Microsoft Release Wave 2 2023 Updates

Transforming customer experiences with generative AI and Microsoft Dynamics 365 in Release Wave 2 2023

In this blog article, we unravel and discover how the latest release is set to elevate user experience, foster rapid adaptability and drive businesses towards increased productive operations. 

Unlock the potential that Dynamics 365 Business Central holds for businesses in the ever-evolving digital era. 

Read on below!

This Business central release 2 2023 takes their investment in Copilot to the next level. They are providing the following:

➡️ Reduce Errors & Time

Improved the ability to consolidate financial data and reduce time required for onboarding new customers. 

Understanding the reasons behind specific errors has become more straightforward, with messages offering guidance on resolving issues and resuming work. 

➡️Compliance 

Microsoft’s commitment to assisting organizations in focusing on their core business while ensuring compliance with government regulations is evident through the automation of regulatory tasks. 

➡️Usability & Efficiency

With a continual emphasis on usability, this release enhances efficiency when dealing with lines on documents by introducing key tips for quicker keyboard access.

More capabilities for people to optimize their processes and complete tasks faster with the guidance of Copilot.

Additionally, a new capability allows users to peek at editable fields for rapid insights into data without the need for extensive drilling down.

➡️Productivity

Engage in intercompany partnerships for multiple companies in multiple Business Central environments.

The investment in productivity extends to enabling consultants and developers to launch the Visual Studio Code editor or a debugger linked to the source code in the GitHub repository directly from the Business Central web client.

Additional updates in Release wave 2 2023 include:

1. Adapt faster with Microsoft Power Platform: 

• It’s easier to set up workflows in Business Central with new templates that support more scenarios out of the box, so that you can automate more processes to be more productive. 

• Users can consume business events with the Business Central Power Automate connector.

2. Application: 

• The intercompany and consolidation features now work across environments, which allows broader use of the multi company capabilities. 

• The supply chain capabilities in Business Central are improved with new optimizations and enhancements that improves your inventory and warehouse processes. 

  • e.g:, Improvements to the picking process, fulfillment suggestions, and SKU management, and more granular warehouse configuration for manufacturing and jobs.

3. Country and regional: 

• Global expansion: In this Release Wave 2 2023, Business Central is now available in more than 130 countries and regions.

4. Development: 

• The move to Visual Studio Code is where Microsoft continues to invest in areas that enhance productivity for developers. 

• Modernizing processes for testing dependent extensions by making sure that AL GO can handle these tests for customers, VARs, and ISVs who manage dependencies. 

• All required tests run on the latest released versions of ISV apps without manual intervention.

5. Governance and administration: 

• Business Central delivers a set of additional self-service features to help administrators manage more granular administrative rights.

6. Legislation: 

• This release offers new audit formats for digital reporting, such as SAF-T in Denmark and FAC for France, and better support for e-invoicing and local legislation.

7. Onboarding: 

• Tooltips on fields provide better “Learn More” links to content that explains values that are too complex to cover in a short text.

8. Productive with Microsoft 365: 

• Improved efficiency of collaborative business processes in Microsoft Teams by investing in the capability to unfurl a card without installing the Business Central Teams app.

9. Reporting and data analysis: 

• Addition of more capabilities to Analysis mode, enriching reports, and an overview that lets you explore all reports in this Business Central Release Wave 2 2023

10. Service and platform: 

• Continuous investment in the fundamentals of our service, focusing on performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance.

Investment Areas

• Adapt faster with Power Platform

  • Enjoy seamless integration between Business Central and Power Platform empowers organizations to enhance efficiency by automating repetitive tasks.

  • Power Automate templates offer a solution for automating workflows tailored to specific business processes. 

  • Ongoing investments in a robust integration with Power Platform aim to amplify its capabilities, providing more avenues to leverage business data effectively. 

    • E.g: The integration of Copilot capabilities into cloud flows within Power Platform products, enabling the creation of interconnected business workflows and experiences. 

    • Achieved through intuitive natural language expressions.

Microsoft continues to invest in a seamless experience for customers who use Business Central together with Power Apps, Power Automate or Power BI.

Read more here. 

• Application

  • With each release, Microsoft prioritizes customer’s top requests and aligns with prevailing market trends. 

    • E.g: Enabling customers to leverage Copilot for optimizing their business processes.

  • In recent releases, significant investment has been towards enhancing multi company capabilities, utilizing Business Central across borders and for managing multiple entities. 

  • Continuous investments are planned throughout the application, aiming to improve experiences in inventory management, service and project management, and strengthen integrations with other Dynamics 365 applications.

Core application functionality is a key investment area for Microsoft. It’s what helps companies optimize their business processes. 

They customize their delivery to the needs of their customers to ensure increased productivity with every release.

Read more here.

• Copilot and AI innovation

  • In a recent survey tracking business trends, nearly 9 out of 10 workers express a desire to leverage AI to streamline repetitive tasks in their roles. Historically, AI has been a resource beyond the reach of many SMBs.

  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot addresses this gap by providing professionals with the support of advanced AI in their day-to-day tasks. 

  • Within Business Central, Copilot equips customers with user-friendly AI tools, enabling increased productivity without the need for extensive data science expertise.

