What's New in Business Central 2026: AI Agents, Agent Designer, and What's Coming Next

2026 has been the biggest AI-focused year yet for Business Central. Microsoft has moved from "Copilot suggests things" to "agents actually do the work," and a second wave of updates is already scheduled for October. Here's what's live today, what's coming next, and what it actually means for your operations.

What's live now: 2026 release wave 1 (BC28)

AI agents that do real work, not just suggestions

The headline story this wave is autonomous agents. The Payables Agent reads incoming vendor invoices, matches them to the right vendor and account, and prepares purchase invoices for your team to approve — no re-keying invoice data by hand. A new Expense Agent does the same for expense management: capturing receipts, tracking spending, and helping staff submit expense reports, backed by native expense reporting functionality that works with or without AI. The Sales Order Agent has also matured, handling more real-world order scenarios based on direct customer feedback.

One detail worth flagging for budgeting: several of these agents run on consumption-based pricing, similar to other automation tools that charge per transaction. Model expected volume before rolling one out broadly.

Build your own agents — no code required

Agent Designer reached general availability in May 2026, and it's a genuinely big deal. Any team — not just AL developers — can design a custom AI agent connected to live BC data using natural language, with the option to extend it further with AL when you need more control. If you've wished you could automate a repetitive workflow unique to your business without waiting on a development cycle, this is the tool.

A more transparent AI experience

This wave adds a centralized task pane in Outlook so you can see everything agents have done across shared inboxes, transaction-level visibility so you can review and approve AI-suggested content directly on the document it touched, and processed-email categorization so your team isn't duplicating work an agent already handled.

Under the hood: MCP Server and reporting

The Business Central MCP Server — how AI clients like Copilot Studio connect to your BC data — got five upgrades this wave: one-click configuration fixes, environment import/export, support for any MCP-compliant AI client, live data access via embedded resources, and full telemetry and audit logging. You won't see this in the UI, but it removes real friction if you're investing in AI integrations. Alongside it, Business Central shipped a rebuilt financial reporting engine, a new global Withholding Tax framework, and a Permissions Overview Page for analyzing user permissions across every object in one place.

Also worth knowing

• Sustainability journals now get Copilot-assisted gas emission suggestions.
• Partners and ISVs building Copilot features no longer need their own Azure subscription — Microsoft-managed Azure OpenAI resources are available out of the box.

What's coming: 2026 release wave 2 (BC29, October 2026)

The next wave rolls out starting October 2026, with functionality phasing in through April 2027. Three things stand out for planning purposes.

Order automation goes multi-channel. Today's automated order processing is mostly built around sales quotes. BC29 extends it to full B2B order processing through email, Microsoft Teams, Shopify, and EDI — so orders arriving through more of your actual sales channels get captured and processed automatically.

Smarter, more predictive agents. Expect more advanced AI agents alongside predictive sales opportunity assessments and intelligent recommendations aimed at faster decisions, not just automated data entry.

SOAP web services are going away. This is the one that deserves your attention if you have older integrations. Business Central began deprecating SOAP endpoints for UI pages in BC26, and BC29 removes them permanently. OData v4 REST APIs become the fully supported standard going forward. If any of your integrations, reports, or third-party connectors still rely on SOAP endpoints, audit them now — waiting until October means scrambling.

What this means for your business

The pattern across both waves is clear: Microsoft is betting on agentic ERP — software that doesn't just show you data, but takes action on it with human oversight. That's a real opportunity to cut manual work in AP, expense management, and order processing. Two things are worth doing now:

1. Audit your integrations for SOAP dependency before BC29 lands in October.
2. Pilot one agent — Payables or Expense are the easiest starting points — in a sandbox before committing budget to consumption-based pricing at scale.