Dynamics Corner

Episode 439: AI in Business Central: Bridging the Gap Between Developers and Functional Consultants

• Brad and Kris • Season 4 • Episode 439

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In this episode of Dynamics Corner, Kris and Brad talk with Miljan Milosavljevic about how AI is changing Business Central. They explore how AI helps developers and functional consultants work together. With a discussion around Subscription Billing, they share their experiences and insights on how AI-driven development and AI agents can make business processes smoother. Listen in for thoughts on the future of AI and ERP optimization. Don't forget to subscribe to keep up with the latest trends in Business Central.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. What's subscription and what's AI? I'm your co-host, Chris.

SPEAKER_04:

And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on December 9th, 2025. Chris, Chris, Chris. What is AI? I don't know. I don't think I can go three minutes without thinking about AI. But in this episode, we had the opportunity to talk about AI and development and the future of development, along with the subscription building model within Business Central. With us today, I had the opportunity to speak with a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, hi. What about yourself?

SPEAKER_04:

Doing very well. Doing very well. I've been looking forward to speaking with you. You know, it's interesting. I just wrote a blog article about an AI vibe coding experience. Experiment that I did over the weekend.

SPEAKER_00:

I saw that post. This morning.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, yes. I put it out there this morning. I have Raspberry Pi. I use Pi Hole for advertising. Not ad for ad blocking, excuse me. Jeez, I'm all messed up this morning. For ad blocking, I use Pi Hole running on a Raspberry Pi. And then Sunday morning, I realized that Pi Hole has an API. And I have a little 1.3 inch OLED display that I purchased for my Raspberry Pi. For another one. I have multiple Raspberry Pis, not the Pi that's running the Pi hole. I put it on, I put the OLED display on the Raspberry Pi. And then I said, okay, I'm going to see if I can vibe code without writing one line of code, something that will pull the API. Using the API, pull the statistics from the Raspberry Ui running Pi hole and display it on the Raspberry Pi that has the OLED display. I've never programmed in Python before. Thankfully, with knowing development, I understand enough to um read code. But I said, I'm going to go through this experience without writing one line of code. And it did it. Success? Success. What blew me away was I I I said, um, we need to, here's an API. Here's the endpoint, here's the structure of what it looks like. And then, you know, here's you know the structure of the API, here's the API endpoint. Um, and then here's the response because I started in the API documentation, and I need to pull out this. So just giving it that information and telling it what I wanted to do with some prompts, it went through the whole thing of connecting through the API, getting a token, put in code to refresh the token if it needed to, then display information onto this little OLED display. It created documentation. Now, this OLED display had buttons. It even suggested do you want uh to make one of the buttons be an exit from exiting the application? I was floored because it knew, and again, this little OLED displays is not like displaying on a monitor. You have to code to display the information. It's not just you know displaying something on the screen, it's uh display that you have to display the programming, and then it knew to program the buttons. Wow. I was and you didn't write one line of code. I didn't write one line of code, completely prompted. And and again, I did this in my house. I wasn't on anyone's you know system and we're not doing anything crazy. I have you know disposable pies, I'm working on it. You know what the best thing about it? Yep, what it took one hour to complete. Start to finish with documentation. It will pull the API so I don't have to open up the pie hole dashboard to see the statistics again. Do I look at that stuff that often? No, because I just runs. But I figured I just have a little vibe coding fun experience. And during that time, I cleaned my smoker.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, your barbecue smoker?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. My smoker, my smoker grill, excuse me. Yes, my smoker grill, I cleaned during this process and I was done. I started at 1500, I was done at 1600, including cleaning my grill.

SPEAKER_00:

That's incredible, man.

SPEAKER_04:

I was floored. And with that, before we get into talking about some of this and a little bit more during today's conversation, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so um I would say I'm I'm I started with NAV like in 2008. That's quite a few years. Oh no, and currently, yeah, we're all on the plane with the business central. So I'm I'm I'm working in a German company named IT Hammer IT Consulting uh in a product development basically. And you could say I have um yeah more contacts with Microsoft directly than I used to recently. I'm contributing more to code, that's how I would put it. The other way, I mean technically or let's say it other ways, I'm just uh technical dude, mostly.

SPEAKER_04:

No, that's good. Technical dude. I like that. Technical dude. Um no, but you've done some uh interesting things. Wanted to talk with you about one. Um what is your take on AI and development with Business Central?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think I I feel like probably like many people uh that it's picking up I would say slowly, still slowly. I think some of us are experimenting more than the others, that's for sure. I kinda like it how the future feels like it will look like but I think it was here at the beginning somehow, I would say. I mean we have seen um you know enormous I would say advance in recent months. So you can yeah, yeah, so you get something really usable at this point of time. However, I'm not the guy that's like uh or so far my experience was like that that uh whatever I got, I had to fiddle a bit. So it was never a complete story spit out of the AI. But basically, um I think that's something that we should count on in the future, generally speaking.

