New features in the Business Central 2022 release wave 2

Business Central is a comprehensive business management solution on the cloud for small and mid-sized organizations that helps automate and streamline business processes and manage your entire business. This powerful solution enables companies to manage their business, including finance, manufacturing, sales, shipping, project management, services, and more.

Microsoft releases two major waves of updates and enhancements for Business Central each year. In the 2022 release wave 2 of Business Central, numerous updates and new features were made to enhance the onboarding process, user experiences, reporting, and connectivity. In this post, we will highlight key updates and new features we feel are most beneficial to Business Central users.

The 2022 release wave 2 of Business Central makes it easier for users to rapidly switch companies across environments. Designated users can use this new feature to view, edit, and compare data across companies. Visual cues have been added in the app bar to help users quickly identify which company and environment they are currently working in and include a company badge that can be customized with a specific color and up to 6 characters if needed.

To use the company switcher, follow the steps below:

1. Select the standard company icon in the upper-right corner of Business Central
   This is the company badge and can be customized for each company
2. In the Available Companies pane, select the company that you want to switch to
3. Select the Switch drop-down menu and select one of the following:
   1. Switch – opens the role center for the selected company in the same browser tab
   2. Open in new tab – opens the role center for the selected company in a new browser tab, keeping the original company open as well
   3. Open in new tab and go to the same page – this option is available for list pages and opens the same list for the selected company in a new tab

The action bar received numerous updates and enhancements during the 2022 release wave 2. Improvements have been made to remove redundancy and enhance customization to produce a more user-friendly experience. For example, a user could personalize a page to reduce the number of menus needed for a specific action. To do this, users can activate the personalize mode and simply drag and drop different actions to tailor their interface for common tasks. Additionally, the new modern action bar reduces clutter by grouping all related actions together, avoiding the same action being available in multiple menus. Microsoft has also given users the option to switch off the modern action bar feature to return to the legacy layout.

Other improvements made to the action bar in this release include:

• The Navigate menu item has been retired and merged with the entity menu. For example, on the Customer Card, the Navigate menu items have been merged with the Customer menu.
• Frequently used actions are in more prominent places in the action bar
• The action bar is more customizable, enhancing personalization
• Split buttons are now available to give users a quick one-click reach to the first action in the menu

Microsoft has teamed up with Shopify to create a powerful connector between Business Central and the e-commerce giant Shopify. This connector helps organizations create a better online shopping experience. In the 2022 release wave 2, Microsoft has made numerous improvements to the user interface for the Shopify & Business Central connector. For example, Microsoft has made the following changes to the Shopify Shop Card:

• The Shop Code field is made mandatory
• The Item Synchronization tab has been renamed to Item/Product Synchronization
• The Inventory Synchronization tab has been removed. Because of this, the Inventory Tracked and Default Inventory Policy fields are moved to the Item/Product Synchronization
• Sync Orders and Sync Shipment actions are added to the Sync Group
• Certain fields are now only editable if certain conditions are met
• The blank option for the Image Sync field has been renamed to Disabled

In the 2022 release wave 2 of Business Central, users will see improvements to the onboarding experience. Additionally, Microsoft has added an in-product experience that will make it easy for users to find relevant third-party apps available in AppSource that connect to external business productivity services, such as banks. These apps will be easy to install and set up. Enhancements to the onboarding feature make it easy to:

• Learn how to use Business Central – the tooltip descriptions for sensitive and essential fields have been improved to make it easier for users to learn how to use Business Central
• Find apps to connect to core services – users can easily identify the right app that connects your business to external business productivity services
• Install and set up new apps – the app installation guide in Business Central has been improved allowing for a smoother installation experience
• Access setup pages for new apps – after an app is installed, users can access the app’s setup page from the Extensions Management page in Business Central

Previously, Microsoft introduced Excel layouts for reports. Microsoft is committed to continuing to improve this experience. In the release wave 2, users can now choose the Excel layout on the report’s request page. To use this feature while running a report with an Excel layout, users can use a dropdown menu to choose from the available report layouts for the report. This enables organizations to have multiple layouts for the same report data set. For example, a company can have a specific layout for a planning meeting, a layout used for mail merge, and a third layout for a board meeting.

In addition to the new Excel layout capability, a new set of APIs has been released for the finance area that can be used in both Excel and Power BI. This empowers users to create their own Excel-based financial reports for a more detailed analysis of data. The APIs and data sets are created for selected data. The first datasets consist of data for:

• General Ledger data including budgets and dimensions
• Accounting Periods and Business Units
• Customers, Vendors, and Ledger entries including detailed Ledger entries
• Webhook subscriptions and entity definitions

In the 2022 release wave 2 of Business Central, Microsoft continues to improve the way it integrates with Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, and the Dataverse. These improvements and enhancements allow users to:

• Embed multiple Power BI report parts in the Role Center at the same time
• Personalize and design the Automate actions in the web client
• Switch Power Automate features on or off
• Use Power Automate to notify Business Central of Dataverse entity changes

There are numerous other updates, new features, and enhancements made to Business Central not included in the list above. To learn about the rest of the new features and functionalities included in the 2022 release wave 2 of Business Central, contact our team today.

Rand Group is your support partner to ensure your company fully utilizes the new functionalities and all users are trained to maintain peak Business Central performance. Our Business Central experts will work with your team to highlight key features most beneficial to your organization and train your users to ensure maximum return on investment.