Olivia: Hi everyone, and good morning! Welcome to today’s exclusive webinar on Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2. I’m Olivia Morris, the Marketing Manager at Monpellier, and I’ll be your host today. Thank you for joining us and taking the time out of your morning.

We’re excited to walk you through some significant updates and improvements in the latest release of Business Central Wave 2, which is coming this October 2024. Features will be rolled out between October and March 2025. While not all features will be available from day one, you’ll get a sneak peek from our experts here today.

Our goal is to ensure you’re well-prepared to take full advantage of these new features and enhancements. I’m thrilled to be joined by two experts, Marnie and Luke, who will guide us through today’s session.

Introductions

Marnie is our Microsoft Business Central Software Consultant at Monpellier. Marnie, would you like to introduce yourself?

Marnie: Thanks, Olivia. Yes, I’m Marnie Christie, and I’ve been working as a Business Central software consultant for just over three years. My day-to-day work is project-focused, covering the full project lifecycle—from initial scoping, system build and configuration, to preparing clients for go-live with training and data migration. Before that, I was an end user of Nav, the previous version of Business Central, for around seven years, working in a busy finance team, similar to many of our end users.

Next, we have Luke, our expert Business Central Software Support Consultant here at Monpellier. Luke, would you like to introduce yourself?

Luke: Hi everyone, I’m Luke Dyson, a Business Central Support Consultant. I specialise in supporting customers with issues and error messages and also perform product demonstrations to introduce features to potential clients. Additionally, I provide consultancy to our current clients. I started working with Business Central back in 2015 when it was Nav 2013 R2, starting in first-line support and building my expertise since then.

Olivia: Brilliant, thanks, Luke! Today, Marnie and Luke will provide an overview of what’s new in Wave 2, and then dive into some key features. They’ll discuss Power BI reporting, co-pilot integration, and managing subscription billing and revenue, exploring how these changes will impact you, and our customers. We’ll also have a Q&A session towards the end, so feel free to drop your questions in the chat, and we’ll get to as many as we can. If we don’t have time, we’ll follow up via email after the webinar.

Business central Wave 2 Quick Summary

Let’s get started! We’re delighted to introduce Business Central Wave 2, which is packed with new features and enhancements designed to improve functionality, performance, and user experience. Now, Luke and Marnie will provide a quick overview of the Wave 2 updates, focusing on customer-facing features rather than partner updates, so you can get the most out of these improvements. Marnie, over to you!

Marnie: Thank you, Olivia. As mentioned, a quick disclaimer: some features we discussed today may not be available from day one. Microsoft’s release plans span from October to March, and some updates scheduled for early next year are already known. However, timelines may change during testing, so some features could be delayed. Today, we’re focusing on the features most likely to be available soon and those we’ve had a preview of.

As per the slide, I’ll start with the enhanced application features. This update in Wave 2 brings significant improvements to the core functionalities of Business Central. We’ll see streamlined user interfaces, making navigation more intuitive and tasks more straightforward, boosting team productivity. There are also advanced financial management tools for more precise financial reporting, better cash flow management, and improved budgeting capabilities. A major highlight is the inclusion of embedded Power BI reports, which I’ll discuss in more detail later.

We also have optimised inventory management, providing real-time visibility and advanced analytics to support more effective decision-making.

Luke: Next, I want to talk about AI innovations. Wave 2 introduces several AI-powered tools that will transform your interactions with Business Central. In particular, the co-pilot integration continues the AI revolution in a meaningful way that supports your business, with significant time-saving improvements. I’ll cover this in more detail later on.

There are enhanced data analytics, and we’ll also see improvements in automated workflows—note, that this refers to business processes, not approval workflows. The AI features, in my opinion, are among the most exciting parts of the upgrade and will be a huge help with things like number series and item attributes.

Marnie: Lastly, I’ll touch on regional expansions. Business Central now supports over 170 countries and regions, with additional localised features tailored to meet regional tax regulations and compliance standards. Multi-currency support has also been enhanced, providing better exchange rate management and automatic currency conversions. Furthermore, there are additional language packs to ensure a seamless user experience for global teams.