  • This release further amplifies our utilization of Copilot capabilities, aiming to enhance productivity across a wider range of roles within the SMB sector.

This wave expands on our first Copilot capability, marketing text suggestions, boosting productivity for a broader set of SMB roles. 

Read more here.

• Country and regional

  • Business Central continually expands to reach more countries and regions, facilitated largely by partner-led localization efforts. 

  • In 2023, Business Central extended its availability to over 155 countries and regions worldwide. 

  • Complemented by built-in language options, this ensures Business Central can cater to a diverse global clientele. In instances where Microsoft oversees localization, updates are regularly provided for all regulatory features within the respective countries.

Business Central is now available in more countries and regions around the world in this release wave.

Read more here. 

• Legislation 

  • Business Central consistently updates regulatory features in response to popular requests for enhancements and evolving requirements from local authorities. 

  • Automating numerous processes and ensuring feature compliance with government regulations provides customers with peace of mind, allowing them to focus on their core business activities. 

    • E.g: The automation of voucher creation, mandated by local regulations for transaction proof and detailed audit trails. 

    • Business Central can automatically generate and attach vouchers to general ledger entries, streamlining compliance for accountants without additional steps. 

    • Additionally, retention policy features offer control over data storage by specifying the duration for retaining vouchers before cleanup.

  • Standardizing regulatory features within Business Central ensures improvements are delivered universally across relevant countries and regions. 

    • Eg: E-documents module serves as a foundational element supporting processes for sales and purchase invoicing, and it can be easily extended by partners to build country-specific apps for e-invoicing.

This Business Central release wave delivers a set of legislative capabilities that can act as a foundation for more specific requirements in local versions.

Read more here.

• Governance and administration

  • Business Central equips and empowers administrators with enhanced tools to efficiently manage environments, apps, and data migrations. This allows them to be self-sufficient, capable of addressing customer needs, and adept at handling diverse administrative scenarios.

  • Key features include:

    • More granular administrator roles, providing increased control over access granted to delegated administrators.

    • Streamlined processes for minor update releases.

    • The capability to link Business Central and Power Platform environments, ensuring consistent integrations and the application of Power Platform environment settings to Business Central.

    • The option to cancel Cloud Migration replication runs.

Addition of new tools and improvement to existing tools are made for administrators to manage environments, apps, and data migrations.

Read more here. 

• Onboarding

  • Ensuring customers experience a swift and seamless transition to Business Central is a priority. Daily business operations continue to run BAU during the adoption of a new management application, while the commitment is to facilitate a rapid onboarding process. 

  • The focus is on advancing the onboarding framework and consistently investing in tools and resources to empower partners for faster and more efficient onboarding to Business Central.

Partners have more capabilities for improving their customers’ onboarding experience with their solutions.

Read more here. 

• Reporting and data analysis

  • In 2023, data has evolved into a priceless asset and serves as the core for decision-making and progress across diverse sectors. 

  • Microsoft invests significantly in their reporting strategy, revolving around establishing universal BI and analytics seamlessly within the Business Central experience. 

  • The aim is to integrate rich and immersive BI and analytics content from both 1st and 3rd parties into Business Central in a contextually relevant manner. Along with self-service capabilities, accessing and leveraging data for maximum value becomes effortless. 

Access to the right reports and data analysis capabilities is essential for companies wanting to be in control of the business and identify new growth opportunities.

Read more here. 

• Service and platform 

  • Users have fewer interruptions, Business Central generally feels faster, and web services and certain scenarios are noticeably so. We’re continuing to invest in the fundamentals of our service, with a focus on performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance. This focus lets Business Central continue to grow in scale along with our customers’ needs.

  • To enhance the overall experience, sign-ins for interactive users are more stable and users experience fewer interruptions in their sessions. We’re optimizing our language (AL) runtime to minimize database locking and the effect of table extensions on performance.

  • Additionally, we’re fine-tuning several application scenarios that our customers frequently use.

Microsoft continues to invest in the fundamentals of our service, with a focus on performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance.

Read more here.

• User experiences

  • Business Central provides multiple options for user interfaces, empowering customers to interact with their data seamlessly from any location and on any device. 

    • The available interfaces comprise an installable desktop app, a browser-based web app, and mobile apps. 

  • From inputting data swiftly, making casual updates, or to analyzing relational data, Business Central offers a range of user-friendly features that are both accessible for beginners and advanced tasks.

  • In this release wave, special attention is given to boosting efficiency when performing actions across selections in lists of records and viewing summarized data, facilitating the correction of data entry errors with ease.

Great user experiences help users enter, update, and fix mistakes in their data in an intuitive way.

Read more here.

Get the most out of Business Central

The latest Microsoft Business Central Release Wave 2 2023 updates mark another stride toward excellence. With each release, there is a continuous focus on enhancing usability, accessibility, performance, and reliability. 

Users can look forward to the transformative impact they will have on streamlining processes, empowering users, and ensuring a resilient and efficient business environment. 

Microsoft Business Central continues to set the standard for innovation in the world of enterprise solutions, promising a future of even greater productivity and success for businesses worldwide. 

Our experts are eager to discuss how we can support your business. Contact us to learn more about how Business Central can upgrade your business today!