If you are on cloud Business Central you might have noticed the new icon that has appeared on all your ribbons. So, what is Business Central Copilot and how can you use this to make your life easier? This blog will go through some of the highlights from the video at the bottom of this page. Or, watch the video on YouTube. Welcome to Business Central Copilot!
Introduction to Business Central Copilot
With the advent of everyday AI in tools such as Chat GPT it was only a matter of time before AI made its way into your business systems.
Microsoft have invested heavily in AI and now have numerous Copilots embedded in nearly all of their products. Each of them can be used differently and have different pros and cons. In this blog we’ll focus on the current features available in Business Central Copilot.
It’s worth stating that this is newly released and is currently in “Production Ready Preview”. This means that it will change, it will improve, and is there for you to get early access and provide feedback.
If you’d like to talk to us about seeing the Copilot feature in more detail then please get in contact.
Business Central Copilot Features
There are a number of features available with Business Central Copilot. We won’t be covering every feature and be aware that it is in different release stages in different countries. Not all features are available in the UK for instance.
The feature we’ll be covering are:
- Marketing Text (General Availability)
- Analyse List
- Bank Account Reconciliation
- Sales Line Suggestions
- Chat (not available in UK)
I’m going to give a verdict for each of these features and a score out of 10.
Marketing Text
This feature has been available for over a year and is now in General Availability. It made sense to be the first foray into Generative AI in Business Central. You can use it to produce text for an Item based on various parameters (description & attributes). You can tweak the tone of the text and get it generate a tagline, a paragraph or a full brief. You can then synchronise the data to your webshop.
It’s a nice feature and demos well although I’m not sure that anyone with any kind of creative department would use the output, it’s got that “AI feel” about it. However, one thing it does well (as any Generative AI does) is remove that fear of the blank page. Once something is down it’s easier to edit and tweak to make the text work for you (and check it for accuracy!).
Verdict: More hit than miss 6/10.
Analysis Mode in Lists
The analyse list function has been existed for a few versions and is a great addition to Business Central. Copilot allows you to describe how you want to analyse the data and it will interpret and build the view for you.
This is a really useful feature if you’re not sure how to achieve what you want but it needs more training. Currently it struggles to interpret what it is that you want to do and rather than advise, such as “try this page”, it will just error. It also struggles with slightly more complicated requirements.
Hopefully, with some feedback and enhancements this feature will really come into its own.
Verdict: Useful, needs some tidying up and more information when it can’t do what you ask 7/10.
Copilot Bank Reconciliation
Bank Reconciliation is one of those essential but tedious jobs in any finance system. Microsoft have made a number of improvements in recent years to help speed up this process and Copilot has now been added to the mix.
The Copilot functionality appears to be a fine layer over the top of that newer functions. It mainly helps improve the process and bring those features together to get you from A to B quicker.
This feature is going to save people time. BUT (!), there needs to be more control over the Copilot “Post Difference to G/L Account” to allow the user to reverse mistakes that are made. Otherwise, any time savings will be wiped out the first time a small error is made.
Verdict: This is how AI should be used, to make peoples life easier and speed up their processes. A little refinement is required though 8/10.
Sales Line Suggestions
I had high hopes for this function. The ability to generate a quote from an email is a useful function – if you have an email and if there is enough detail. This looks like it’s designed to take that on a step and allow you to type quick notes into a chat box in BC. If you’re in a call centre and someone is talking to you, I can see that this would be useful. Potentially, being able to dictate into this box would speed it up more. Or linking direct into a phone call and detecting what the caller is asking for. Sadly, it doesn’t do any of that yet, maybe I’ll post an idea up. 🤔
How it actually worked was disappointing, yes it was a sandbox and yes, it’s a preview but it was so slow! I also got very inconsistent results. Sometimes it matched all the lines successfully and sometimes none of them. Also, there isn’t an easy way to match up the parts that it hasn’t recognised a screen to allow you to correct or find a match manually would be beneficial and also help to train the model more. Come on Microsoft!
I’d also seen some suggestions online (Microsoft screenshots) that you would be able to drop a file into the box and it interpret it. Sadly, on one of their forums they have said that this isn’t officially a planned feature. Watch this space.
Verdict: I think this is a great idea. But, poorly executed in preview state 5/10.
Business Central Copilot Chat
This is the big one, the ability to ask questions in Business Central and your system give you the answers. The feature allows you to ask questions about:
- How to do things in Business Central
- Finding records and data in Business Central
- Understanding features in Business Central
The first and last of these seem to cover fairly similar areas.
Copilot chat seems to be best for asking how to do things, it certainly can point you in the right direction. Although, how different is that to using a search engine? It summarises the information nicely and presents it in a readable format within BC. The popout pane remains whilst you follow the instructions it has given you, so this is definitely a win.
My biggest concern with this is the same as with most generative AI, the interpretation of hard facts. In a finance system most data is absolute and there shouldn’t be room for ambiguity. The four questions I ask at the end of my video worry me in the way in which the system understands what you’re asking and what it present back to you. It would be nice to be able to disable certain sub-features and prompts in the Copilot Chat rather than disable it entirely, but this doesn’t seem to be possible currently.
Verdict: As a learning and guidance tool this shows real promise. To find data it’s useful, but to analyse and interpret data keep clear until the problems are solved 6/10.
Business Central Copilot Summary
It’s early days for Business Central Copilot and it’s showing real promise. However, it’s best at certain things and interpreting data isn’t one of them. As this is AI/machine learning I have no doubt that Microsoft will help it improve its understanding of hard facts and figures and more importantly what the data in the system actually means in a financial and business sense. Use it to assist and guide you, don’t use it to actually do your job.