Luke: I’ll briefly touch on development improvements as well. While this webinar is more customer-focused, there are several enhancements to development tools that will make processes more efficient for our partners. As I mentioned earlier, the updates will make things much smoother. There’s now namespace support, allowing better management of integrations and APIs, making it easier to see and organise things more clearly. Enhanced testing environments will also make it simpler to troubleshoot and resolve development issues faster, allowing quicker transitions between testing stages and live releases. Overall, these development features will make the process faster and easier, ultimately saving you money in the long run.

Marnie: Lastly, I’ll touch on governance and administration updates. These updates may not be as visible to clients but are still important to mention, as they bring notable benefits. Significant improvements have been made to governance and administrative features, which will enhance management and compliance.

One of the key enhancements is advanced security controls, with new security features that enhance data protection and ensure compliance with regulatory standards. Additionally, user management tools have been improved, allowing for more granular control over user roles and permissions, which is often a pain point during implementation. This will make managing access and overseeing operations much more efficient.

We’ve also seen improvements in compliance monitoring, with enhanced tools for tracking and reporting compliance with both internal policies and external regulations. One specific improvement in user management is the addition of in-product notifications for issues with job queues. Many of our clients use job queues to automate background processes, such as running reports or updates at specific times.

Currently, it’s quite difficult to monitor the status of job queues, as errors don’t always appear immediately. In this release, a change in the role centre will introduce a traffic light system to monitor the status of job queues, offering a visual representation of their health. This will be a fantastic improvement for administrators managing those processes.

Olivia: Fab, thanks for that overview, both! We’re now going to move into our deep-dive section. This release focuses on several critical areas, and Marnie and Luke will cover the ones they find most interesting. In this section, we’ll be focusing on Power BI reporting, AI innovations, managing subscription billing/revenue, and co-pilot sales line/number series. I’ll now hand over to Marnie, who will talk about all things Power BI.

Power BI Wave 2 Updates

Marnie: Thank you, Olivia. As mentioned earlier, the embedded Power BI reports are one of the major highlights of this release. Many of our clients already use Power BI, while others use additional reporting tools like JET. With these embedded Power BI reports, users will be able to analyse their business data and gain insights from visual dashboards, starting from their very first month-end. This has often been a challenge in the past, so it’s great to finally address it.

Those familiar with the standard Business Central reports know they aren’t the most visually exciting. The new Power BI reports, however, will give end users a set of base reports that look more modern and visually impactful, making it easier to understand and interpret the data in Business Central. This will benefit both finance and non-finance users, especially when presenting financials to board members or others who don’t deal with finance on a daily basis.

When we help clients transition from other platforms to Business Central, reporting is often a key topic. Many clients take the opportunity to rebuild their reporting from scratch to meet their needs. These Power BI reports will be a great starting point for those clients. Additionally, clients often expect predefined reports that match the look and feel of Business Central—modern, sleek, and less traditional than older software. This new set of reports will finally allow us to meet those expectations.

As seen on the slide, the following Power BI reports will be available: 14 for finance, 12 for sales, 13 for purchasing, 7 for inventory, 11 for manufacturing, and 6 for projects. This covers all modules, and I’m particularly excited about the 11 manufacturing reports, as reporting in that area has historically been challenging. I’m thrilled to bring this forward for our clients!

Olivia: Thanks, Marnie. Yes, it’s really exciting to discuss Power BI reporting, especially for our manufacturing customers. Now, I’ll hand over to Luke, who will be discussing AI innovations. Over to you, Luke!

AI Innovations Business Central Wave 2

Luke: Thanks, Olivia. One of the most interesting features related to AI and co-pilot involves creating item variants, which is incredibly helpful. For example, if you have a product like a black chair and want to create variants in other colours—red, yellow, green, etc.—the traditionally tedious task of creating item variants can now be significantly shortened by the use of Copilot.