SPEAKER_04:

I I think I think so too, and I think you hit some points. I think I had an experience I talked about at the introduction to this with Python, which is a more popular language, there's more information out there. And just throw some questions out there for discussion based upon your context. And I've been also talking with a lot of uh individuals within the business central community space, or ever you want to talk about about AI and development. And I I've been speaking with not just technical dudes like us, I've been speaking with functional consultants as well. Do you think there's a difference in adoption between using AI when you're a developer or a functional consultant using AI for development? Because and the reason why I positioned the question, I've been speaking with a lot of functional consultants who've been dabbling with AI development now. And as they had mentioned, the recent models working with you know, everyone started using Claude uh I think Sonic 4.5, they've had some great results. I've been using um Codex 5.0 lately. Uh 5.1, I didn't have too much luck with for just I didn't like the way that it was prompt and interacting pack with me. But I've been getting better results. So it is getting better with AL. Now, I've been speaking with both developers and functional consultants, and in the conversations I've had, it seems a lot more functional consultants, because they understand the application, are doing development with AI for Business Central. Creating some small applications and PTs.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so that's an interesting, interesting yeah, developing story, right? So I I I mean I I I also see it happening, right? Um I wouldn't say it's really that prominent. I don't know at least in in the surf time I'm moving around. But yeah, um that can I mean that will happen for sure to some extent. However, I I see that I think that I mean both sides should adopt it too. I but I think the usage or the way how the the the functional how to use it is different currently. And I think it's probably going to stay that way. I mean it's great if if some if they can develop some something on their own, so to say. But for the moment I don't see it, at least in my circle, happening in in masses, so to say.

SPEAKER_04:

No, I I understand. I don't think it's in masses anywhere.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh as well as here's what kind though, like how though, Brad? Like, for example, you know, what would be their use case? You know, are they just building a table and a page or are they creating a full-on stack?

SPEAKER_04:

Because it it's um about both. Um and I think there's some challenges now with even because I've been working with business central development as well, too. And we can and this is why I wanted to uh talk with you today about and then we also have the whole just to preface it, I have a million subscription billing questions for you too. But uh uh the whole topic, you know, we we were speaking before about AI and development. I I think it does depending what you're building, and I also think it depends how you prompt it and what you understand. I'm not going to talk about some of the things that they shared with me because I don't know if anybody wants anything shared. Uh, but they were more than a little bit basic tables. The basic tables and pages, I think it has down pretty good. They had some functionality uh in them, and I was impressed with some of the functionality uh as well. And it's it makes me wonder um business central is a framework and AI has to know the framework to develop the code. Whereas if you do something like I did, you're starting from scratch. It's like you're you're basically creating a framework with the language. Where AI, I think, with something like business central in the AL language, it's a little more challenging for the AI, right? Because you have a predefined framework that you need to develop within for functionality. So if we want to uh do bulk posting of documents, for example. Um, you know, Steve Endo did a vibe coding session. I think he did that. Uh he did some stuff with Business Central. It has to understand the application in the context of the comp of the application for it to develop it.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so but but the concept is not too far too far different than what you did with the pie hall, right? You have you have very little knowledge of the development uh language, and you're able to build a full working solution for what you're trying to accomplish. Correct. I'm assuming they're gonna have the same approach with functional consultants who understands the application, but not so much the development coding language, and they're yeah, they could build a full stacks, a full solution.

SPEAKER_04:

I think even I think you need the development for some of the more complicated stuff. But I think I think it shifts where development you would also need it, it it almost proves to me that for development, and I've always felt this for development, you should have a good understanding of the application so you can develop better solutions and know if you need to even develop. Uh, because now with all the features and functionality within the application, sometimes you don't even need to make a uh modification or enhancement. But it it comes up with the importance of understanding the application. Whereas I think you know, a developer wants to type code, and I think a functional consultant doesn't know how to, so they're almost limited to okay, well, how can I talk with the AI agent uh to create the application? So I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so I I don't know if you have attended any of the you know Viecko, probably. Yes. I mean he has interesting takes on on that topic, and I kinda can identify with some like yeah, so the consultants or function consultants may have even more insights into how the app works, so they might even in some instances produce better code, right? By using AI. Perhaps uh but actually uh th those developers that have future are the ones that currently have experience and can basically um utilize AI properly, so to say. Where uh whereas I would probably compare um functional consultants with junior developer, I guess.

SPEAKER_02:

So I think I think there are some challenges that are yet to be overcame overcome.

SPEAKER_01:

They will definitely produce something, but for the moment I don't see it happening. Actually, I I think that penetration has to happen in development for a system. That's how I feel like okay.

SPEAKER_04:

