It’s that time of the year again when Microsoft has released its latest version of Business Central. This version is called Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 April Wave 1. You can find the official release notes from Microsoft here, but this post will break down some of the key new features that were introduced. Let’s dive in.
Jobs to Projects
Microsoft has officially renamed the “Jobs” functionality to “Projects” within Business Central. This seems like a minor change, but for users that utilize this functionality, it seems to make more logical sense than calling them Jobs. While this will take some getting used to, Microsoft has still made it so that when you search for Jobs, it will bring up Projects:
Field Service
Field Service now Integrates into Business Central. What’s unique about this integration is that it flows through the Projects (Jobs) module, and not through Service. This is a great feature because companies would often have to use other add-ons to get this integration.
Page Scripting
As an end-user that leads two major upgrades a year on an on-premises Business Central environment, this new feature will help in the functional testing process. Page scripting is currently in preview, but it allows the user to create a script just by performing standard Business Central Actions. To start this, navigate to the gear icon and select “Page Scripting”:
This will bring up a flyout pane with the new Page Scripting feature:
To get started, select “Start New.” This will start the recording:
Start by performing actions within Business Central. In this example, I will create a new item using a template, and name it “Testing.” You will notice that as I perform these actions, they will populate in the recording flyout pane on the right:
Once completed, select the Stop button:
Here, you now have a few options:
Once you select “Play” the script will run insanely fast, faster than anyone could humanly repeat these actions. If successful, you will see this message:
This is a huge step to help users in functional testing or to complete repetitive tasks. As an end-user, I can use this functionality to script all of the testing that I do during an upgrade so that it can be done in less than an hour, instead of 10+.
Copilot
You can hardly go a day in the Microsoft ecosystem without hearing about Copilot. 2024 Wave 1 brings some new Copilot capabilities to Business Central. While I can’t cover all the capabilities in this post, I’ll highlight a few of my favorites.
Copilot is now built in to any list page’s analyze view. Start by navigating to a list page, such as vendor ledger entries. You will see on the ribbon, that there is a new Copilot button. Once selected, you can choose “Analyze List”:
This will bring up the Copilot prompt where it will help the user develop a string of text that Copilot will execute for you:
These prompts help the user build a query that might take longer if trying to create an Analyze view from scratch:
By simply going through the prompts, Analyze Views can be created by users who wouldn’t understand how to use pivot tables.
Business Central 2024 April Wave 1 brings a lot of new features to the system. While this post can’t cover them all, be sure to check them out on Microsoft’s official website.
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