Directions EMEA 2025

Every six months, Microsoft sets the pace for companies' digital everyday lives.
Wave 1 in the spring. Wave 2 in autumn.

Two fixed rhythms that together drive continuous development throughout the Microsoft universe. This applies to everything from Business Central and the Power Platform to Copilot, AI agents and sustainability tools.

With 2025 Wave 2, Microsoft is moving one step closer to an ERP and data ecosystem where:

• People, data and AI work side by side
• Several processes become self-driving without losing control
• Business Central, Power Platform and Copilot are tied more closely together in one flow

For companies, this means faster decisions, fewer manual intermediate bills and systems that feel like part of the team and not like a technical intermediary.

For us at KOLLAB, this means that we can help you even better in orchestrating the interaction between people, data and technology.

Why is Wave 2 important?

Directions EMEA is Microsoft's annual partner conference with a focus on Business Central and the surrounding ecosystem. This is where Microsoft:

• Lifts the veil on the most important news in Business Central, the Power Platform and Copilot
• Shows how AI Agents and new automation options become an integral part of core processes
• Rolls out changes in licenses, security, governance and infrastructure, which IT and ERP managers must deal with

Wave 2 is the autumn release – that typically sets the direction for the coming year. This year, the common thread is clear: more autonomy, more coherence, more control – less friction.

AI agents working as you think ahead

The most significant news in Wave 2 is the new ones autonomous AI agents to Business Central. Where automation used to be about performing fixed actions, it is now about understanding the intention behind:

• Sales Order Agent can read emails and attachments, recognize orders, delivery addresses and price lines, and create sales orders automatically in Business Central.
• Payable's Agent helps accounts payable by matching invoices, proposing accounts and handling approvals so that the accounts payable process can increasingly run on its own.

The agents continuously learn from your data and can be controlled and corrected with instructions so that people still set the direction while the AI takes the legwork. At the same time, the focus is on data security and control:

• The agents build on Microsoft's existing security policies and rights structure
• Data becomes in your tenant
• “Human-in-the-loop” ensures that people approve essential decisions
• Administrators can limit which data the agents may access

In short: a first, very concrete step towards more self-driving processes without compromising governance.

Copilot moves into everyday life

Copilot is no longer a function you click forward, but a natural part of the user experience throughout the Microsoft platform. In Business Central 2025 Wave 2 you can, among other things:

• Use Explain Prompts to ask questions in natural language:
  • “Why is our inventory bond increasing in October?”
  • “Which customers have the lowest margin in the last quarter?”

• Get answers included context, data visualization and explanations, directly from your own data
• Get help formulating texts, descriptions, emails and reports based on data from Business Central

Copilot thus becomes less of a tool you turn on and more of a cooperation, you have in everyday life. At the same time, Copilot will be more closely integrated with the Power Platform, so automation, data and insight tied together in one flow.

Power Platform and Business Central: one unified flow

Another distinct common thread in Wave 2 is the connection across the Microsoft ecosystem.

• Power Automate makes it even easier to build authentication flows, notifications and automatic actions without code.
• Power Apps can draw directly on Business Central data and present it in user interfaces targeted at specific roles.
• Power BI gets closer integration with Business Central incl. more dynamic reports and drill-back to the specific items in the ERP system.

Improvements you feel in everyday life

In addition to AI and integrations, Wave 2 includes a number of changes that make Business Central faster, more stable and more user-friendly.

Feature Management – control what is activated when

Microsoft does not activate all new features automatically. Many news must enabled via Feature Management, so you can:

• Test in sandbox before production
• Roll out new features gradually
• Avoid surprises for users

In version 27 (Wave 2) we see, among other things:

• UI optimizations that provide faster page loading
• Improved search functionality, incl. Advanced search, which helps when you don't know the exact name of a function
• Option to add fields in analysis views

At the same time, there is already forced changes in pipeline:

• Version 28 (April 2026): New selling price structure is automatically activated
• Version 29 (October 2026): Multiple user posting becomes standard and can provide performance improvements for heavy bookkeeping runs

This makes it crucial to have control over Feature Management and to test the consequences in the sandbox in good time.

