April is here! We’re not just looking forward to longer days and more sunshine—Microsoft is also treating us to a huge number of exciting updates to their business applications, including Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
These updates are packed with the latest innovations, bringing significant new capabilities that embed the applications with modern functionality.
With so many updates on the horizon, it’s impossible to cover them all in one blog post. So, let’s dive into the thrilling upcoming changes to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and see how they can transform your business!
Microsoft’s Investment areas for 2025 Release Wave 1
With Artificial Intelligence (AI) being the focus of almost every technology company, it’s no surprise that one of the standout updates for Business Central is the introduction of intelligent agents.
These AI agents are seamlessly integrated with Business Central to understand and automate complex tasks, helping transform the way you work in the system.
Microsoft’s recent survey on business trends revealed that nearly 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce repetitive tasks in their jobs.
From generating reports and automating workflows to optimising the order creation process, these agents bring cutting-edge AI support to your daily activities with minimal user intervention.
The first out-the-box agent being introduced with this release is the Sales Order Agent, which automates the entire process of capturing sales quotes and orders from customer emails — making your operations more efficient and streamlined.
Let’s now take a look at the various investment areas Microsoft have been focusing on for Business Central in this release.
Application
Core application functionality is a key investment area, driven by feedback from partners and customers to enhance productivity.
The updates include integrating Field Service with service management, allowing users to view item availability directly in Field Service work orders, and providing improved troubleshooting options for cost adjustments.
Copilot and AI
This release wave there has been a continued focus on Copilot and AI capabilities, building on the initial Copilot capability of marketing text suggestions, aiming to enhance productivity across various SMB roles.
The updates include the ability to chat with Copilot to learn how to use installed add-on apps, summarise information with Copilot, and use the Sales Order Agent to automate sales order-taking.
Additionally, Copilot can suggest gas emissions in sustainability journals, enhance purchase order line matching, autofill fields, and automate payables processes with the Payables Agent.
Country and Regional
Updates for country and regional capabilities focus on expanding Business Central’s availability and compliance across more countries and regions.
Key updates include enabling additional countries and regions, installing UK localisation as an extension to the base app, and using the Peppol PINT A-NZ format for e-documents in Australia and New Zealand.
Other notable updates are calculating GST on recurring journals for India, submitting IRS 1099 forms electronically to IRIS in the US localisationv, and defining allowed languages per environment.
See the full list of updates for Country and Regional here.
Development
The development investment area aims to enhance productivity for Business Central AL developers while empowering consultants, citizen developers, and users to achieve more and reduce the cost of changes.
Key updates include moving tables and fields with data across extensions as part of refactoring, selecting extensions to open in Visual Studio Code from the web client, and troubleshooting clients, apps, and add-ins with telemetry.
Additionally, developers can mock outbound HttpClient web service calls during testing, search, navigate, and use app symbols as context for GitHub Copilot, and embed Power BI content in the web client with a new page type.
See the full list of updates for Development here.
E-Commerce
Expanding your customer reach and managing B2B transactions effortlessly is now possible with Business Central and Shopify.
The updates include importing and exporting more data for Shopify B2B companies and their locations, activating sales channels in the Shopify Connector, and using Shopify metafields for data import and export.
Additionally, you can troubleshoot export issues on the Shopify Skipped Records page and benefit from the latest update for the Shopify connector.
E-Documents
E-Documents in Business Central streamline document exchange processes, enhance data accuracy and security, and lead to significant time and cost savings, ultimately improving operational efficiency.
The updates include deleting incorrect e-documents to avoid duplicates, using the E-Documents framework with Power Automate and other solutions, sending e-documents via a service and email simultaneously, and using payments with the e-document framework.
Additionally, users can generate multiple incoming e-documents for multiple attachments, automate embedded attachments in PEPPOL, and use Logiq as a service provider for e-documents.
Other notable updates are creating e-documents from posted sales invoices, previewing incoming e-invoices prior to processing, and exporting reminders and finance charges as PEPPOL files.
Financial Management
Enhancing financial management capabilities, the updates aim to accelerate financial close, improve forecasting, and provide real-time performance metrics while ensuring compliance and security across subsidiaries.
Key updates include analysing subscription billing data with Power BI reports, requiring Intrastat classifications on documents, and checking total purchase amounts on documents.