And uh I've seen it create some good documentation and such as well. And you know, all those developers are technical dudes like us, documentation is usually the last thing that somebody wants to do. And also, I think you really need to understand the workflow of what you're doing and then be able to do small prompts, right? It's very difficult to say you can do it, uh, and I've gone through some exercise of okay, create me something that does this, this, this, and this. But it's almost better to start with the prompting of here's sort of a background, and then exactly yeah, step one is to do this, uh, and step two is to do this, and step three is to do this, so it's like smaller steps instead of expecting it to be um yeah, actually, uh your good you I mean, good point.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's where I expect actually AI to shine for functional consultants in the first step at least, like uh writing stuff down. And I think AI is really excellent at that.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, well, yeah, I mean as a function consultant, a lot of the things that they do is you know build use cases, document it with you know a technical design. Um, you know, so they have a proper structure already. So if you take those proper structure from a function consultant, which they do often with a business case or business process uh in mind, I'm sure they can walk through those steps and then be able to build a solution. So they may be a little bit slower in in terms of like uh understanding and and fully grasping that, but if but if they understand the business case, business use, uh I'm sure they can uh you know go through the whole thing and vibe code it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would definitely support and uh so to say the other side to to try it out and then let's see what the result is.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, no, it's uh it's it's an interesting it's an interesting world that we're in. Uh you know, it seems like you can't go three minutes without hearing something about AI somewhere in the world, unless you have all external communication shut off. But it's it's yeah, I've been talking a lot more because again, it's interesting uh to me to see what you can do with AL.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it is it do you think now is it blending the role? Because back then, in NAB days, right? You have a functional consultant, they know the application, and then you hand it off to a developer and then they work together. Do you feel like uh uh new newer or even you know uh people in this space for a long time, do you think their role is starting to blend where they could do both? Maybe complex ones goes to you know an actual developer.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I I I cannot tell for sure, uh, but I feel like AI can bring us together somehow. That's how I feel like because currently I I I feel like there is a lot of um like often those two sides don't understand each other very well, generally speaking. And I think I mean let's talk about the normal process. There is a feature that should be developed, and uh some functional consultant tries to, you know, has a lot of thoughts and have it in the head, try to put it on the paper, uh in in letters. And I mean, although he might have an idea what is actually should be built, I mean the developer might have no clue whatsoever by just looking up the thoughts that the functional consultant has put in some task or whatever. And when I see what AI can do with that, which is like a pile of thoughts of functional consultants, which has you know uh a lot of experience, I I think it can bring you know those words much closer together, generally speaking. Transferring thoughts to to to getting something faster, I think uh you hit it perfectly, um, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04:

I think that it is going to force developers to be more functional and functional to be more development oriented, in turn doing exactly what you said, bringing everyone together. I think it's going to cross those roles because I think some of the smaller development tasks are no longer going to be necessary for coding. It's going to be necessary to be able to understand the application and how to do it because it it's really pretty good now with adding a feel to a page. It's really good at going through and updating tooltips, it's really good at doing a lot of those what I call minor things that are nuisances in a sense for someone to do in development, even creating an API page, right? You can say, here's the table, creating an API page for this. And I've done that recently for several of those. And it does a really good job of that. So, from a point of view of the developer, it's going to cut out a lot of that. So then you're going to have to have some of understanding the application and how to prompt it to do that. And then I think from a function consultant, it's going to be the same way. How do you communicate this to an AI or a developer to be able to instruct them on what to do in the detail that you need to do it? So your point of bringing everybody together, it's going to bring everyone together to where I think you're going to have a lot of crossing. Uh, and it's going to be important to have a crossing, and it's um the rules will change.

SPEAKER_01:

I certainly hope for that. Because as a developer, I see that there are developers lacking functional knowledge, and and I see that AI could jump in basically.

SPEAKER_04:

That's good. Have you done what what type of experimenting have you done with it? Have you done much?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I was thinking about what can I share in this podcast, and I realized that I basically nowadays I use it like every day. It doesn't, I mean, it it's it's it has become a part of my uh you know uh uh routine, daily routine actually. I mean it yeah, just I mean, like really the stupid stuff stuff that I don't know, I just don't Google any longer almost. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And that's why we're going to have ads and AI responses, because I had a conversation with someone this morning about that same thing as who uses search engines anymore? just ask AI.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. That that's what happened to me at least in I mean like in in last month. And in development also, right? Uh I I'm even trying to push myself to explore more because I think I'm I'm not in the let's say leading the pack. I'm just learning so to say and I learn every day about how to put it to the purpose.

SPEAKER_04:

And from the scope of AAL do you do see it facilitates any of your development now?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah yeah yeah so I mean like autocomplete is like there's I I would probably cry tomorrow if it would go away for whatever reason. And yeah developments I think in the new future have more chances to utilize it better rather than maintaining the base up or something like that. So the context is important I would say so I'm still switching between do I put the effort to put the context to AI or I do it by myself.

SPEAKER_04:

