In October, Microsoft will again release the new versions of its business applications, including Dynamics 365 Business Central. First details about the new functionalities and improvements have already been announced.
In addition to several innovations in the application and the development environment as well as a generally improved user-friendliness, the focus of the new Business Central version this October is once again on the area of onboarding, the interaction with Microsoft 365 and an optimized administration.
Onboarding – still a focus area for releases
This year’s fall release will again optimize the Onboarding experience to get started working with Business Central as quickly and smoothly as possible. The new release cycle therefore focuses in particular on connectivity to third-party business productivity services. To this end, the new version offers better discoverability, installation and setup of apps of this type, which are available in the AppSource. The proposed apps must meet certain requirements (e.g. specific usage and quality criteria and a minimum set of features).
Application improvements for more productive work
Optimizations are also expected to reappear in the application itself with the fall release. For example, in the financial area, bank reconciliation and the test report will be further improved. In addition, a statement report with two sections for outstanding reconciliations will be added.
The journal entries from posted payment reconciliation journals can also be reversed in the future. This will allow the books to be recovered more efficiently if errors occur.
To make financial reports more transparent for both new and experienced users, account schedules will be renamed to financial reporting. In addition, the function will be slightly changed for a better overview of the available reports.
Also introduced is the new “VAT Date” field on documents and entries, as well as an enhanced text function for VAT clauses. Also announced is a redesigned and configurable Intrastat function for all countries and regions with configurable reporting. This takes the form of a document with different statuses providing the history of previously reported periods.
Optimized collaboration with Microsoft 365
For some time now, Microsoft has been increasingly investing in smooth interaction between Business Central and various Microsoft 365 applications. The second wave of the 2022 release therefore offers administrators more control in managing OneDrive and Excel in Business Central. Users will also benefit from improvements in report layouts and data editing in Excel.
Updated user interface and data loss protection
In addition to the new features listed, the upcoming Business Central fall release will include other optimizations. For example, the user interface across the client portfolio for desktop and mobile devices will also be improved (e.g. with new design elements). A simplified company and environment switch will make working with Business Central even easier in the future.
Another major simplification is the new option to restore deleted environments. In future, these will be placed in a temporarily soft-deleted state for seven days after deletion. Within this period, administrators can restore the deleted environment in the Business Central Admin Center without the help of the Microsoft Support. The new feature is designed to protect against data loss, for example, if an environment is accidentally deleted or its trial has expired.
Expansion of Power Platform integration
The integration of Business Central into the Power Platform continues to be expanded. Among other things, this brings improvements to the Power Automate connector and the “Automate” action (e.g. easy access to document attachments and automated assignment to a process in Business Central). In addition, Business Central and Power Automate will be equipped with a modern toolset that makes it easy to extend Business Central and connect it to other systems.
As always, detailed information on selected new features in this year’s fall release of Business Central will be available on our blog shortly.
