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Microsoft announced on the Dynamics 365 blog ↗ that creating autonomous AI agents using the Microsoft Copilot Studio tool will be possible in November this year. At the same time, Microsoft will also introduce 10 ready-made AI agents to the Dynamics 365 product family. Among them is an agent designed for Business Central – Sales Order Agent.
In the blog content, there is only one sentence about the agent for BC (I still don’t understand why Business Central is always overlooked whenever it appears in the context of all Dynamics 365 products). Fortunately, we can learn a bit more about it from the Sales Order Agent for Business Central preview video ↗:
What’s interesting among the other published agents?
Among the 10 agents for Dynamics 365, it’s worth mentioning the Financial Reconciliation Agent for the Copilot for Finance application. Already present in Copilot for Finance for some time, the capability to reconcile entries from various sources (not necessarily BC) will now take the form of an interactive agent. We can connect Copilot for Finance with BC data, so this agent is available for potential use.
The remaining agents are intended for work with Dynamics 365 applications outside my area of interest, although they look impressive functionally – I could see many of them, with their functional scopes, in Business Central as well (a dreamer)… On the other hand, I would also like to see many standard functions, available for years in, for example, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management (formerly AX), in BC (an incorrigible dreamer).
But let’s get back to the agent designated for BC. Below are my observations on the new functionality of the Sales Order Agent for Business Central.
What a Sales Order Agent actually is
Sales Order Agent manifests as a functionality suitable for small companies where there is no separate customer service department or even a sales department with designated customer service specialist(s). When a company is too small to dedicate people to handle orders but at the same time does not want orders to remain unaddressed in the inbox for too long, that’s where our new AI agent comes in! The sales order agent will handle incoming correspondence, create a sales order, and reply to the customer. In short…
The feature has not been released yet, but from the video presented by Microsoft (link ↗), we can learn, among other things, that the setup will be very simple — specifying a mailbox dedicated to receiving orders from customers. By the way, the configuration window is built in such a way that other communication channels (not just email) might be available in the future. After selecting the mailbox, we will be able to launch the agent right away. It will immediately get to work by scanning the mailbox, grouping correspondence into so-called agent tasks, identifying recipients (customers), and issues. In the agent panel in the form of a timeline, we will check the existing and proposed correspondence (with a brief AI-generated summary for each message) and all the actions taken by the agent. The agent tasks that require review and approval (e.g., the content of the proposed response) will be highlighted.
Who replied to me?
Here’s an interesting fact about Microsoft’s presentation materials – it concerns the e-mail signature that Microsoft used in presenting its new feature. Maintaining transparency for AI-powered solutions, the sample e-mail reply is signed by the agent itself (and not by the person overseeing it – which I think is how it always should be), and additionally, there is an information below stating that the company writes its e-mails using AI, but they are edited and carefully reviewed before being sent.
It’s like the green email signature – think before print of modern times :). I wonder if we’ll see more of such bold signatures (after all, not everyone wants to admit they’re using AI in creating official content) in our daily communication with customers and vendors.
Summary
I must admit, the agent (at least in the video) looks pretty slick. I will definitely be eager to test its functionality and range of capabilities once it’s released. I’m curious about what it will be able to do with sales orders and sales quotes in BC. In the video, we see that it can certainly create an order and convert a quote into an order. However, I’m thinking whether it can also add more lines or modify existing ones if a client changes their mind at the last minute, or if it can, for example, update the requested delivery date and check stock availability for that date when a client asks if the goods can arrive earlier. We’ll see!
In the meantime, let me know in the comments ↓ what you think about this type of features, especially those based on Copilot or AI in general. Will the sales order agent actually help clients with order processing, or will it rather cause confusion in communication? Or perhaps you have an idea for a different agent for BC?
This post was not written using AI 🤖 I mean it!
