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Resources for help and support

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Organisations that use Dynamics 365 Business Central can get technical support for any issues that they might experience. In this article, we show you the following information and many other tips for how to use Business Central:

Chat with Copilot

APPLIES TO: Business Central online

Chat with Copilot is an AI-powered tool that answers questions and finds business data related to Business Central. You can access it from any page by selecting the Shows the icon for chat with CopilotCopilot icon in the upper-right corner. Learn more about chat with Copilot.

Help with fields

Copilot can help you understand the purpose and typical use of individual fields. When you choose Ask Copilot in a tooltip for a field, chat opens with an Explain prompt for the field name and Copilot provides information about it. Copilot links to the articles it referenced, so you can verify the description.

In-product tips

Business Central includes tooltips for fields and actions that can help guide you through the various business processes. Some pages also have teaching tips and tours to help you. On each tooltip and teaching tip, choose the Show help link to open the Help pane where you find information about the current page and related tasks. If the chat with Copilot feature is turned on, instead of the Show help link on tooltips, you have an Ask Copilot link. When you select this link, the chat pane opens and a prompt asking for an explanation of the field is automatically entered, like "Explain field name "Invoice Discount %". On all pages, use Ctrl+F1 on your keyboard to open the Help pane. On any device, use the question mark in the upper right corner to get to the Help. These links can also access content from other websites, such as the websites of providers of any apps that are part of your Business Central.

Help pane

APPLIES TO: Business Central 2022 release wave 1 and later

In Business Central, the Help menu item (the question mark in the top-right corner) gives you access to a Help pane that can help you find answers to your questions. The Help pane has different content, depending on how you access it. The following list describes the cards that are always, or nearly always, present:

  • A link about the current page

    At the top of the pane, a card shows a short description of the current page, if one exists. If there is no page description, then the card provides a single link to an article about the page.

    If Business Central can't find the relevant link, we show the landing page in Microsoft Learn. For example, if the page was part of an app that didn't add context-sensitive Help mapping to Business Central, the Learn link defaults to the landing page.

  • Links to related articles

    These links are related to the current page and will change if you move to another page. The links are limited to the learn.microsoft.com site. If there are more than three links, choose the Show more link to expand the card. Choose any link, and the related article will open in a new browser tab.

  • Links to content for apps on the current page

    These links are based on any app that extends the page or defines the page.

  • Links to other resources

    Three links are always available in the Help pane: Links to the Help & Support page inside Business Central, the Keyboard Shortcuts article, and the Business Central community.

The following list describes how you can access the Help pane and whether cards are added to it:

  • Choose the Help menu item (the question mark in the top-right corner)
  • Use the Ctrl+F1 keyboard shortcut from anywhere in Business Central.
  • Choose the Learn more link on a tooltip for a field, if available. The Learn more link is only available in the mobile app or on custom fields (that is, fields from non-Mocrosoft extensions) in the web client.

Tip

When you choose a link, the target article opens in a new browser tab. You can choose to un-dock the browser tab, then, so that you can view the relevant information side-by-side with Business Central. The pane remains open while you navigate through Business Central so that content you searched for remains visible.

Search in the Help pane

APPLIES TO: Business Central 2021 release wave 2 and later

Use the search field at the top of the Help pane to search for guidance about how to use the product, built-in capabilities, and available training modules. Depending on your search terms, the pane shows five or more links with a short description. Choose a link, or refine your search terms. When you choose a link, the target article opens in a new browser tab. You can choose to undock the browser tab so that you can view the relevant information side-by-side with Business Central. The pane remains open while you navigate through Business Central so that content you searched for remains visible.

Note

In the current version of Business Central, the search field in the Help pane only applies to content that is published to the Dynamics 365 Business Central documentation on Microsoft Learn.

Help & Support page

From the Help pane, you can access the Help & Support page inside Business Central that includes helpful links. You can also see how you can contact technical support for your Business Central.

This section outlines the resources available to you in the different sections of the Help and Support page as outlined in the following list:

Tip

Business Central includes tooltips for fields and actions that can help guide you through the various business processes. Some pages also have teaching tips and tours to help you. On each tooltip and teaching tip, choose the Show help link to open the Help pane where you find information about the current page and related tasks. If the chat with Copilot feature is turned on, instead of the Show help link on tooltips, you have an Ask Copilot link. When you select this link, the chat pane opens and a prompt asking for an explanation of the field is automatically entered, like "Explain field name "Invoice Discount %". On all pages, use Ctrl+F1 on your keyboard to open the Help pane. On any device, use the question mark in the upper right corner to get to the Help.

Find answers

The Find it section provides links to the most common places to find answers to your questions. The links fall into four categories and are explained in the following subsections. Your Business Central partner can configure some of the links, and as a result the behaviour can be slightly different.

