Microsoft is expanding Dynamics 365 Business Central by deepening its integration with the Power Platform. Recent releases improve how organisations use Power Apps, along with automation and analytics, to streamline processes and scale delivery. Below are the most important changes—and what they enable in practice for teams building apps, workflows, and reporting.
Power Pages with virtual tables in Dataverse (Public Preview: Nov 2023)
Microsoft introduced Power Pages support to help organisations securely extend Business Central data to external audiences. This capability allows authenticated—and where appropriate, tightly controlled—external users to create, read, update, and delete data that’s exposed from the ERP. These tables can be surfaced in Dataverse as virtual tables, enabling Power Platform experiences without replicating data. Administrators can control which operations are permitted and which tables—and records—are accessible. This makes it possible to design external experiences that match specific business processes and risk requirements.
For example, you can build a customer portal where users place orders and track status directly against ERP data. You could also create a support portal where customers sign in to view products, access manuals, log issues, and create support cases.
Expanded field mappings for BC ↔ Dynamics 365 Sales (GA: Oct 2, 2023)
Microsoft expanded standard integration mappings, making it easier to map the fields most organisations need. Organisations can now tailor integrations between D365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales with less custom work. In many cases, this reduces reliance on developers for routine mapping changes.
Select which BC tables are enabled in connections (GA: Oct 2, 2023)
Microsoft also added the ability to enable only the specific tables you need when connecting to microsoft dataverse. This reduces integration clutter and surface area, helps prevent unnecessary manual work, and strengthens governance without extra customisation.
Higher power automate limits for triggers and bulk updates (GA: Oct 3, 2023)
Microsoft increased modification limits for trigger and bulk-update scenarios from 100 to 1,000 rows. This makes it easier to run higher-volume automations without breaking work into multiple runs. Previously, flows could struggle with datasets larger than 100 records in a single run. Teams often had to split work into multiple cycles or build custom handling to complete processing. With higher limits, power automate becomes viable for higher-volume ERP scenarios—provided you design for throttling, retries, and error handling.
Business events as triggers in the connector (GA: Oct 3, 2023)
Microsoft added support for Business Central business events as triggers in the connector. This enables more precise, event-driven integrations across ERP, CRM, and surrounding systems. Makers can build flows that respond instantly to specific events, improving speed, control, and automation reliability.
Example business events include customer blocked/unblocked, sales invoice posted, opportunity activated, and purchase order released (see Business events on Business Central (preview) – Business Central | Microsoft Learn for the full list).
Create flows from templates in one place (GA: Oct 3, 2023)
Microsoft streamlined flow creation by consolidating templates into a single creation experience. Users can create flows across categories—such as approvals and background automations—from one entry point, improving discoverability and standardisation.
More control over embedded reporting (GA: Oct 3, 2023)
Microsoft improved the embedded Power BI experience to make reporting easier to consume day to day. Users can control report pages, expand visuals to full page, and adjust zoom more easily for faster analysis and better usability.
Retrieve a list of companies via the connector (GA: Oct 3, 2023)
Microsoft added a connector action that retrieves a list of companies, simplifying multi-company automation. This makes it easier to run a single flow across multiple companies—useful for shared services, group reporting, and standardised processes.
Simplified approvals (GA: Oct 3, 2023)
Microsoft refined the approvals experience based on user feedback. Automatic environment and company selection—plus clearer handling of approval decisions—reduces setup friction and makes approvals easier to manage.
Full support for power platform access to virtualised ERP data (GA: Nov 2023)
Microsoft also expanded support for virtualised ERP tables, enabling broader power platform use cases. Apps, flows, and Power Pages running on the platform can interact with ERP data via virtual tables, supporting CRUD operations without replicating data.
What to do next
In summary, these Business Central updates strengthen how organisations build apps, automation, and analytics on the Microsoft platform. For teams modernising operations, these capabilities create new options for faster delivery, tighter governance, and better user experiences. Done well, they improve responsiveness and reduce manual effort across core processes. More importantly, they make it easier to connect ERP data to workflows and experiences without creating duplicate systems of record.
