Plan and prepare for Dynamics 365 Business Central in 2021 release wave 2
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.
Important
The 2021 release wave 2 plan covers all new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from October 2021 to March 2022. In this article, you'll find the product overview and what's new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Overview
Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive business application solution that is designed and optimized for small and midsized organizations. For 2021 release wave 2, Business Central investments center on helping users get to productive usage faster, whether they are new or existing customers. We expand the built-in tours to cover more standard entities for better onboarding of additional business roles. We continue our Better with Microsoft 365 investment by bringing further capabilities to the Business Central and Teams experience. Finally, and not least, we continue our rapid expansion to more countries and regions. In 2021 release wave 1, Business Central added 13 new countries and regions. In release wave 2, we expect to announce availability in more than 10 more countries and regions.
Some examples of our investments in various areas:
Administration: In 2021 release wave 2, Business Central delivers new capabilities to simplify and improve the way our partners administer tenants. Administrators enjoy new experiences for managing licenses and permissions.
Application: You can now get better explanations and guidance on errors that are caused by problems in posting setup and dimensions. Improvements to reporting, bank reconciliation, and supply chain capabilities will also help customers be more productive.
Better with Microsoft 365: Share a record from the browser client in Microsoft Teams.
Country and regional: We continue our rapid expansion in more countries/regions with 10 or more new markets in this release wave.
Development: We continue to deliver new capabilities for developers.
Governance and administration: This wave adds more operations in the Operation log section of the Business Central admin center.
Modern clients: We improve the discoverability of reports across departments by applying a filter to the links that are shown in the Role Explorer.
Onboarding: Built-in tours cover more standard entities to support the onboarding of more business roles. A new help pane will help users get unblocked faster when they experience an issue.
Service and platform: We continue our effort in improving the performance of Business Central.
Updates to Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 release wave 2
Tip
Download the release overview guide and share with your team as you plan to onboard the new capabilities included in this release wave.
* Overview guide available in English version only.
Investment areas
Application
In 2021 release wave 2, we deliver updates based on the most popular requests for improvement. We'll invest in better reporting, better management of dimensions, and several improvements to the supply chain area.
Modern clients
Business Central offers an extensive portfolio of clients so that users can achieve more at their desks, at home, or on the go. With users across a diverse range of business roles and proficiency levels, and with local and accessibility needs, we are committed to make sure that the user interface is both intuitive to start with and powerful when needed.
Your voice matters: We assess feedback across numerous community channels at a regular cadence, and we run user studies. Based on this research, we have identified client enhancements for 2021 release wave 2.
Governance and administration
The 2021 release wave 2 delivers a set of admin and governance capabilities designed to help admins and IT pros set up, secure, manage, govern, and monitor customer environments.
Better with Microsoft 365
In 2021 release wave 2, we invest in better integration with Excel. We also improve the support for collaborative business processes in Microsoft Teams so that you can bring Business Central pages into a Teams channel.
Development
We continue to invest in a rich spectrum of extensibility tooling capabilities for developers, including making the AL language even stronger, providing developers with a great experience.
Country and regional
There is a large demand for Dynamics 365 Business Central online. We are increasing the global availability to cover more countries and regions so that small and midsized businesses across the world can achieve more. Expansion to more countries and regions is achieved through partner-led localization. Our partners create the relevant localization apps that are published to AppSource. In combination with the built-in language offerings, Dynamics 365 Business Central is then available to serve customers in 50-plus countries and regions worldwide.
Microsoft Power Platform
With Business Central 2021 release wave 2, we improve the integration with Microsoft Dataverse. We also enhance the integration with Microsoft Power Platform with support for workspaces in Power BI.
Onboarding
Business Central 2021 release wave 2 brings continued improvements to the onboarding experience for Business Central. We add more teaching tips, building on the framework that was introduced in 2021 release wave 1. We improve the checklist experience to add support for business process tours, and we enhance the framework to add support for partners and ISVs to automate the onboarding for their specific solutions.
Service and platform
No matter the industry type of a small or medium-sized business (SMB), business users expect a dependable service and platform that they can run their business on.
To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Dynamics 365 Business Central below:
For application administrators
User-impacting features to the user experience enabled automatically
User-impacting features should be reviewed by application administrators. This facilitates release change management and enables successful onboarding of new capabilities released to market. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users, automatically" in the release plan.
Features that must be enabled by application administrators
This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users by admins, makers, or analysts" in the release plan.
Get the most out of Business Central
| Helpful links | Description |
|---|---|
| Release plan | View all capabilities included in the release. |
| Product updates | Stay up to date on latest product updates. |
| Release calendar | Know important release milestones. |
| Licensing | Improve your understanding of how to license Business Central. |
| Product documentation | Find documentation for Business Central. |
| User community | Engage with Business Central experts and peers in the community. |
| Upcoming events | Find and register for in-person and online events. |
| Product trials | Get started with Business Central. |