So that that's still a challenge I would say it is it is because it's it's tough and that's where I'm saying is it you know the development for using AI versus a functional consultant use an A because the developer is going to do similar to what you had said. Is it more difficult or more time consuming for me to type the context or to type the fields in the page and and put it together and then have to review it and do it. So it's it's it's an interesting world that we're in and it's moving fast. And do I want to fast forward a couple years? No. But I almost would like to in a sense just to see what where we all are and uh what space we're in because uh I've been having a lot of fun with it and getting a lot of practical use out of it as well. And I'm almost uh I don't want to say afraid I'm almost uh curious curiously uh um yeah awaiting to see where we end up we should touch up on that also like I I also feel that there is kind of uh uh fear for I don't know from certain um population but I don't fear feel it to be honest I'm I'm also like you like hoping to see what comes next right so I don't have a fear that it will replace me I don't know I I cannot explain it I just feel like let's do it and try to put it to use no absolutely well I like I said I think I do believe that it won't replace like AI is not going to replace people I think uh it will have new opportunities but I think people using AI will replace people because I think in some cases you will become a little bit more efficient and be able to do uh a better job to for lack of better terms. Again everything has to be reviewed I'm not saying it's going to hit everything 100% of the time and I'm not one of those skeptics that looks for everything that AI faults don't get me wrong. One thing I learned in coding with AI is I commit every change. Why? Because I I need to roll back because it will go off um I I was vibe coding something else just as an experiment with uh some of the tools that I use and it went totally out into left field and started modifying things totally outside of the context of what I wanted it to modify. So thankfully I was able to roll back to you know a previous commit. So that's uh I like I said I don't want to say it's 100% perfect all the time but the neither are people so uh we just have to to learn to accept it. So uh you do quite a bit it's it's I have so many things I want to talk with you about uh the AI topic again it's it's it's interesting to me but the other part is um uh recently well it seems again when you get to my age a day a year seems like you know they all seem like yesterday um subscription billing was added to business central recently a couple versions ago I think a couple waves ago right two or three waves ago October last year yeah yeah yeah two waves ago right because we had yeah this is October April third wave yeah three waves ago so uh about a year ago it was added and uh rumor has it you know a little bit about subscription building yeah so that's true the rumors are true uh so the the the C Hammer was the company that um uh they say licensed uh this app for Microsoft because Microsoft at some point of time figured they have um um you know something that is kind of missing and I think they basically explored a bit uh what's there on the market so I don't know the the details but uh at the end it ended up uh choosing uh the solution that was belonging to the product family called Dice actually and I was the one that was kind of in charge of transferring this IP from CHAMER to Microsoft and along the way um there were some technical uh stuff that had to be improved because I mean you're taking over the the the the partner IP partner code which might not be hundred percent aligned with with uh coding side uh standards and whatever for Microsoft so I was kind of um yeah supporting that path of transferring the IP to Microsoft so I was not the the one that developed the whole stuff uh I did I was involved with certain parts to some extent uh but basically yeah that's this full story kind of so so with that that it it seems that there's been a few portions of the application that they have um licensed from other parties um yep and it's you know some of that stuff is not you know it's not a secret so you know subscription billing was one of them that again was licensed from an organization you work with I have some questions on that uh it and I don't if uh whatever you can talk about I'm not certain what you can and can't talk about but so you said you worked in the process to transition it from your organization over to Microsoft uh so that it was within the base application. Do you do the coding in that process or do you do you work with the engineers or the technical dudes at Microsoft and then they enhance the code. How does that relationship in that process work?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah so uh yeah i it has multiple aspects uh or uh so you do the code along the way that's for sure because there were simply stuff that were were not aligned and uh when Microsoft acquires some third party solution they also have something called work for hire for a while meaning that they count on the fact that you are the one that the company they have purchased from is the most familiar with with actually what's in there and can basically uh they are the the ones that can do the changes the fastest uh compared to them um so I would say initially that was done mostly by CHAMER most of the changes uh nowadays it's starting to shift to Microsoft and we're hoping to kinda um um put it in in uh or let's say um bring it to that state that Microsoft can maintain it by themselves completely we're not there yet so we are still uh involved in uh delivering fixes and some futures however the the the amount of work we are doing right now is getting lower and I guess I don't know but I guess that's probably something they they normally do with other letters also.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah I I assume it takes makes sense and I understand what you're saying for your team to work with the application for a certain period of time while it's being brought into the application because you understand the application understand how the application works and then that gives the internal team the opportunity to learn the application and understand how it works so that then they can maintain it and keep it within the realm of their workflow and their future for uh future plans uh for the application as well um how long did that process take to transition it from your your code base in a sense into Microsoft is that something that's lengthy or is that something that gets done rather quickly and again I'm not talking about the whole I'm talking about what's the point that you already knew you know that it was already known that the application was going to move the the whole other you know process I don't have any interest in I'm just interested in knowing the process from the technical aspect of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah so I think I think uh the talks started somewhere around 2023 when the Microsoft's uh end of 2023 when they started looking around uh we were passing some procedures that they have when they are acquiring third party uh IP and that happened somewhere in March April 2024 and when they said okay we are buying it that happened somewhere in June July I don't know something like that and then in October it went into release uh but the work is I mean I wouldn't I mean the question is where you drew the draw the line when do you say it has been uh transferred so if I would I would have I would have to answer that question I would say probably April this year it came to a form when it's kind of uh aligned with a lot of stuff Microsoft is doing like demodata and everything but but it was released in the October last year and then it's we had some um additional work to do in order to align it more I see that's not too that's not too long that sounds pretty fast.

SPEAKER_04:

It's not I thought it was a I honestly thought the process would be uh a little more lengthy or it'd be a lengthier process to well transition but you're saying yeah moving fast that's for sure I laugh because you say they're going fast. They are going fast. It seems like every day I learn something new about the application that a feature that was just added maybe overnight or something. I I say that in jest but it it the application is evolving so quickly.

