So soon? It seems like only yesterday we were looking at Microsoft’s 2022 Wave 1 Update for Dynamics 365 Business Central. But here we are, and Wave 2 is upon us. Improvements and new features for this release are centred around onboarding users and providing access to business-enhancing apps and capabilities. Power Automate continues to enhance the automation story and overall performance and usability have been further improved.

Microsoft is highlighting further updates in wave 2 including:

• Seamless service: No matter the industry type of a small or midsized business (SMB), business users expect a dependable service and platform that they can run their business on.
• Administration: Business Central delivers a set of features for better and improved communication about the health of each environment.
• Application: We will continue to improve the application to support integration with Shopify. The finance and supply chain capabilities in Business Central are improved with several optimizations and enhancements so that users can run their business processes more efficiently.
• Better with Microsoft 365: We improve the efficiency of collaborative business processes in Microsoft Teams. Users can pin cards inside Teams, and delegated admins can now use the Excel add-in.
• Country and regional: In 2022 release wave 2, Business Central is generally available in more countries and regions.
• Onboarding: Organizations can get to productive usage faster because it’s easier to discover and install apps.
• Development tools: We have moved entirely to Visual Studio Code where we continue to invest in areas that enhance the productivity for developers.
• Power Platform: More efficient automation with Power Automate so that users can set up workflows for the specific needs of their organization.

Investment and improvement

Other key areas for investment and improvement include:

• Development: to improve Business Central AL developers’ productivity, including: promoted action groups and action references; use ByRef, XmlPort parameters in OData; Access database row version from AL code; and write faster updgrade code.
• Microsoft Power Platform: to improve integration with Business Central, including: personalise and design the Automate action group in the web client; Power Apps and Power Automate support for document attachments; rely on personalization to show or hide Power BI parts on lists; and add media/image support for Business Central connectors.
• Application: delivering updates based on the most popular requests for improvement, including: better bank reconciliation for checks; extended text functionality for VAT clauses; financial reporting replaces account schedules; new VAT Date field on documents and entries; reverse payment reconciliation journal entries; and use multiple remit-to addresses for vendors.
• Country and regional: exapanding to more territories through partner-led localization, including: configurable and redesigned Intrastat solution; and service declarations F01DGS for Belgium and Intrastat for Italy and France.
• Reporting: improved Excel capabilities and a new finance API, including: use new dedicated APIs for financial reporting; run, send reports from the request page; and choose the report layout on request page.
• Service and platform: dependable and reliable operations, including: get Power BI reports on telemetry.
• Productive with Microsoft 365: more capabilities to manage OneDrive and Excel, including: configure OneDrive integration; and delegated admins can edit in Excel.
• Onboarding: connecting business services such as payroll, banking and electronic invoicing, including: new field descriptions improve clarity; easily access setup pages for new apps; easily find apps to connect to core services; and easily install and set up new apps.
• User experiences: improved usability, accessibility and performance, including: legacy list views will be hidden; experience new UI design elements; and switch companies across environments.
• Governance and administration: added and improved capabilities to set up, secure, manage, govern and monitor customer environments, including: get more, better communications as admin; get more visibility into outages; restore deleted environments; and use service-to-service authentication with admin API.

Information at your fingertips

This is just a quick overview of the changes – Microsoft has all the details if you want to dive in, or follow the links below to find the specific information you’re after:

• Release plan: View all capabilities included in the release.
• Product updates: Stay up to date on latest product updates.
• Release schedule: Know important release milestones.
• Product documentation: Find documentation for Business Central.
• User community: Engage with Business Central experts and peers in the community.
• Upcoming events: Find and register for in-person and online events.
• Dynamics 365 free trial: Get started with Business Central

And, needless to say, if you’ve got any questions or if you think your business could benefit from any of the new capabilities, Eagle360 would love to help.