New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1: Get to Insights Faster with Copilot-Generated Analysis Tabs

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 1.

The 5th of the new functionality in the Copilot and AI innovation section is get to insights faster with Copilot-generated analysis tabs.

Copilot is the AI-powered assistant for work that boosts creativity and improves productivity for Business Central users.

Copilot can help reduce the time it takes to identify trends and anomalies in your business data by enabling you to express your analysis as a simple sentence, and without ever leaving Business Central.

By describing how you want to structure your data analysis, such as “show me vendors by location sorted by amount of purchases,” you can quickly get to insights instead of spending time on the clicks and keystrokes needed to construct analysis views. This feature can help you make informed decisions and take action based on the insights you gain from your data. For example, you can use this feature to identify which vendors are supplying each of your warehouses, and then take steps to optimize your supply chain or negotiate better deals with your vendors.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Apr 2024
General Availability: –

Feature Details

There are several ways that Copilot can speed up your analyses:

• Create: Starting from any list in Business Central, put Copilot to work by providing keywords or a description, indicating the columns, groups, pivots, filters or sorting that you want to use to present fields from the table. Copilot uses AI to understand your desired layout, and helps you refine and build upon the generated analysis when you provide more keywords. Copilot also suggests a name for your new analysis tab.
• Update: Quickly adjust an existing analysis tab by expressing your desired changes in natural language.
• Explain: Copilot summarizes the information presented in the analysis tab as a concise sentence—a useful reminder or quick overview whenever your coworkers share analyses with you.

This feature can be accessed from the specific list page that you want to analyze. Copilot can work with most fields that are already present on the list page and corresponding table, including summing up totals, but cannot create new fields or correlate data across tables.

Tell them what you think

Microsoft are excited to have you with them on their Copilot journey.

Help them improve Dynamics 365 Business Central by discussing ideas, providing suggestions, and giving feedback. Use the forum at aka.ms/bcIdeas, or join the discussion on the Dynamics 365 Business Central Development Viva Engage network (formerly Yammer) to help them shape the future of AI in Business Central.

Geographic areas

This feature will be released into the following Microsoft Azure geographic areas:

• Germany
• Norway
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• United Arab Emirates
• United States
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• South America
• India
• Japan
• France
• Korea

My Opinion

I’ll actually be interested to get some feedback from clients on this Copilot feature when it becomes available. Some have started using the analysis tabs functionality, and it will be interesting to see how much of an improvement they think this is.