Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a robust, flexible, and scalable solution that connects your finance, sales, service, project, warehousing, and manufacturing teams to help you adapt faster and work smarter, which in turn helps your business to thrive.
Business Central has been making headlines since its launch in April 2021. It has already set a successful track record and made a big splash this year with the limitless functionalities it offers, and it continues to simplify user experiences by upgrading, developing, and introducing new features as suggested by users from across the world.
Microsoft has published its release plans for the next cloud update wave across Dynamics 365. The 2022 Release Wave 1 will span from April 2022 to September 2022, commencing with regional deployments from the 2nd of April 2022. Some features will also be available starting February for early access.
Release Plans
Release plans enable customers and partners to learn about the new capabilities that Microsoft would be rolling out across Dynamics 365 modules in the upcoming cycle (April and September 2022).
This tactical document is designed to capture the vision for each product and to track the timeline for the release of these new features. These timelines are subject to change and may be introduced earlier for a public preview.
Let’s Get Started
All the features listed in this blog are categorized into distinct fields by Microsoft. The glossary for the same is mentioned below:
1. Hybrid Work Models
- Users, automatically: These features include changes to the user experience and are enabled automatically.
- Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically: These features are meant to be used by administrators, makers, marketers, or business analysts and are enabled automatically.
- Users by admins, makers, or analysts: These features must be enabled or configured by the administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users.
2. In the General availability column, the feature would be delivered within the month listed. The delivery date can be any day within that month. Released features show the full date, including the date of the release.
This checkmark (✔️) indicates features that have been released for public preview and early access.
In this blog, we will cover the following topics:
- Application
- Better with Microsoft 365
- Development
- Governance and administration
- Microsoft Power Platform
- Modern clients
- Onboarding
- Reporting
- Service and platform
APPLICATION
In 2022 release wave 1, Microsoft has announced updates based on the most popular requests received from users all over the globe. It has focussed on investing in better reporting and several other improvements in the supply chain area.
Better with Microsoft 365
In 2022 release wave 1, Microsoft has invested in a stronger reporting story, including better integration with Excel. It has also focussed on improving the support for collaborative business processes in Teams to enable the user to bring Business Central pages into a Teams channel.
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Enhancements to Microsoft Teams integration | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Outlook add-in – add email attachments to Business Central records | Users, automatically | Feb-22 | Apr-22 |
Development
Microsoft continues to invest in a rich spectrum of extensibility tooling capabilities for developers, including making the AL language even stronger to improve the developer experience. The features are as mentioned below:
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Isolated events | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | – | Apr-22 |
| New isolated event OnCompanyOpenCompleted | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | – | Apr-22 |
| Auto-deploy dependent projects in workspace | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Demo tool and demo data for manufacturing scenarios | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| In-client performance profiler | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| AL-Go for GitHub – modern DevOps for partners | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
| Telemetry – company name as a custom dimension in AL LogMessage | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
| Users can export report datasets to XML | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
Governance and Administration
Business Central 2022 release wave 1 delivers a set of admin and governance capabilities to help admins and IT pros set up, secure, manage, govern, and monitor customer environments.
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Customer-managed encryption key for encrypting customer data at-rest | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | – | Apr-22 |
| Customers can consent to Microsoft Support accessing their data through a Lockbox consent flow | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | – | Apr-22 |
| Allow security administrator to define default permission set assignments when user is signing up | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Feb-22 | Apr-22 |
| Updating only licensed users from Microsoft 365 runs faster and more efficiently | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Permission set handling enhancements | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | May-22 | Jun-22 |
Microsoft Power Platform
In 2022 release wave 1, Microsoft improves the integration with Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Power Platform.
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Dataverse data change events | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Apr-22 | – |
| Improvements to the Power Automate and Power Apps connector | Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | Apr-22 | May-22 |
Modern Clients
In 2022 release wave 1, Microsoft made improvements for our extensive portfolio of clients with the focus on better usability, accessibility, performance, and stability.
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Copy link from Share menu | Users, automatically | Feb-22 | Apr-22 |
| New desktop app delivering full web client experience on desktop is listed in the Microsoft Store | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Usability improvements to the web client | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
Onboarding
Onboarding is a key focus in every release wave. The aim is to make the onboarding of new customers faster.
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Context-aware links in the Help pane from Microsoft and partners | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Guided tour that helps users find settings and personalization tools | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Support for rich text in teaching tips and tours | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Tour of the Role Explorer and how to filter it | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
Reporting
Reporting is amongst the highest priorities for most business users, both to get insight into new growth opportunities and to share data as a foundation for business planning discussions. Here are the new release updates:
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| New capabilities for financial reporting with account schedules | Users, automatically | Mar-22 | Apr-22 |
| Use Excel to design layouts for reports | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
Service and Platform
Whether it is a small or medium-sized business (SMB) or a larger one, business users expect a dependable platform & services to run their business smoothly.
| Feature | Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
| Performance – partners can get database insights through virtual tables and in-client pages | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
| Telemetry – error dialogs are logged to telemetry | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
| Telemetry – the action of enabling detailed telemetry is logged to telemetry | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
| Telemetry – when a database deadlock occurs, it is logged to telemetry | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
| Telemetry – support engineers can now see user IDs in telemetry | Users, automatically | Apr-22 | Apr-22 |
Thus, we come to the end of the Wave 1 Release Plans for 2022. As mentioned earlier, the introduction of some features and release dates could be pushed back and there might be additional feature announcements, so keep in touch with us to stay updated on the release plans and never miss an important update. Contact us today to learn more.
We at Intech Systems are committed to providing our customers with the best solutions according to their business requirements. Our firm focuses on implementation, development, and support services for Microsoft Business Applications. Intech is amongst the top Microsoft Dynamics partners in India today and is trusted by 200+ customers globally for its digital transformation solutions. With offices in India and the United States, Intech has over four decades of experience in delivering top-notch technology solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365, F&O, Business Central, CRM, Power BI, Power Apps, Microsoft Azure Cloud, AI, loT, and other custom-developed applications.
We are on a mission to help businesses like yours get ready to embrace and leverage these technological changes to position themselves better for the future. Whether you want to migrate from Navision to Business Central or from a non-Microsoft ERP system, we are here to provide you with the best possible solution.
Email us at sales@intech-systems.com to start your digital transformation journey today.
Click here to the Business Value you can derive from Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Release Wave 1: Business Value