So often, there’s a situation where someone has, say, 40 different variants of an item, and inevitably, one or two setups might be missed. It won’t necessarily be uniform—you might miss a unit of measure, for instance, and then have to go back and fix it. With Copilot, however, you can simply copy the item variants, which is a great feature. Another feature related to items is the ability to suggest different dimensions. For example, if you’ve got units of measure like pallets, or dimensions such as height and weight—which are useful for airfreight or shipping by sea, where weight and dimensions are critical for fitting items into containers—AI can assist by suggesting those dimensions and attributes in the system.

In terms of analysis, as shown in the screenshot with the variants, this will become more reliable with Release Wave 1. There will be fewer errors, and it will reduce what we call AI “hallucinations,” where it suggests random information. I remember asking a basic question, “What’s the coldest place on the planet?” and the AI started talking about bananas! So yes, AI hallucinations do happen. But with Release Wave 2, it’s going to be far more reliable.

Olivia: Brilliant, thanks for that, Luke. Yes, AI is certainly one of the most interesting parts of Wave 2 at the moment. It’s not just a gimmick—it saves time, resources, and, as Luke said, takes care of the boring stuff. So now, I’ll hand back over to Marnie, who’s going to discuss managing subscription billing and revenue with you all.

Managing Subscription Billing and Revenue

Marnie: Thank you, Olivia. Yes, the next topic I’d like to introduce is something I know will be welcomed by existing BC customers. It’s also finally great to be able to tell potential BC customers that this is now available. Over the years, this functionality gap in BC has been a bit of a pain to manage manually, so the new feature allowing businesses to manage subscription billing and revenue recognition by creating subscription contracts in Business Central is a big step forward.

The system offers a simple process to manage portfolios of items and services that are billed on a recurring schedule. For example, it could be IT support, cleaning, or maintenance contracts. You can even combine the sale of services and items into a mixed subscription contract that holds information about items, services, and the billing schedule. This is a major improvement on what we’ve had in the past.

Templates will also simplify creating subscription contracts by standardising parameters and schedules for recurring billing. For example, with a maintenance contract, you might use some stock items and also have a person attend on-site, and the system will know this is a monthly recurring cost. So, you won’t have to manually track whether invoices have gone out or check your revenue.

Another benefit is the ability to manage current pricing and plan for future price updates, meaning the system will automatically handle these changes. For finance teams, posting accruals to the balance sheet is automated, and revenue or expense is assigned to the correct period in the income statement. As shown on the screen, the new tiles appearing on the role centre are a great help for project managers and management accountants. The visual impact alone makes it easier to understand your current position. This is a huge step forward, and we’re excited to offer it to our clients.

Olivia: Thanks, Marnie. Now, for the final deep dive, Luke will talk once more about Copilot and AI. Over to you, Luke.

Copilot Sales

Have you ever had a sales order with about 40 lines and wished you could speed up the process of filling in all the fields? Well, with Release Wave 2, Copilot is designed to speed up this process using the “Get Line Suggestions” feature. As you can see in the example, it can suggest various items and quantities, and even fill in fields like units of measure—such as shipping items on pallets. This will make sales processing much easier.

Another cool feature is related to Number Series, which is one of those essential but tedious tasks. You need to set up number series to create documents, but sometimes they get overlooked, or you end up using the default Cronus number series and run out. The new features make it easier to create and manage your own number series, and Copilot will automatically add them to the relevant setups.

In the past, customers have created number series only to find they’re not working or not populating numbers correctly because they missed something in the setup. With Copilot’s suggestions, you can create your own series, and it will handle the rest in the background, making sure everything is configured correctly. I think this is a really neat improvement in the next update, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.

Olivia: Brilliant, thanks for that, Luke. Now, we have a couple of questions. If we don’t get to them all, we’ll send detailed answers via email after the webinar.

Q&A Section

Olivia: The first question is for Luke: “Can you explain how the new AI-powered Copilot feature works in practice? Specifically, how does it integrate with existing workflows, and what kind of tasks can it automate?”

Luke: Well, I should start by saying this is a webinar, not a technical course. But essentially, Copilot in BC uses machine learning algorithms to provide intelligent assistance within the application. It’s important to note that no customer data is used to train these algorithms—this is often a concern these days, but Microsoft ensures that customer data is protected.