SPEAKER_01:

But what's obvious they try to to I mean they they try to identify the gaps and to fill them in that's how I interpret it right now. So um so with the subscription billing application as well uh so is Microsoft handling all the support or are they still sending some of the support over to you uh they're taking it on their own uh they are they are taking some of them to on their own and some of them uh are passed to us still uh I mean that's that's probably obvious when you look at the uh repo it's now in the on the BC apps repo so that can be checked uh and I think I feel like it's still uh I wouldn't say a lot but quite a few stuff are in in the pipeline so to say and I expect it to reduce some in this year and I and they are still I mean they are also uh having their own support channels and sometimes they resolved it by themselves and sometimes we do. Yeah but I'd say when I when it comes to something which so there are also circle of knowledge is kind of stuff you know not only Microsoft in all companies they have the the stuff that they know better than the others and I would say the subscription billing is not something that's really nowadays widespread for example across the Microsoft so we still get uh uh fix some stuff at the same and I'm I'm not sure when this will end we hope that this will happen I don't know end of this year or next year um but we're still working together with Microsoft. No it's good that they're working together uh a few more questions on this uh so what about the existing customers that you had did you have to do a migration for them from yeah yeah yeah yeah so I don't know if you have followed up the story about the subscription billing but it wasn't extensible up until uh April in the first release in the the the very first release was not extensible I saw a lot of chatter about that because everybody likes to make changes we couldn't we couldn't migrate them uh like all of our customers not all but like I would I think most of them right now have received an information that uh we plan to switch them to the uh Microsoft subscription billing because it's also in their interest because currently they pay for our app still and yeah subscription billing for Microsoft is kind of free for them. We have invested um quite a few time in migration routines because the apps um that are now a part of Microsoft are actually not identical to what we had you know they have changed they have evolved um they might even have some other features which are not completely the same so we had to write the the the the code that does that with the hope that it should be an effortless migration and I can only say that some of our customers started this process as far as I know nobody is completely switched.

SPEAKER_04:

We have of course the customers that are starting with Microsoft billing already but the migration wave is still about to start and be finished I guess in the next year 2026 that's the goal so to say that all of them have switched and and the problem is of course uh I mean the problem uh um the current state is that you know in this dependency Hammer has its own family of apps uh which is called DICE and it has uh roughly 20 apps and they're all entangled somehow right so imagine that we had to isolate those two apps which uh were called subscription billing and usage based billing to pull them out right in the middle of the dependency tree uh give it to Microsoft and now try to integrate all of the remaining eight in with uh what Microsoft has so it was quite a challenge so that's that sounds like a challenge yep but ongoing no no it's uh you get the I mean sometimes those slow changes are good I mean Microsoft itself when I work with the applications they do a good job of moving slowly in some areas to to to much much chat or sometimes to allow you to migrate some of those customers uh we're talking about the subscription billing and you you mentioned usage billing uh what is a quick overview of the subscription billing portion of it I think uh I jumped right into the questions yeah I should have started off with what it is and what you can do with it but uh there was a little assumption of me I mean that again I'm the technical guy so I I care more about that stuff but uh what is the subscription billing feature and what can you do with that subscription billing? It's basically uh a new module that enables to manage I hope any kind of subscription billing inside of Business Central it probably cannot cover every everything out of the box but that is the idea uh and uh that means it provides the new entities inside of business central like subscription header lines uh contracts uh and the framework for managing uh billing hopefully effortlessly I mean without effort and so Chammer has done it for quite a while uh and uh CHammer has focused on IT industry companies in general uh and uh quite a few of those customers were having like a huge amount of contracts and everything so mass data processing was kind of an imperative and when we come to the usage-based dealing that's a scenario where you have somebody like companion or Microsoft uh giving you the usage data on a vendor side right and you want to import it in your system and say okay based on what you have gave me like Microsoft and companion I'll build my customers so that's user-based data so if you you do not have to use it you can work uh without usage based billing data processing just by manually entering everything in the system but as I said CHAMR has a pool of these customers that uh you know have I know thousands of contracts or thousands of tier customers or even working with government and they have simply the need to to you know process thousands of lines so when we're talking about a subscription you're talking that if I have a monthly invoice for services or I have a monthly invoice for something it allows you to set it up in the system and then those subscription invoices would be created periodically at certain intervals correct yeah exactly I mean most normal period is monthly period like that's most widespread uh system so you basically set it up I mean uh mobile I don't know um TV cable whatever and then you set up uh these periods and monthly you can issue you have a worksheet that generates um uh uh invoices for I don't know how which you know how many customers you might have or customer uh contracts and that's the point yeah and then the usage based billing is the consumption so so you had mentioned like from Microsoft a companion so if you're dealing with other services so if it's a disk space you know that may be variable where you charge per uh you know gigabyte per megabyte per kilobyte whatever the you know whatever they're going to charge you at yeah and then you get that monthly based upon usage and then you could tie that into your own usage based system as well if you had another metric for for uh consuming usage as well yeah yeah yeah so you basically import it and based on that you uh create um uh images on sale side and you can also connect it with the purchase images that you get from companion Microsoft I like that that's um yeah so uh that's not the only I mean there are also third parties you probably know that right that also do similar jobs yes and to be honest some of them have their own strengths and uh I would say subscription beneath Microsoft has his own strength but the the I mean when you have something standard uh in in Microsoft uh business central it's kinda appealing to take it because you don't have to pay for it I guess absolutely it is appealing if um it's within the base product because of a couple of reasons one it's going to it continues to evolve with the base product much easier and if it doesn't do exactly what you need now that there's extensibility in it um you know as you'd mention at first it wasn't extensibility which a lot of people had some questions on but I also understand the delay on it as well uh sometimes I think some chatters just because it's easier to chat at just like saying AI is wrong instead of saying okay what what about the AI is right? Uh let's focus on the what is wrong of it just uh I think that's human nature. But I think it's a little bit easier because then you get additional features for you know additional Features and functions within the application. You have the migration path that's much easier. I mean, anyone who has an app, again, in the app source, they usually stick with the same process. But I can see benefits to both. But it is. Again, it's uh I tell everyone, no one will ever be the only one at anything because if somebody has a good idea, you bet that somebody else is going to try to do the same thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Competition's good.