Small UX grips – big difference

Several changes to the user interface remove daily annoyances. These are small things, but they can be clearly felt by users:

• Side panels no longer steal unnecessary space from the main window
• Week numbers in the calendar can be easily displayed so that planning becomes more intuitive
• FlowFields are calculated only for visible fields, resulting in noticeable performance gains on heavy pages

Finance and reporting: more governance, less complexity

Although AI fills the headlines, it happens very importantly on the finance side. Wave 2 brings, among other things:

• Possibility to create multiple fixed assets directly from one purchase document
• Alternative posting groups for more flexible handling of employee transactions
• A new one Audit Trail Report, which strengthens documentation and auditing
• More options to customize reports with Excel layouts, Word templates and new Power BI reports with drill-back
• Improved functions for calculating excise duties

The goal is not “more reports for reports”, but more calm in the stomach at CFO, controller and accounting manager, because traceability, documentation and flexibility are improved.

Supply Chain and production: foresight as a competitive advantage

On the inventory and production side, Wave 2 also pushes up the level:

• Option to choose standard calculation methods for production consumption, depending on whether you want to record expected or actual consumption
• Improved management of subcontractors and changed posting order so that the system posts in the correct line order – important for complex production flows

Combined with AI agents and Power BI insights, companies get a much better basis for precise planning and disposition, and thus a more robust supply chain.

New Quality Management module: structured quality control of incoming goods and materials

The new Quality Management module in Business Central makes quality control an integral part of your logistics and production flow. The module is built to help you meet industry standards and regulatory requirements by systematically incorporating quality control into reception, production and assembly.

Specifically, you can define, when and where quality control must be carried out:

• By receipt of goods (purchase receipts), so that the quality of incoming materials is assessed before they come into play in production.
• On production output, where finished goods are automatically or manually checked against your quality criteria.
• On assembly output, where assembled products are quality assured before they are forwarded to the warehouse or customer.
• As manual or scheduled quality checks at fixed intervals – e.g. on particularly critical materials or production lines.

For each quality control you can define boats scope and parameters: whether the check must apply to a specific item number, a product group, lot or serial numbers, and which properties must be measured, e.g. weight, dimensions, density or other physical characteristics. At the same time, you can set up triggers (e.g. accounting for goods receipt or completed production), sampling for external laboratories and quarantine procedures, so that goods are automatically put in “freeze” until the quality is approved.

The module also supports documentation and analysis: that can be generated quality certificates and certificates of analysis across goods and batches, and management gets an overview via overviews of both quality status and quality order across production and suppliers. It provides a more data-driven grip on quality, and makes it significantly easier to document to customers, authorities and certification bodies that you deliver stable and traceable quality.

For new environments, the quality module is provided as a standard extension, while for existing installations it can be added via AppSource. It makes it possible to activate and test the Quality Management module controlled –, for example in a sandbox –, before it is rolled out widely in your production and purchasing organisation.

A public preview is planned for December 2025.

Sustainability moves into ERP

Sustainability is increasingly becoming an integrated business parameter, and Wave 2 clearly reflects that. The new Sustainability Role Center collects ESG data directly in Business Central:

• Emissions, water consumption and waste can be recorded and analysed
• CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) and EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) supported in standard
• Via Item Charges transport and energy consumption can be linked to the ESG accounts
• Copilot can help estimate CO₂ footprints and generate report drafts adapted to e.g. CSRD Requirements

In practice, this means that sustainability moves away from Excel appendices and separate spreadsheets and into The ERP core.

E-commerce and e-documents: less manual, more synchronized

Wave 2 also strengthens the area around e-commerce and e-documents:

• The Shopify connector updated to new API versions and more stable synchronization
• E-documents can now include not only invoices but also deliveries, and they can be created from drafts or included in Power Automate flows
• It will be much easier to build coherent digital flows across sales channels, purchasing and finance with less duplication and better traceability

For companies with multiple sales channels, this means both less manual maintenance and better data quality.

