We attended Directions EMEA 2021 in Milan, the event for the Microsoft partner community that returns to face-to-face attendance.
Here are the main new features announced at the event
A few days ago our team travelled to Milan to attend Directions EMEA 2021. The multitudinous event for the Microsoft partner community returns in this edition with extensive measures to respect the physical distance. It is a great event for partners that allows us to get together and during which we always present news and the general roadmap of the company. During this edition, some very interesting announcements have been made, which we summarise in this article.
Business Central roadmap: what the first wave of 2022 upgrades will look like
Directions EMEA 2021 kicked off with surprising data on the increase in the use of Business Centralonline: from 2,000 customers in 2019 to 20,000 this year. This data provides a very powerful outlook for ERP.
Regarding the short-term future, improvements in reporting (especially the integration with Excel, which will allow editing anywhere, but also Power BI and Word), functional improvements and a strengthening of security at different levels have been announced. In addition, it has been announced for new countries in 2022 and the use of Business Central plus apps has been greatly encouraged. On the other hand, much emphasis has been placed on making the app easier to use.
Onboarding in Business Central and integration with other apps
Onboarding will be one of the areas that will grow in the upcoming updates. The speed will be increased and new tools will be offered for onboarding new customers.
On the other hand, the aim is to connect Business Central with new apps to increase the possibilities for users. In this regard, a connector with Shopify has been announced.
Troubleshooting with telemetry
During the event, several examples of the use of telemetry were shown. For example, how to monitor the environment using aggregated data to see the performance of pages, reports or which ones have the most impact on customers. The use of Artificial Intelligence is intensifying in the system tending towards a more predictive software.
Validation in AppSource
Validation of applications in AppSource is automated. Now regardless of the zone it will take no more than five minutes. This feature is aligned with the tightening of the integration between apps and Business Central.
The cloud
Business Central's Managing Director, Mike Morton, explained the keys to success at Business Central online during his speech:
- Use AppSource where possible.
- Reduce the time spent by consultants using onboarding capabilities.
- Use telemetry to support customers.
- Use service to service authentication connected to Business Central.
- Migrate even large customers to the cloud (cloud migration will no longer be capped at GB).
