Autonomous Agents, Copilot, and security in Business Central: reporting from Directions EMEA 2024

Directions EMEA is an unmissable appointment for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central community. This year’s edition broke all records: on the first week of November 3,200 attendees from 650 companies, coming from 60 countries, met in Vienna to discuss all things Business Central. The most talked about topic, you guessed it, was AI, whether in the form of Copilot or Agents. 

Continuous growth, yet again 

Before we get into all that, the obligatory note on how successful the platform has become. Once again, Business Central is Microsoft’s fastest growing application. More than 40,000 companies use BC online (SaaS), and the usage of the system (calculated in number of API calls, job queues, and browser interactions) has been growing steadily year over year. With more customers comes more investment, and the solution keeps on scaling up, and is increasingly attractive to larger companies.  

The system’s capabilities keep increasing, too. “This is the best release of Business Central we’ve ever had – and this time I mean it!” said (only half-jokingly) Mike Morton, Principal Product Manager for Business Central at Microsoft. This gives a good idea of the mood of the event - Business Central is a success, and its capabilities keep on growing. A lot (lot) of words were spent on the AI functionalities that are already available in the system, and what’s upcoming. 

What are Agents in Business Central?

By now you may be familiar with Copilot and AI – but what is an Autonomous Agent? 

Autonomous Agents are AI-powered tools that automate business processes within an organization without the need for major manual input.  

While Copilot is also AI-powered, there is a fundamental difference between the two. 

• Copilot is akin to a smart personal assistant, and can be used by users to speed up and improve personal tasks.  

• Agents are used to automate processes on behalf of companies. In other words, each user can have their own personal Copilot, but Agents tend to be used by multiple people within one organization. 

Sales Order Agent: automation, but within human control 

Expect to see a lot more processes managed by Autonomous Agents in BC in the future. The first one being launched is the Sales Order Agent – which can understand instructions in natural language (for example, an email where a customer orders items, and asks to have them sent at a specific date), automatically create quotes, communicate with the customers, ask questions, set delivery dates, and take next steps. It will be in public preview in December 2024 in the US, and available in further countries and languages early next year. The Sales Order Agent is built to automatically adapt to customizations and extensions (such as the functionality added by LS Retail partners) with no or few extra e-instructions. In this way all BC users, even those with extensions and add-ons, can take advantage of it. 

So far, it sounds exciting – a user who is part of the private preview claims that with the Sales Order Agent they could process 5x as many sales, without needing to hire additional help.  

But I hear you, AI-sceptics. What about the risks? Could AI misunderstand a request, and send out the wrong items? No retailer wants to lose money, or control, due to a concatenation of automated approvals. No worries – Microsoft has got you covered. During the demo on stage Microsoft put a lot of focus on how humans remain in full control of the process. Which means, you can decide how much freedom the AI should have. You set up defined permissions and profiles within which the Agent operates. And then, the Agent keeps you in the loop, for example seeking human intervention when preparing communications, or requiring approval for key operations. 

Is the AI out to get you? Not just yet

There are two good news here: one, the AI is not stealing your job just yet. And two, you might be able to offload to the Agent some of the most boring, repetitive tasks (like writing emails or sales quotes, or finding product substitutions), so you have more time to do what you love best (speak to customers? Have a quiet coffee in the middle of the morning? We don’t judge). 

As Søren Friis Alexandersen, Principal Product Manager for BC at Microsoft, put it on a LinkedIn post after the event, “AI use cases are lacking. Customers feel they should be using AI, but don't know where to start.” There are a lot of opportunities, and the technological capabilities are increasing by day, but the direction is still unclear. I believe that come Directions 2025 we’ll have some tangible examples of where AI can really transform daily work for us and our customers – but there is still some road ahead. 

Combating cybercrime with a security-first mindset

With the increase in cybercrime and attacks, it’s unsurprising that Microsoft is making massive investments in security. The Microsoft Secure Future Initiative, launched in November 2023, is an extensive program built to ensure that cyber security becomes part of every method, practice, and layer of the network.  

For Business Central, Microsoft announced extra capabilities to audit BC systems to help organizations effectively respond to security events, forensic investigations, internal investigations, and compliance obligations. The goal is to use automations to speed up response and remediations. 

When it comes to security, any system is as safe as its weakest link – which is why it’s important that all of us, who are using the system, extending it, and implementing it, also maintain constant vigilance as well as good cyber hygiene policies. BC offers multi-factor authentication, advanced privacy options, the possibility to restrict traffic by location or IP address, among other options – it’s important for admins to familiarize themselves with these features and use them to maintain a secure environment.  

Sustainability, e-documents, pivots and more

We heard lots more about  

• Sustainability. With ESG reporting standards becoming more stringent in the upcoming months and years, the new sustainability role center is an important tool to maintain regulatory compliance. Companies can record emission data, calculate carbon fees, generate sustainability reports and more. 
• Enhanced e-documents. Over 60 countries mandate the exchange of e-invoicing and other digital documentation, and 20+ more countries will require it by law within the next 24 months. The BC e-document app can be used in countries where companies require specialized e-document handling to comply with local regulations.  
• Tons of functionality to make your job faster. From improved search, to the ability to look up BC data like invoices within Teams using Copilot, to all sorts of tools to compare and analyze data (Pivot tables inside BC, data comparison with Copilot, Agents automating Sales Orders, and much much more)... the BC team has clearly invested in developing tools that will put a smile on your Accounting team’s faces. 

In summary (so you don’t have to ask ChatGPT): AI is here to stay, everyone is excited about it, but we don’t yet have the big picture. For now it looks like it might rid us of the little boring tasks you used to give your junior colleagues, and save us those few minutes a day that add up to hours and days – and we will happily take that.