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Chat with Copilot (preview)

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[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

This article explains how to chat with Copilot to get answers about your company data and assistance with tasks and subject matters related to Business Central.​

Important

About chat with Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that helps spark creativity, boost productivity, and eliminate tedious tasks. By chatting with Copilot in Business Central, you can ask questions and find business data using natural language. Here's what you can do:

  • Find business data for your company in Business Central. Use chat to look up and open data about entities or records related to business processes, such as customers, vendors, sales orders, items, and more. For example, ask Copilot: "Show me the latest sales order for Adatum."

    By working together with the analysis assist feature, Copilot can also aggregate data for you. Prompting chat to group records or perform calculations, such as summing or averaging, generates an analysis tab displaying the results.

  • Get explanations or step-by-step guidance on various tasks. For example, ask "Help me understand dimensions" or "How do I post a sales order." Learn more.

  • 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 it's easy to verify the description.

Copilot's sources responses from the official information available on Microsoft Learn at Dynamics 365 Business Central documentation.

Using chat with Copilot streamlines your workflow by bypassing traditional navigation and product help.

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Prerequisites

Learn more about geographic and language availability at Copilot international availability.

Get started using chat with Copilot

  1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select the Shows the icon for chat with Copilot Copilot icon Shows cllour number 1.

    The Copilot pane appears as shown in the image:

    Shows the icon for chat with Copilot pane with callouts

  2. In the Ask a question box at the bottom Shows callout number 2, enter your question, and then select the arrowhead or press Enter to get an answer.

    Your input, known as a prompt, can be a question, statement, or command.

    Tip

    Copilot includes a couple of features that can help you write questions:

    • To help formulate questions, select one of the prompt guides—Find, Explain, or Guide—available the top of the pane Shows callout number 3 or from the Shows prompt guide icon View Prompts icon above Ask a question box Shows callout number 4. Prompt guides are predefined short phrases that begin a question or prompt. They save you time, guide Copilot's responses toward a category of answers, and help you learn how to phrase questions to get the best responses.
    • Select the prompt suggestions above the View prompts button Shows callout number 5 to automatically ask a predefined question to see how the questions and answers work. Prompt suggestions are only available when you're using the CRONUS demonstration company.

  3. Review the answers displayed in the Copilot pane Shows callout number 6.

    Depending on your question, the answer can contain text, links to records or pages in Business Central, and links to Business Central help articles on Microsoft Learn.

    To assist you better, Chat might ask for more details about your prompt and offer you to choose from a few options. In some instances, Chat follows an answer with related prompt suggestions for you to choose from Shows callout number 5.

  4. Ask another question to refine the answer.

    Chat remembers the context, which means that you don't have to repeat key points from the original question.

Clear chat to start over

If you want to switch to a different topic of conversation with Copilot, select the Shows the clear chat icon Start a new Copilot chat session icon at the bottom of the Copilot pane above the question box. This action clears Copilot's memory of your last few messages. Starting over is often helpful after a lengthy conversation with many messages, and it can help Copilot deliver more accurate answers.

The chat also clears if you close or sign out of Business Central.

Tips for better questions

Basic techniques to improve the answers

Here are some ways you can improve the answers you get from Copilot:

  • Ask clear and specific questions.
  • Be concise and avoid long sentences or multiple sentences.
  • Ask one question at a time.
  • Use natural language, expressing the questions in a friendly and conversational manner.
  • Use keywords, phrases, and terms that you know are used in Business Central, either in the app or documentation.
  • Ask follow-up questions or rephrase the last question if the initial response doesn't fully answer your questions.
  • Clear the current chat session to start over if you're asking a question on a different subject matter than previous question.

Prompting for aggregating data on analysis tabs

If you prompt using phrases related to data aggregation, chat creates an analysis tab that you can open from a link it replies with in the Copilot pane. For example, the following figure illustrates an answer you could get for the prompt: "In which countries are my top customer":

Shows a link tot ana analysis tab in the chat with Copilot pane

To generate this type of response, use common words and phrases related to data aggregation and analysis, like "group", "pivot", "sum", "average", "most", and "least", in different variations. For example:

show me customers grouped by their country and zipcode
which customers got most discounts
group the current records by name and location

Learn more about analysis tabs in Analyze data in lists with help from Copilot.

Example prompts

Your questions to Copilot vary depending on your role, current task, the processes that your organization follows, and how you express yourself in words. The following are examples that show different ways of asking questions in the chat pane that can inspire you to write your own questions based on your situation.

Prompt: Find the Item with Description 'ATHENS Desk'

In this example, you give clear instructions for Copilot to locate a single record. For example, you hint that the record is found in the Item list. You indicate the field 'Description' must be a specific text that you have typed using quotes and with correct capitalization. Copilot usually responds accurately when given a few precise hints, but you can also use more casual language as in the next example.

Prompt: Give me the latest invoice for adatum

In this example, you ask Copilot to locate a record, but the question is less precise and might result in a less accurate answer. Copilot can often understand, or guess, that the invoice you're looking for isn't a purchase invoice but a sales invoice from the Posted Sales Invoice list. Copilot would also need to match adatum with Adatum Corporation that is the full and precise name for the sell-to Customer name associated with the invoice.

Prompt: Show me customer ledger entries for Adatum from about three weeks ago

In this example, you ask copilot to solve a common date puzzle that typically requires you to open a calendar for reference, or to use advanced date range filters. Copilot can usually understand common expressions and business terms.

Prompt: How does I save my filterrings for later?

In this example, you ask Copilot for guidance on how to perform some task in Business Central. Copilot can usually understand the intent of your question, even if there are a few grammatical errors, spelling mistakes or abbreviations.

Provide feedback on answers

You can rate the answers you get from Copilot by using the like (thumbs up) button for good rating or the dislike (thumbs down) button for a poor rating. When you select the dislike button, you can choose a reason, including inaccurate, inappropriate, or other. This information can help us improve suggestions.

Analyze data in lists with help from Copilot
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Configure Copilot and AI capabilities
Responsible AI FAQ for chat with Copilot
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