Copilot is deeply integrated into BC, providing recommendations such as “Get Line Suggestions” and supporting users as they navigate various modules both before and after go-live. For example, in inventory, it can suggest optimal stock levels based on trends in vendor ledger entries, helping manage stock coming in and going out.

In addition to handling the repetitive, boring tasks like data entry, item variants, and number series, Copilot can also assist with report generation and decision-making. For instance, it can automatically generate financial forecasts or suggest stock replenishments based on analytics.

It really enhances the user experience by making BC easier to work with and less stressful to manage. Compared to legacy systems, I believe those are far behind in terms of AI integration. Microsoft is leading the way, ensuring that AI is a helpful companion in streamlining workflows and improving decision-making.

Using the analysis of historical data, you can look at various things like customer ledger entries, for example. I don’t know if any of you have heard of some third-party software called JetReports. To be honest, I think it’s starting to catch up to tools like JetReports in terms of the analysis it can perform, the reliability it offers, and the information it provides. You could use it to analyse your customers, such as identifying your most valuable customer.

Sales teams may also find it useful for understanding good months and bad months—good trends, bad trends, and so on. I’m really looking forward to it—it’s very exciting. Brilliant, thanks. I really like how you described it as a ‘companion’. I think that’s a great way of putting it. I’m definitely going to steal that for my next social post.

Olivia: Our next question looks like it’s for Marnie, and it’s about Power BI. The question is: “Regarding the enhanced reporting and Power BI integration, what are some of the most notable new customisation options available, and how can these improvements help in creating more detailed and actionable reports?”

Marnie: Well, the enhancements to reporting and Power BI integration in this release offer several customisation options. We’re going to have customisable reporting templates, allowing users to create templates that meet specific business needs. Yes, you’ll start with a base, but of course, they can be amended as required. Reporting is rarely one-size-fits-all; it’s specific to each business, so it’s important to know this flexibility is available.

One thing we’ll need to explore further as this release comes out is the licensing aspect—particularly how much integration with Power BI is included with a standard BC licence, versus whether an enhanced Power BI licence will be required. The templates themselves allow for flexible layout adjustments, dynamic data filters, and custom calculations. It’s similar to building a Power BI report from scratch, enabling users to generate reports that reflect their unique requirements. Teams within a business often want different things from reports, so this flexibility will be very useful.

We also have advanced data visualisation with the Power BI integration. The significant improvement here is the ability to provide advanced data visualisation. Dashboards—this is what people want these days. They want the ability to see their performance, not just in an Excel spreadsheet or a long list of numbers. Users will be able to create interactive dashboards and detailed charts that offer deeper insights into business performance, which is key. This will also help highlight key trends and any anomalies, making it easier to analyse complex datasets.

For teams working across different modules within the system, this will be particularly beneficial. Finally, we have enhanced data connectivity. The updated integration improves the connectivity between Business Central and Power BI, allowing users to pull in data from various sources, not just from BC. This means users can combine external data with Business Central data and create more comprehensive reports that are suitable for board members, offering an overall view of the business.

The seamless data flow will ensure reports are always up to date, which is something we love, and they will reflect the most current business information. Real-time information has been a sticking point for a lot of people, and this will definitely address that issue.

Olivia: Thanks, Marnie. I see we’ve had another question from Susan. We’ll answer that after the webinar via email or something similar, but thank you for sending it through.

The Conclusion

Olivia: So, thank you both. That brings us to the end of our webinar. To recap, we’ve covered key features and enhancements in Wave 2, specifically around Power BI, Copilot, and managing subscription billing, while addressing some of your questions.

We’ll send you some additional information after the webinar, including our white paper, which you can download here or wait for via email. We’ll also send a recording of this webinar, a transcript, and some resources on the Wave 2 updates.

If you have any further questions or need support, feel free to contact us anytime. Our details are on the screen, and we’re here to help you make the most of these features and your Business Central application. Chat or call us whenever you want.

Thanks again for attending, everyone, and thanks to Marnie and Luke for sharing their expert knowledge and brilliant insights throughout this webinar. Have a great day, everyone. Goodbye.