apps, browser-based web apps, and mobile apps. Whether you need to enter data quickly, edit entries casually, or analyze relational data, Business Central has various tools that are simple to use but powerful when needed. 

Conclusion

Every Dynamics 365 Business Central release improves usability, accessibility, performance, and reliability. In this release wave, Microsoft has improved performance while working with actions across choices in lists of records and seeing summarized data, allowing you to correct data entry errors quickly. 

If you’re already using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, life is about to get even better! If not, it might be time to consider it—your business will love you for it.

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Related reading:

The Power Pair: Business Central and Power Platform

Leveraging AI in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

About the author

Liberty Grove Software is an established Microsoft Partner that focuses on providing customers with sales, service, and support for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central/NAV solutions, as well as training and upgrades.

Over more than 25 years, Liberty Grove has assisted hundreds of customers with businesses ranging from small to mid-sized to Microsoft Partners in implementing, training, customization, and upgrading Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions.

The organization is one of only a few companies worldwide that Microsoft recognizes as qualified to provide Business Central/NAV Upgrade Service Centers.