SPEAKER_04:

It is. I think competition's good. Competition's important. And um, you know, not everything's for everybody. It's uh that's why they have many different types of motor vehicles that you can purchase. Uh there's something for everybody, right? They all have different features that appeal to to other people. So or other uh geez. I think everybody knows what I mean when I said that. It's my face and so no, that's good. That's interesting. So, what other great things have you been doing? You do quite a bit. It's very difficult to um yeah, you know, to to to hammer in on a number of things that you do. Um you had uh gone to AMIA recently as well, correct?

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, yep. So I went to Posnan. Um I presented a session about um 15 AI features nowadays that are present in Business Central. So uh other than that, I I was recently uh doing something in regards to the German uh e-documents connector, not relevant for you guys from US.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, we uh we still we still put stuff in the mail and we still have checks. I don't understand for the life of me why the United States still does that. I I I can't even think of a reason other than trying to make somebody somewhere makes money on it. That's all I have to tell you because checks if yes, somebody somewhere is making money on checks because I can't think of another reason for it. Although I can't tell you how many checks I write in a year. I think I have written one check in the past two years.

SPEAKER_00:

Brad, there's one thing that uh I had to do actually recently where I had someone come out and and and service my pellet stove, and uh it's like and I was ready to you know take my iPhone and pay this guy. It's like no, we just take checks. Like, how about cash? Don't even take cash, check. I'm like, what? I don't have my checkbook.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't know who does that. I receive more checks than I right. Thankfully, when I have service here, it's either cash in a case of corona, or um or it's uh like um you know, most technicians now will have a mobile device that has you know a touch on it that you can do. So we get we're getting more and more, but a lot of people still use checks. You said 15 features, 15 A. So what caught me on that session, right? This is why I wanted to go to this, and there's a reason why I'm gonna go to this. Is um can you give me a quick rundown of the 15 AI features in Business Central?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, out of the head. So they're like um even the ones you remember. I I listen, I can't remember them all either, but there are those four built around uh items like um um the marketing text for start. I mean, before that there was uh like image recognition that's not that well famous one. Then uh there is you know item substitutes, uh you also have suggest sales lines, then there is um e-documents matching, bank reconciliation before that. You have the summary in the in the cards, then you have the chat, uh, analysis, analyze, and actually the ones that I uh for the ones that I like the most or I have highest hope for are the agents and not the sales uh agent, which is also pretty fine for some uh I would say business models. But I think the I really have high hopes of payables agent generally speaking, because I tried it and um for SMB, which the business central is meant for, I think it has a good perspective. So I just um before before preparing this session, I just threw you know the the some random invoice I had, and I was like, let's see whether it recognized anything. And I was like, wow, like you know, I I got something on an email which is a PDF, and I get it posted in in like without any data exchange definition or whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think I think you're right, the payables agent is maybe underrated in terms of usage because in many cases you deal with almost the same vendors every time, and so it's easier for it to learn of the type of invoices that you will receive uh via email, uh, versus you know, versus the sales agent, which is you can have a ton more random invoices or orders, uh order information, but the payables agent I think it's a great fit for a lot of organizations that I mean everybody handles with a vendor, right? So yeah, you're right. I it's a great call out on the payables agent.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it it's still not uh it's still in preview, however. They are trying to push it to the you know, red uh RTM. How would you say that? So basically to be publicly available, uh not in preview mode any longer. And I'm looking forward to. I mean, there are some I I think why they are trying to to I mean that's what they said, that why they are trying to uh put it in public as soon as possible because they're hoping for the feedback, what should be improved. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

That is a key, and I say this to everybody. It's important to get something out there because you get the feedback. It's almost like if you write, if you tell somebody, okay, give me your ideas of what features and functionality. I could just picture the conversation because we could have it here. Give me some ideas for uh purchase and payables agent. And everybody would just be quiet. Why doesn't it do that? So it is good to get something out there, and then also you know what to invest your time in as well, because if if you don't have feedback for usage or features, you could delay or take time because you're doing something and you may have this big portion of it that you think extremely important, because everything's a good idea. And this is just for any development cycle, not just the purchase and payable agent I'm using as an example. You could spend weeks on a feature that nobody ever even uses, and then you may be missing a feature, you may be missing a feature that's extremely important. So that feedback um is important on there as well.

SPEAKER_01:

The thing is, I was like uh before the these AI ages, so to say, I was wondering how to you know get a PDF from email process, and either you would you would reach out to Power Automate or or I mean there is also functionality that you can call from Outlook, not sure if you're aware of it. Uh it's it's uh so it's it's it's uh add-on for uh add-in for for Outlook so that you can also process PDF documents and put them in in inbound uh incoming documents and it worked, but I think this is another level. I really hope it will be another level. And it looks like it's it promises a lot, I would say.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I wonder I wonder if for all the people that have ever used uh power automate to do that will still will eventually switch and just use the power uh payables agent.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, I will see you know the other agents are also coming, so they might you know some new world of agents. Do you name your compile agent? Sorry? Do you name your agents? Do I name my agents? Like you my like personal name or what?