Product Help

The Find it section includes two links to product Help:

  • Help about the page you were just viewing in Business Central

    This link is automatically generated. If Business Central can't find the relevant link, the landing page on Microsoft Learn for the default version of Business Central is shown. For example, if the page was part of an app that didn't add context-sensitive Help mapping to Business Central, the Learn link defaults to the landing page.

  • Help landing page for Business Central

    The functionality in the default version of Business Central is described in the Dynamics 365 Business Central documentation Learn more in the Learn more using the product documentation section. You can also extend and customise Business Central with apps from AppSource. All apps provide links to the relevant product Help so that you can always find guidance for the different workflows in your version of Business Central.

Community

In the Business Central community forum, you can submit a question and learn from other Business Central community members. Partners and Microsoft employees participate in the conversations.

If you don't yet have a partner, the Community can also help you get unblocked if you have questions. For example, if you just signed up for a trial, the Community can be a great starting point.

Blog

We talk about new capabilities on the Dynamics 365 Blog, including any special considerations.

Capabilities coming soon

Business Central is updated with major feature updates every six months, and with monthly service updates. Choose the link to view the latest release plan. You can also get an overview of upcoming and recently released capabilities in the release plans across Dynamics 365.

For the longer term overview, the Business Central roadmap page shows the general priorities for Business Central in the coming years.

Do more with your trial

This section gives you shortcuts to the Microsoft commercial marketplace where you can find solutions and services from Business Central partners. Use the links to explore the full capabilities of Business Central before you decide if you want to buy a subscription. You can also find a link to contact the sales team.

Note

This section is only available in Business Central online trial experiences. If you already bought Business Central, the section isn't longer visible.

Give feedback

Periodically, the Business Central team gathers feedback from our users about how satisfied they are with the product. In addition to ratings, you can also provide a written comment. By giving us specific and actionable comments, you help our engineering teams to prioritise the product improvements we invest in. You can also consent to be contacted about your comment. If you do, you're invited to a Teams meeting at a time that's convenient for you. You can provide product suggestions at any time on our Dynamics 365 Ideas website.

Product suggestions

On the Dynamics 365 Ideas site website, you can provide suggestions for new features and capabilities. Your input goes directly into Business Central's engineering backlog for investigation and prioritisation.

Make sure that you search through the list of submitted suggestions. There's a chance that someone already submitted something similar, and that entry might have already received votes. Vote if an idea already has been submitted to get it prioritised on the engineering backlog.

Troubleshooting

The Troubleshooting section shows technical information that your administrator or Business Central partner can use to unblock users. The section includes information about the latest error message, the current version of your Business Central, and a link to go to the Page Inspection page. Learn more in Inspecting Pages in Business Central.

To help you or your supporting partner troubleshoot, you can switch on additional logging in the Report a Problem section. You can then analyse the extra telemetry in the admin centre or Application Insights, for example.

As the internal administrator, you have access to the admin centre where you can continue the troubleshooting. You can view telemetry, manage environments, and manage user sessions. The following articles in the administration content provide more information:

Report a problem

Your Business Central reselling partner helps you with technical support. This section makes it easy for you to contact your reselling partner, if they submit their support contact details. If your Business Central partner then can't resolve the problem, they raise a support ticket with Microsoft.

Learn more in Escalating support issues to Microsoft in the administration content.

Note

With Business Central online, the Report a Problem section is only available if you have paid for a Business Central subscription. If you have signed up for a trial and have not yet purchased Business Central, you don't have a reselling partner, and you can't contact the Microsoft support team. You can find a Business Central partner on the I'm looking for a solution provider page. Learn more in How do I find a reselling partner?.

With Business Central on-premises, this section is only available in 2020 release wave 2 (version 18) and later.

Support contacts

The Report a problem section displays an email address or a hyperlink for you to get in contact with the customer support person or team, like: Do you need technical support? Contact support at someone@example.com or https://www.contoso.com.

Note

If support contact details aren't present, it means that your Business Central reselling partner hasn't provided the information. As a reselling partner, you set up the preferred support contact details in the admin centre. Learn more in Configuring the support experience in the administration content.

To alert your partner to a problem, choose the link to either send an email or open their support site in a new browser tab. You can then add the technical information about your Microsoft Entra tenant from the Troubleshooting section and any other information that you find relevant.

Note

The support contacts information isn't available with Business Central on-premises.

Learn more using the product documentation

A large community of partners extend and customise the base version of Business Central. Each partner and many customers deploy their own Help to their own website. But you can always go to the Dynamics 365 Business Central documentation site to learn more. The site hosts different types of content, such as the following content:

In this section, you can learn about how to navigate the business functionality content.

