What Is A Release Wave?

Microsoft are great at regularly releasing additional functionality to their Business Applications suite, and they do this through means of a ‘release wave’. These release waves come twice a year and extend the existing functionality of the system that you are using.

We usually get access to the release notes around February, ready for the general release from April onwards. For those of you who love to future plan, this release wave is for April onwards (a couple of months early I know) the next one will be September, so keep your eyes peeled for what we’ve got coming in June/July!

The release waves are released in 2 stages which are public preview and general availability.  

Today we will be looking at what is going to be added to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central over the next few months and what toolsets you’ll be able to leverage to make using Business Central even better than it already is.

Overview Of Dynamics 365 Business Central

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a business management tool allowing you to automate and streamline your business processes in a highly scalable and adaptable format.

You can touch most of your key business processes with Business Central, such as finance, sales, service and operations.

You can easily add functionality to manage your specific industry needs by using add ons, applications from industry leading independent solution vendors (ISV’s), or custom-built solutions by your chosen partner *cough, FormusPro cough*.

What To Expect & When

This release wave is broken down into ten topics, which will be periodically released over the next few months:

• Application
• Copilot & AI
• Country & Regional
• Development
• E-Commerce
• Governance and Administration
• Reporting and Data Analysis
• Supply Chain Management
• Sustainability Management
• User Experiences

Application

All the updates for the core functionality of Business Central are all hitting general availability in April 2025. The release updates include: integrate Field Service with Service Management, analyse subscription billing data with Power BI reports and view your availability in Field Service work orders. You’ll also automatically have access to post foreign currency adjustments to unrealized gain and loss accounts.

These updates haven’t got a public preview date available, so looks like they will be launched in April 2025.

Copilot & AI

It wouldn’t be a Microsoft update with out mentioning Copilot! And for good reason too, as the functions in Business Central are only getting better as we drive forward into the future. This month (February) we’ll see the ‘use sales order agent to automate sales order-taking’ function hitting public preview! General availability will come at some point in June 2025.

You’ll have to wait a bit longer, until April 2025, to get the public preview for the rest of the updates for Copilot & AI in Business Central. You can look forward to the fact that you’ll soon be able to:

• Chat with Copilot to learn how to install add-on apps
• Summarize with Copilot
• Suggest gas emissions in sustainability journals with Copilot
• Enhance purchase order line matching with Copilot

There’s not yet a confirmed general availability date for the above but be sure to check our news page for regular updates.

Country & Regional

Business Central will soon be available in more countries and regions! We’ll see A-NZ format in e-docs in Australia and New Zealand as well as defined languages per environment, so we’ll see further enhancement to the usability of the system across the globe! Which is very exciting.

Development

In release wave 1 2025 Microsoft aim to enhance the ability and empower their consultants, citizen developer and users to do more, while lowering the cost of changes across the platform.

All the following changes will be generally available in April 2025. 

• Move tables and fields with data across extensions as part of refactoring
• Troubleshoot clients, apps and add-ons with telemetry
• Mock outbound HttpClient web service calls during testing
• View build metadata in the Extension Management page
• Embed Power BI content in web client with new page type

E-Commerce

E-commerce has a lot of updates in the pipeline with general availability ranging from April to August 2025. We’ll go through the upcoming feature enhancements in order of when they’ll be hitting general availability.

April 2025

• Delete incorrect e-documents and avoid duplicates
• Activate channels in Shopify Connector
• Send e-documents via a service and email simultaneously
• Import and export more data using Shopify metafields
• Troubleshoot export issues on Shopify Skipped records page
• Automate embedded attachments in PEPPOL
• Create e-documents from posted sales invoices
• Process e-documents in two steps
• Export reminders and finance charges as PEPPOL files
• Use e-documents to fix unposted purchase credit memo’s

May 2025

• Use payments with the E-Document framework
• Generate multiple incoming e-documents from posted sales invoices

June 2025

• Preview incoming e-documents prior to processing

August 2025

• Send e-documents with Power Automate and other solutions with API’s

Governance & Administration

There are new tools on the horizon for administrators to manage environments, apps and data migrations! In April you’ll be able to add support for MultiSubnetFailover. While you’ll have to wait until May 2025 to view app compatibility with future versions in admin centre.

In June 2025 you’ll be able to automate environment management with the Power Platform connector. The final update to governance and administration will come quite late (close to the second release wave date) in September where you’ll be able to update sandbox environments to preview versions.

Reporting and Data Analytics

Having a grasp on your reporting is essential for most organizations, and this thought probably pushed the move to Business Central over some of the other solutions available in the market, and there are further enhancements coming to the analytics you already have access to.

There will be enhanced analytics for manufacturing, access reports and request metadata in Word layouts and the use of enhanced financial report capabilities coming to general availability in April 2025.

Supply Chain Management

The enhancements coming to SCM in wave 1 2025 are extensive, with all the features reaching general availability in April 2025.

• Use enhanced customer document layouts for service management
• Add more columns to various pages to gain more insight
• Block items or variants from production output
• Avoid document number errors when you post project journals
• Handle production output with warehouse put-aways
• Use streamlined product design tools in manufacturing
• Manage document attachments in manufacturing

Sustainability Management

Driving positive environmental and social impact to contribute to a more sustainable future is the driving force for many organizations, which is why there’s such a focus on this in the release wave 1 updates that’ll be scattered between April and October 2025.

• Use ESG Reporting integrated with Business Central (Apr 25)
• Specify default sustainability values for various entities (Apr 25)
• Capture sustainability data with general journals (Apr 25)
• Use water and waste management with sustainability (Apr 25)
• Generate a CSRD preparation report (May 25)
• Enable taxonomy elements for ESRS and other standards (Jun 25)
• Enable sustainability Scope 3 value chain for assembly and transfers (Oct 25)
• Provide carbon equivalent data for sales based on Scope 3 automation (Oct 25)
• Start value chain in purchase process for Scope 3 in sustainability (Oct 25)
• Use sustainability scope 3 value chain in manufacturing (Oct 25)

User Experience

The final topic to cover is around the user experience in Business Central, allowing users to more efficiently update, fix mistakes and enter data in an intelligent way.

You’ll be able to preview PDF attachments directly in the web client, something we know people have been wanting to do for a while now, and as of April 2025 it’ll be here! You’ll also be able to optimize the screen estate usage on the web so you can customize your screen to the device you’re on, from large external monitors to resizing the FactBox pane in narrow mode, again available in April 2025.

Now we know that was a lot of information to digest, and there’s a lot of updates rolling out over the next few months, so if you have any questions or would like a solution expert to dive a bit deeper into some of the key points you believe you’ll make the best use of, then please feel free to get in touch today!