SPEAKER_04:

No, no, when you're working with an agent, right? Do you name them? Like my no, the AI agents. When do you name them when they're doing work? Oh I started talking line. I I I have better conversations with my agents than I do with people sometimes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're if you tell them what's their name, they will remember it. I know that for sure. So I haven't told them their name.

SPEAKER_00:

I just you give it you're giving them their name. The moment you give them their name, they be you know they become a little bit more personable, right? Right?

SPEAKER_04:

I'm doing that. In my uh I'm going to have a good agent file, and I'm going to say your name is going forward.

SPEAKER_01:

And it goes to the to the agent memory. So mine, for example, for the I I use like all bunch of them, I tried them all. But the GPT one, uh, the dog, my daughter give gave him the name, and it's cous crew. That's the current name of my agent. And he also responds like that, like I'm cous crew, and I'll deliver you the answer. So try it out.

SPEAKER_04:

That's it. As soon as we're done with this, I'm going to set up and I'll have multiple agents depending upon how I feel. Give them who I want to talk with. Um lingering question I have, I just throw this out there for conversation. And I was thinking about it on my run the other day. Thankfully, I've been able to run again. And with all of these agents doing all of this work, what is that going to do to licensing? Because the agents are going to be able to do work of users. Licensing today is based on user subscriptions. I know you can pay by usage with the agents, right? That's how the whole the premise is going to be that um there's going to be a fee for the use of the agents. But I think there's going to be a big shift from user licenses to how this these agents are going to be licensed. So I'm I'm curious to see how that licensing model works out and how you charge for it. Again, I'm just throwing that out there. I'm not suggesting or asking anybody uh what their answer is. But what do you what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I would I would simply, I mean, I would suggest anybody who wants to try it out, uh, because you know when you get a business central tenant, you get a small amount that you can use, like a couple of processes, and then you're done for agents. The agents are the only ones that are built right now by Microsoft. So I would just say, I mean, that would be my suggestion if you're not you want to try it out and to try to use it in real life, go with the pay as you go uh subscription, uh connect it to your environment, and you know, check out how much it consumes.

SPEAKER_04:

So and put a budget on it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

The most important thing you can do is put a budget on it because I mean let's let's talk about as an example for payables agents.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't feel like I mean it depends on the on the company size, of course, but like that's like a handful of people doing that. And um it also depends on the volume of the purchasing wage that you might get. But I think anything like double or three-figure sceneways shouldn't be that much pain uh cost-wise, and the people would be happy with the result and result, hopefully.

SPEAKER_04:

I would say it's I mean that's it's it's that's all the new stuff this year. So uh, you know, the agents. Um Chris, you mentioned co-pilot agent. I think I heard you say.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, co-pilot agent, right? So like you know, being able to you know add that as part of your uh you know business decision of creating sort of your own agent that interacts with Business Central. Um uh because I I think that's where it's going. I mean they're they're you know Microsoft's pushing that very, very hard. And I'm sure it's not a secret about the MCP servers, you know, and and and I know AJ has done this and I've I've dabbled it you know for quite some time is interacting with the MCP server for Business Central with Copilot, build a full solution in like five minutes, five, ten minutes, and then and then also calling email, you know. Uh you you had mentioned about interacting with Outlook and be able to do more than that is just a few prompts and connecting it and nothing else, you know. It's pretty straightforward. So the the ability for for for you to create an agent for a specific use case that's repeatable and then have it interact with all the different applications that you have, not just Business Central, um, but you can also create a record in Business Central and fully interact with it, and then at the same time connect it with the other Microsoft uh applications and beyond as a huge benefit for the SMB space that don't quite have you know the budget of enterprise level. So if you look at it from that perspective, it helps it helps it create a level playing field for for their growth.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think however, I mean we're talking about the copilot studio in general, right? Yeah, copilot studio in general. Yeah, yeah, I think we're yet to see what the application will be because I I have a feeling, that's my feeling currently, that uh it's not that widespread yet. I mean, talking about the business central, people mostly stay inside the business central, and copilot studio means you building an agent which is attached to I don't know, website um um or some other channels. And I'm I'm curious to see, and I'm MCP is also is it in preview already or not? I'm not sure. I think it is preview, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It is in preview and it's in 27.2, I believe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 27.2. Yeah, so 27.2 you can uh work with it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so I think uh yeah, let's see next year what will happen. Because I'm interested to see use cases actually. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_00:

It's use use case. The adoption is usually gonna be tough because you're trying to find where in your business would this fit, right? Uh and in using in using that and kind of a day-to-day. So adoption is gonna be a little bit interesting where people are gonna be using it for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, if we if we don't know, I am sure AJ will know. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, even for you had mentioned about the uh computer use uh agent, where it looks at the screen of your computer and it will just read the context of your screen. So I think that's why it's important for for that use when you have tooltips on your business application. Uh so you no longer need a true API. That's what the computer use agent does, is that there's no API needed, it just looks at the context of what you have on your computer. So if you if you design an application in Business Central, you have very good tooltips, it's going to understand that context in the screen, interact interact with it.

