Microsoft Dynamics 365 2023 Release Wave 1Missed These Features?

7 Top New Features From Business Central 2023 Release Wave 1

One of the many benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central being a true cloud accounting system, is the automated updates that happen twice annually. Each year, in April and October, Microsoft roll out their major updates. They are continuous, touchless updates that provide new features and functionality and eliminate the need to do expensive upgrades every few years.

Administrators can set a maintenance window for each environment that determines when Microsoft is allowed to update that environment too, so you have greater control of when they happen unlike many other systems.

What’s new?

The 2023 release wave 1 improves support for managing multiple companies, including improvements to the intercompany features. This release reduces the time it takes to onboard customers by creating seamless onboarding experiences that are supported by quality content from Microsoft. It will help organisations stay compliant with various government regulations by providing features that automate regulatory tasks, so organisations can focus on their primary business. For example, we’ll add support for non-deductible VAT. Usability is always a focus, and in this release they’ll boost efficiency when working with lists of records. You can personalise columns by adding any field from the table, use bulk actions on multiple rows, and get more comprehensive views to work faster and smarter.

Here’s seven of our favourite updates that you might have missed from Dynamics 365 Business Central from 2023 Release Wave 1.

In the latest release you can:

• Manage your intercompany setup on one page that includes intercompany partners, an intercompany chart of accounts, and intercompany dimensions.
• Companies will be able to subscribe to data from another company. Tables and fields can be defined for total control over the synchronisation. Changes in the main company are immediately pulled to the receiving companies by the job queue. This functionality is a game changer for organisations that share the same metadata across two or more companies.
• Handle bank transactions on the IC General Journals page.
• IC general journals are included on the G/L Register page.
• The experience when working with the intercompany inbox and outbox is smoother, and the Handled Inbox now lets you open documents.
• Role Center cues are added to give an overview.
• New Business Central customers can search for Intercompany Setup to find the new setup page. Existing customers with upgraded tenants can turn on Feature Update: Automatically accept intercompany general journal transactions on the Feature Management page to make the page available.

Copilot Capability

• Start with a picture: Create a new item record by uploading a picture. Business Central analyses the image and automatically suggests a matching category from your list of item categories. Customers who configured categories with templates and default attributes benefit from all of these being automatically assigned, reducing manual data entry.
• Author marketing copy: The new Marketing Text area, reachable from the Item card actions or FactBox, is where users author a customer-ready, rich-text product description that can be used in any marketing activities.
• Get AI-powered suggestions: Business Central uses Azure OpenAI and GPT technology to suggest a compelling product description based on the item’s attributes, category and name (description). Get more suggestions or append them to your draft to author the perfect description. Review and edit before saving.
• Customise suggestions: Use the Create with Copilot window to adjust various language parameters such as the format, tone of voice, and quality to emphasize. Choose precisely which attributes should be included when text is generated.
• Publish to Shopify: Customers who connect Business Central to Shopify using our extension now benefit from new actions on the item card and list.
  • Send the item directly to your Shopify store to start selling immediately. This follows your store settings and may include information such as the item picture, marketing text, inventory, and price.
  • Navigate to the corresponding product on your Shopify store, as your customers would experience it.

Updates To The Shopify Integration
Three updates are scheduled to take place in the next update. Two of which we think will be of interest to users:

• Price synchronisation for Shopify: A Sync Prices action has been added to the Shopify card which utilizes the following settings to define what prices are shown to the customer:
  • Customer Price Groups, Customer Discount Groups, Allow Line Discount, Prices including VAT, VAT Business Posting Groups and Currency Code.
  • Improvements to Shopify Connector: Users can now use item and customer templates instead of configuration templates. Making it easier to create item and customers from list pages or convert contacts to customers.