Governance and administration
Governance and administration enhancements focus on providing new and improved tools for administrators to manage environments, apps, and data migrations.
The updates include adding support for MultiSubnetFailover, migrating record links and notes with cloud migration tooling, and viewing app compatibility with future versions in the admin centre.
Additionally, there is support for IPv6 for enhanced security and scalability, updating sandbox environments to preview versions, linking to Power Platform to use Copilot Studio messages, and automating environment management with the Power Platform connector.
Reporting and data analysis
Having access to the right reports and data analysis capabilities is crucial for companies aiming to control their business and identify new growth opportunities.
The updates include enhancing reports with PDF post-processing capabilities, validating report layouts for errors as an admin, and adding fields from related tables in analysis mode.
Additionally, users can leverage enhanced analytics for manufacturing, access report and request metadata in Word layouts, and utilise new templates and enhanced capabilities for financial reporting.
Service and platform
Investments in the service and platform area continue to focus on the fundamentals, emphasising performance, stability, resource governance, security, and compliance. The update includes calculating values only for visible FlowFields.
Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management in Business Central encompasses a wide range of functionalities, including sales, purchase, invoice, inventory and warehouse management, project management, service order management, and manufacturing.
Each release aims to expand these capabilities to enhance user productivity. The updates include rescheduling production orders within a safety lead time, using enhanced customer document layouts for service management, and cancelling production orders that have consumption.
Additionally, users can add more columns to various pages for better insights, allow multiple people to post inventory simultaneously, and experience improved usability in manufacturing.
Other notable updates are enabling overpicking for production orders, achieving greater accuracy in manufacturing costing, and omitting warehouse pick for manual flushing methods.
Users can also create demo data for Subscription Billing with a demo data tool, create subscription contract lines manually, and track and rebill quantity changes in subscriptions.
Furthermore, the updates align Subscription Billing with standard user experience and terminology, allow receiving project items with receipts or put-aways, and block items or variants from production output.
Additional enhancements include avoiding document number errors when posting project journals, handling production output with warehouse put-aways, reopening finished production orders, and using streamlined product design tools in manufacturing.
Users can also print barcodes from production orders, manage document attachments in manufacturing, use Edit in Excel on output, consumption, and item journals, and combine service shipments on a single service invoice.
Sustainability Management
Sustainability management in Business Central empowers customers to drive positive environmental and social impact, enhance operational efficiency, meet regulatory requirements, and contribute to a more sustainable future.
The updates include generating a CSRD preparation report, specifying default sustainability values for various entities, and enabling taxonomy elements for ESRS and other standards.
Users can also leverage enhanced analytics for sustainability, capture sustainability data with general journals, and use water and waste management features.
Other notable updates are enabling sustainability Scope 3 value chain for assembly and transfers, providing carbon equivalent data for sales based on Scope 3 automation, and using ESG reporting integrated with Business Central.
Furthermore, users can start the value chain in the purchase process for Scope 3 in sustainability, use refreshed demo data for sustainability, and apply the sustainability Scope 3 value chain in manufacturing.
The final update in this category introduces a new Out of Scope emission category.
User experience
Enhancing user experiences ensures that users can enter, update, and correct data intuitively.
The updates include previewing PDF attachments directly in the web client, optimising screen estate usage, adjusting the FactBox pane width, and implementing various user interface enhancements for a better overall experience.
As we look forward to the updates rolling out between April and September, it’s clear that these enhancements are designed to make a real difference in your day-to-day operations.
From improving user experiences to advancing sustainability and compliance, there’s a lot to be excited about.
If you’re interested in taking a deeper look into any of the mentioned features, please click the links throughout, or alternatively you can view the full release notes for Business Central here, or click here to view the full 2025 Release Wave 1 Plan.
Want to take a look at these features in action? We’re hosting a webinar on Wednesday 16th April at 11:00 AM (BST) where you can take a look at these upcoming capabilities and ask our expert team members any questions you have! Sign up here: https://www.mercuriusit.com/webinar-dynamics-365-business-central-2025-release-wave-1/
If you’re interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, please view our webpage, or get in touch to arrange a demo of the solution.
Let’s explore how this powerful ERP solution can transform your business.
