Copilot in Business Central: Capabilities and Configuration Guide

Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need every advantage they can get to stay agile, efficient, and competitive. With an integrated AI assistant built right into your ERP system with Copilot in Business Central, it helps users work faster, smarter, and with more insight.

If you are looking to understand Copilot's capabilities in Business Central, how to configure it in your Business Central environment, or explore best practice tips for a successful adoption, you have come to the right place. Whether you're a Business Central administrator or business user seeking "what's in it for me", you will find value in this blog. Let's dive in!

What can Copilot in Business Central do?

Let’s break down the significant capabilities of Copilot in Business Central and how they translate into concrete business value.

Conversational Natural-Language Interface

With Copilot built into Business Central, users can ask questions in everyday language and let the system help them find records, generate content, or summarize data. This benefits businesses in a number of ways:

1. Non-technical staff can interact with ERP data without needing to know table names or complex filters.

2. Faster onboarding of new users. Instead of needing to learn every menu, ask Copilot.

3. Reduced friction for ad-hoc queries.

Automation of Routine, Repetitive Tasks

Copilot helps remove tedious tasks so users can focus on higher-value work. For example, generating marketing text for items, predicting late payments, or automating reconciliation processes. This allows time savings across finance, sales, procurement, and operations, improved consistency in outputs, and potential reduction in human error for repetitive workflows.

Insight and Predictive Analytics

Because Copilot can leverage the data in Business Central plus the AI models behind it, you gain forward-looking insights: e.g., inventory forecasting, payment risk prediction, and seasonal sales trends. This results in more informed decision-making rather than just historical reporting, allowing for proactive management of cash flow or inventory rather than reactive.

Embedded in Business Central Ecosystem

Because this is not a bolt-on but part of the Business Central platform, you get the smooth integration, familiar UI, and alignment with your business data. Microsoft emphasizes: “Copilot in Business Central … empower[s] workers with intuitive AI tools to get more done with less effort, without needing to become data scientists.” With this, it allows a lower learning curve for users versus using an external AI tool, better alignment of AI outcomes with your actual business data and processes, and scalable across roles across the organisation (finance, sales, operations, etc).

Copilot for Business Central Use Case Examples

Understanding the capabilities is one thing; seeing how they map to business problems is what makes the case. Check out these use cases that most SMBs struggle with, that Copilot for Business Central can simplify.

• A sales rep needs to quickly summarise the order backlog for a key customer and ask “what risks do we face this quarter?” Copilot helps parse the data and highlight issues.

• A finance team wants to reduce the time spent reconciling bank statements. Copilot can speed up matching entries and flag deviations.

• A procurement manager wants to forecast inventory shortages ahead of a seasonal surge. The predictive capability gives early warning.

• A marketing/merchandising role needs compelling product descriptions for items fast. Copilot generates a first draft that users review and refine. (See example of marketing text generation).

Configuring Copilot in Business Central

Here’s a clear configuration guide you can use (or adapt) for your Business Central environment. Many of the steps come from Microsoft documentation.

Pre-requisites and Licensing

1. Ensure you are using Business Central Online (cloud) rather than on-premises or private cloud, since Copilot functionality depends on Azure OpenAI services.

2. The administrator performing the setup should have the required permissions (e.g., SUPER in Business Central, or equivalent admin role).

3. Ensure your tenant is properly set up with Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) and you have the required subscriptions/licences for Copilot features (check with Microsoft / your partner).

4. Verify your region/geography compatibility: if your Business Central environment is in a different geography than the Azure OpenAI service used by Copilot, you may need to allow “data movement across geographies”.

Enable and Activate Copilot Features

1. In Business Central search for “Copilot & agent capabilities” page.

2. On this page, you’ll see all available Copilot/AI features (divided by “Preview” and “Generally Available”). Features are active by default when available, but you can deactivate specific ones or grant access to specific users.

3. If required, toggle the “Allow data movement” switch (only needed if dealing with cross-geography data).

4. For each feature you want to enable for your organization, select the item and choose Activate (if it’s not already).

Assign Permission and User Access

1. Determine which user roles or groups need access to Copilot features.

2. Use Business Central’s built-in security roles/permissions to grant those users access (e.g., the ‘SUPER’ role or other customized permissions).

3. Optionally, you can restrict features to certain users or teams (especially during phased roll-out). Some partner guides suggest limiting “Enabled for” to specific groups in Feature Management.

Configure Data Governance and Compliance

1. Ensure you have the right data usage, privacy and governance practices in place: e.g., what data will Copilot access, how will outputs be reviewed, what are the audit logs/telemetry.

2. Because Copilot may use Azure OpenAI services (depending on region) you should verify where data is processed and stored and communicate this to stakeholders.

3. Define review and approval processes: e.g., generated text (marketing copy) should be validated by marketing; business users should still verify predicted insights.

Training and Change Management

1. Introduce users to how Copilot works in the context of Business Central—demo the conversational queries, generated text, and analytics insights.

2. Provide guidance on “how to ask Copilot” (natural language, clear prompts) and how to review/edit generated outputs.

3. Encourage a phased approach: start with one department or use-case, then expand. This allows you to gather feedback, refine prompts and governance.

4. Monitor usage, collect user feedback, and adjust feature access or prompts as needed.

Ongoing Monitoring, Metrics, and Optimization

1. Use telemetry and usage data (Business Central / Azure OpenAI) to track adoption: how many users are using Copilot, what kinds of queries, and what features are most used.

2. Gather business outcome metrics: e.g., time saved on repetitive tasks, improvement in forecast accuracy, quality of generated content.

3. Refine: adjust user training, prompts, and feature access based on real-world usage.

4. Stay updated: As Microsoft releases new Copilot capabilities (via release waves), you’ll want to enable them, test them and adopt where relevant.

Best Practices and Tips for Success

To maximise the ROI of Copilot in Business Central, keep these best practices in mind:

• Start small & prove value. Pick one use-case (e.g., marketing copy generation, common support queries, forecasting) and demonstrate value before broad rollout.

• Define clear guardrails and governance. AI-generated output is powerful, but still needs human oversight.

• Ensure clean, accurate underlying data. Because Copilot uses your Business Central data, the better your data quality, the better the output and insights.

• Train users on how to prompt effectively. Natural language works best when users know how to ask the right question—clear, contextual, well-defined.

• Monitor feedback and continuously improve prompts. The better the prompt and the more context you give, the better the output.

• Consider localization and region specifics. If your operations span multiple geographies, ensure you handle language settings, data residency, and compliance accordingly.

• Communicate benefits to users. Highlight time savings, easier workflows, and less manual work. This helps with adoption.

• Stay aware of limitations. AI isn’t perfect. Always have review and validation, especially for critical tasks.

Download your Free Checklist: "Go-Live" with Copilot in Business Central

Conclusion

The integration of Copilot into Business Central marks a significant step forward for AI-enabled ERP systems. With capabilities such as conversational queries, content generation, predictive insights and deep integration into your business data, organisations can unlock new levels of productivity, insight and agility.

However, as with any transformative technology, success depends not only on having the feature available but on enabling it strategically, ensuring data quality, clear governance, user training, and ongoing optimization.

At Systema Solutions, we help businesses across Canada configure, customize, and adopt Copilot for Business Central to maximize its value. Whether you’re exploring AI-powered automation for the first time or planning a full-scale rollout, our experts can guide you every step of the way — from setup and permissions to user enablement and best practices.

Ready to empower your teams with Copilot in Business Central? Contact Systema Solutions today and let’s make AI work for your business.