SPEAKER_04:

Do you know I remember when the modem, you know, when I could buy a 1200, 2400 bud modem, and that was a big thing, and I had CompuServe email.

SPEAKER_00:

CompuServe.

SPEAKER_04:

And I remember when the cell phone was created. I really want to go back to those times. I I think uh simple times. You know, I'm listening to you both talk about all this, and I'm just like, wow, it's um it's it's just uh you know, those those movies back from the 60s and 70s talking about the you know the futuristic space future. Uh-huh. We weren't too far off.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. So I start I had a like um a feeling like I'm not sure where the future comes, right? And I wasn't sure about whether it's good or bad for me. But right now I have a feeling it cannot pass by me, it's me like ignoring it, right? So it's going to hit everybody, actually.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, whether you're yes, it's it's yes, you you said that well. It's um uh it's not going away. It's uh it's it's it's a good time to take a look at uh what's available. Again, you don't have to rush, you don't have to use it just to use it. Uh as you talked about like the use cases, come up with practical use cases. I know with myself, I had to start small, like very small, simple things, not create an application. And I'm not even talking just development, I'm talking because you had mentioned you use it with your daughter and in ChatGPT and talking with them about stuff. But I started very, very small. And now I have a better understanding of it and I can know where to apply it.

SPEAKER_00:

In in generality, though, I think people don't realize indirectly they're already interacting with AI. I mean, we mentioned that I don't Google anymore. Uh you're right. I I still go to google.com to Google stuff, but it summarizes for me. And and then you can turn it into AI mode, which you have a full chat. You really don't have to Google and search which the first, you know, the first thing that comes up on the list of among different links, it just summarizes it for you, saves you time.

SPEAKER_04:

I remember when that was invented, by the way. Search engines. You know, search engines used to be pretty much manual where people had links and pages, and these are the sites. Like uh, I'm telling you, my poor brain has gone through a lot. Uh but to your point, Chris. See, I think of all these things now. It's um, I don't know, maybe that's a sign of being old. You saw it reminiscing. I think everybody uses AI a lot more than they think, like you said. It's not just in the search ending, but even like customer support. I saw a statistic on one large software company, and it really stuck out that they get like 30. It's a large software company, enterprise software company, and it's not Microsoft with Business Central. They saw this uh statistic. It was one of the other ones. They had 35,000 support requests, of which 30,000 were answered by AI. 5,000 required a human. That's impressive.

SPEAKER_00:

That is impressive. That's probably them asking for a human at that point, right? It's like, ah, I understand this is AI.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh or whatever, you went through it. Or again, it might have been, you know, speak to a person or something, but this is the world we're in where I bet you a lot of your customer support type requests are handled by AI.

SPEAKER_00:

I I I will say, just to go back into the enterprise level in our space, um uh I did I did have a conversation with uh two individuals that are similar industry, they're tech guys like us, but they're in a different world. One worked in Amazon and the other one works at Oracle. And so we were having a conversation about AI and using AI as kind of a day-to-day routine. And surprisingly, surprisingly, the two of them said that I haven't really dabbled into it as my day-to-day. So it's you know, again, I I'm living in this uh the Microsoft world where like everything's thrown to as co-pilot. Um, they even advertise now, and you know, I watched watching Monday Night Football the other day. Copilot by Microsoft was uh was uh marketed, but from hearing it from two different places, uh they said, and they're both technical developers, and they're like we don't we don't really we use it, but we don't it's not part of our daily routine. So that's surprising to me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah surprising. So that's uh like a story between electrical cars and tuk tukes in South East Asia, right? So like you're gonna have electric cars across the developers, but you'll still have a lot of tuk tuk.

SPEAKER_04:

It'll come, it takes time to adopt and and then eventually everybody will have it. Um Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I could speak with you uh for a long time. We'll have to have you on uh about some of these other topics. There's more topics I wanted to talk with you about. Um, but we do appreciate you taking the time you uh spent to speak with us today because uh any time you spend with us, you can't spend doing something else, and time truly is the currency of life. So I uh we do appreciate um uh you and all that you do, and you do some great things as well. Um if anyone would like to have some more information about um you know subscription billing, about AI with Business Central or any other the great things that you do, what's the best way to get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I would say maybe email. I don't know. I haven't thought about that, so uh will you put the email somewhere? Or I don't know how to yes, yes. Maybe even better idea is our blog, so there is a contact form. I have a blog, like it's Milian RS, uh point RS, so just drop me a line and I'll respond. If you have my email or Teams, you can also reach me out or public repos for Microsoft, whatever.

SPEAKER_04:

Excellent action. Thank you, Milan. And uh we'll put uh your contact information within the show notes of this. And uh we look forward to speaking with you soon, and hopefully I get to see you at one of the upcoming events.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, hopefully I had fun. Thank you guys for your time. No, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_04:

I'll talk with you again soon. Chao ciao, bye.

SPEAKER_01:

Bye bye.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for join joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlife.com. That is D V L P R L I F E dot com. And you can interact with them via Twitter, D V L P R L I F E. You can also find me at mattalino.io, m-a-t-a-l-in-o.io, and my Twitter handle is Mattalino 16. And see you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone, thank you, and take care.

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Kris

Host
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Brad

Co-host