A technical foundation built for the future

Beneath the surface, Wave 2 also strengthens the technical foundation: what is rarely seen, but always felt. Among the news are:

• Option to add AI resources directly in the AL code
• Improved integration with Visual Studio Code for developers
• Support of IPv6, customer-controlled encryption keys and improved telemetry
• Sandbox environments, which can be updated to preview versions, so that you can test upcoming releases with your own data
• Possibility to stop and roll back updates directly from the admin center if something goes wrong along the way

In addition, the test and quality work gets a boost via Page Scripting, where you can record user actions and play them as automated tests. Now also with the option to edit the recordings.

Model Context Protocol (MCP): standardized bridge between Copilot agents and external systems

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that allows Copilot Studio agents to be connected directly to existing knowledge and data servers – without custom-built integration for each source. In practice, an MCP server acts as a layer between your internal systems and Copilot, where it exhibits:

• Resources – file-like“data that the agent can read for context (eg API response, file content or other data sources)
• Tools functions that the language layer can call to perform actions
• Prompts predefined prompt templates for specific tasks

When an MCP server is connected, the available tools and resources automatically become visible in Copilot Studio and can be assigned to the relevant agents. Name, descriptions, input and output are inherited directly from the MCP server, and when something changes on the server – e.g. an updated API or a new tool –, the change takes effect in Copilot without additional maintenance. This makes MCP suitable as a common standard for exposing both internal APIs, data platforms and third-party systems to Copilot agents.

At the same time, governance is under control: Copilot Studio only reflects the tools and resources exhibited from your MCP server, and you can control which agents may use which tools. When connecting to non-Microsoft systems via MCP, you as an organization are responsible for content and access: just like with other integrations.

To utilize MCP in Copilot Studio must Generative Orchestration be activated. You can then: connect to an existing MCP server (via YAML-based templates), set up your own MCP server, add the desired tools and resources to the agents and – if relevant – publish your MCP connector so that it can be used across tenants.

In this way, MCP becomes a central link between Copilot agents, Business Central, the data platform and other business systems, and makes it much easier to expand the AI agents with the company's own data and actions.

Continia: Document Capture, Banking and Expense – closer to standard

Too many Business Central customers play Continia Solutions a central role.
Wave 2 and latest app updates mean, among other things:

• Document Capture:
  • One-click connection for e-invoicing
  • Easier setup of customers and suppliers for e-document exchange
  • Closer linkage to BC Sustainability and ESG calculations
• Payment Management → Continia Banking:
  • PM is phased out and replaced by Continia Banking over the coming year
• Expense Management:
  • Mass approval of expenses
  • Better options for customizing posting descriptions for imported banking transactions

For the finance and finance function, this means more automation – and better interaction between bank, expenses, e-documents and ERP.

What does this mean for you and what is the next step?

Business Central 2025 Wave 2 is not “just another update”.
It is a release where:

• AI and autonomous agents are seriously moving into the core processes
• The connection between Business Central, Power Platform and Copilot is sharpened
• Sustainability, governance and security are considered as standard
• The everyday experience for users improves – both in speed and ease of use

For you as a company, the next step is to:

1. Get an overview: Which of the new functions are relevant to your business and IT landscape?
2. Test safely: Utilize sandbox, preview versions and Feature Management to test without risk.
3. Prioritize: Choose the 3–5 measures that provide the greatest value – e.g. AI agents in the creditor, better reporting or the sustainability module.
4. Plan roadmap: Make a plan towards versions 28 and 29 so that mandatory changes do not come as a surprise.

If you need sparring on what Wave 2 concretely means for your setup, we can COLLAB help with:

• Review of your current solution
• Identification of relevant news and risks
• A concrete one roadmap for how you can best utilize Business Central 2025 Wave 2 – without getting operations out of control.