Business Central includes tooltips for fields and actions that can help guide you through the various business processes. Some pages also have teaching tips and tours to help you. On each tooltip and teaching tip, choose the Show help link to open the Help pane where you find information about the current page and related tasks. If the chat with Copilot feature is turned on, instead of the Show help link on tooltips, you have an Ask Copilot link. When you select this link, the chat pane opens and a prompt asking for an explanation of the field is automatically entered, like "Explain field name "Invoice Discount %". On all pages, use Ctrl+F1 on your keyboard to open the Help pane. On any device, use the question mark in the upper right corner to get to the Help.

Content on the site

This section of Microsoft Learn hosts content from Microsoft that represents the Learn more pillar in the user assistance model. In part, the Learn more content intends to answer those questions that the user interface can't answer, such as the following list:

  • Where does this page fits into the bigger workflow?
  • What comes next?
  • What would be the alternative?

From inside the product, you can access this content either through the Learn more link in tooltips and teaching tips, or by using the Ctrl+F1 keyboard shortcut.

The navigation panel shows the table of contents that groups articles by business area. For example, you read the article Purchase Items for a Sale, and then the table of contents shows you that there's also an article called Correct or Cancel Unpaid Purchase Invoices. Both articles are in the group called Purchasing, which bundles articles that are related to the Purchasing module in Business Central.

The table of contents includes a group of content that describes local functionality for the countries/regions that Microsoft supports. If you don’t see your country/region listed there, it’s probably because a partner localises your country/region. Learn more at Country/regional availability and supported languages.

The local functionality content describes the capabilities in Business Central that can help you be compliant in the supported markets, such as tax statements and other reports. In some cases, the difference between the default version and the specific country/region version is invisible to users. In other cases, users must set up reporting or electronic invoicing in a specific way. If you can't find a description of a certain button or action in the general section, you can hopefully find it in the Local Functionality section.

Tip

On the learn.microsoft.com site as well as in the in-product search field and in the Help pane, the search results show some context for the target article. The context includes the link that might show the name of a country, or a short description that calls out a certain capability or a country/region, for example.

Find other content

If you land on an article that doesn't answer your question, you can find other content in two ways on Microsoft Learn:

  • Use the Filter by title field in the table of contents on the left side of the website

    This way, you can filter by words used in the titles of the various articles. For example, type invoice, and then choose one of the offered links, such as Set Up Invoice Rounding or Create Prepayment Invoices.

    Underneath each link, you can see where that article is in the table of contents. That way, you can easily see if the article is in the Purchasing section or in the section for Australian local functionality, for example.

  • Use the Search field in the top-right corner of the website

    This way, you can search for any term. The site then searches all the content for that term or expression. Search for invoice again, and scroll through the list of hundreds of articles in the Business Central content that uses that word somewhere in the text.

Languages

Content about business functionality is published in several languages. When you land on Microsoft Learn from inside the product, you see the content in the same language as you specified in Business Central, unless that language isn't available on Microsoft Learn.

You can change the language by changing the URL, or you can use the language toggle in the bottom-left corner of the website.

The content is authored in English and published to URLs with en-us as the language code. When new information is published in English, it's then sent off for translation into the supported languages. In some cases, you can't read this new content in your own language for up to four weeks, but in most cases it only takes a week or two. You can always view the latest information by switching the language to en-us.

For each language, the table of contents is translated, but the content in the Local Functionality section is in English except for the country or region that corresponds to the current language. For example, in the Danish version of Microsoft Learn (https://learn.microsoft.com/da-dk/dynamics365/business-central/), you can see the entries for Australian local functionality in Danish in the table of contents, but the articles are in English. Only the articles for Danish local functionality are translated into Danish.

Recommended content

On Microsoft Learn, each article shows a pane with links to other articles. The Recommended content section is automatically generated based on how each article is used with the rest of the site. The links aren't static and change over time.

Tell us what you think

With Microsoft Learn, each article has two buttons at the end of the article. The This product button sends you to the Ideas site, and the This page button lets you submit feedback about the content through GitHub. In both cases, you must create an account if you don't already have one. For product feedback, you must sign in with your work or organisational email account. For access to GitHub, you can use any email address when you create an account.

We welcome your contributions, both as pull requests with suggestions or corrections to the content, and as GitHub Issues with bugs or questions. But be mindful that feedback and contributions to the dynamics365smb-docs repo is about the content, not about the product.

Important

Microsoft accepts pull requests to the dynamics365smb-docs repo only, not the language-specific repos. If you have feedback about translations, you can report a GitHub issue in the relevant repo.

Microsoft Learn hosts content for other products and other types of content. Use the links at the top of the site to navigate to Microsoft training site or to the Dynamics 365 release plans, for example. You can also find a link to the Dynamics 365 Community site, for example.

Apps and other solutions

If your Business Central includes functionality that isn't provided by Microsoft, then the provider of that functionality also provides Learn more content on their own website. You can access this content in the same way as in the default version of Business Central, such as by using the Ctrl+F1 keyboard shortcut.

The same applies if you use Business Central on-premises.

See also

Find free e-learning modules for Business Central here