What’s New in Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2

The new version of Dynamics 365 Business Central (2025 Release Wave 2) was released in October 2025, while the new features that will be included in this wave are planned to be delivered to market from October 2025 to March 2026. Let's take a quick look at some of the new features that are already available and that we think you'll find interesting.

Development

The 2025 Release Wave 2 introduces several valuable improvements for developers, focusing on productivity, performance diagnostics, and better control over development workflows in Dynamics 365 Business Central. Let’s review the key improvements:

• Cancel build and publish from Visual Studio Code
• Record and edit easier with enhanced page scripting tool
• Truncate table data with new AL method
• View SQL call information in performance profiles
• Hide Copilot summaries

Developers now have the flexibility to stop an ongoing build or publish operation directly from Visual Studio Code. This feature saves time when a build needs to be interrupted without waiting for the process to finish. Canceling can be triggered manually by pressing the Cancel button or by closing Visual Studio Code. Furthermore, if the connection to the on-premises or sandbox developer environment is lost, publishing will also be canceled so it won't block a new publish when the connection is re-established. The following examples show the Cancel operation when building and publishing an extension from within Visual Studio Code.

The new Rec.Truncate() method in AL provides a powerful and efficient way to delete large volumes of data from a table. By bypassing row-by-row deletions, this method significantly improves performance and reduces execution time for data cleanup or reset operations. This feature is particularly valuable for scenarios involving bulk data management, helping you maintain optimal system performance and data hygiene.

Performance profiling now provides visibility into SQL calls executed by Business Central. Developers can now see which calls are made to SQL during a performance profile, and therefore better assess whether bad performance is due to AL code inefficiencies or resulting SQL calls.

For scenarios where Copilot summaries isn’t needed, developers can hide a Copilot summary FactBox on a page of type Card, Document, or ListPlus. This gives organizations more flexibility in controlling user interface elements and tailoring the experience to their business and compliance requirements.

The Page Scripting Tool, used for recording user interactions and automating test scenarios, is now even more powerful. This release introduces several improvements that make recording and editing scripts more flexible and intuitive:

• Define the insert point for the next recorded steps
• Rearrange the order of steps
• Delete any step as needed
• Define script parameters directly in the UI
• Create and manage a suite of scripts within the UI

Copilot and agents

The 2025 Release Wave 2 continues to build on Microsoft’s AI-driven vision for Business Central, enhancing productivity and enabling users to get even more value from embedded Copilot and agent capabilities. The latest updates focus on smarter data interaction, improved guidance, and greater control over how AI assists in daily business tasks.

• Autofill contact details with Copilot
• Find pages and reports with advanced Tell Me search
• Give more instructions for the agent when you review its tasks
• Summarize with Copilot enhancements
• Understand how each Copilot and agent capability is billed
• Use enhanced analysis assist with Copilot
• Use enhanced chat with Copilot

Copilot now automatically searches the web for information and provides suggestions for customer or vendor contact details such as address, phone, email, and website. It can also use a web search to autofill similar fields that typically contain publicly available information.

The improved AI-powered Tell Me feature helps you quickly locate any page or report, even when you don't remember the exact name. You'll spend less time searching and more time getting work done. This feature adds an advanced search option in Tell Me that finds results based on semantic meaning, not just exact text matches. It considers various page properties and additional search terms to provide an ordered list of relevant results.

The Copilot and agents task pane shows the tasks each agent works on. You can make sure the agent does what you want. If an agent needs your help to complete a task, for example, if it's blocked because it can't find an item or a customer, use the Additional instructions field to give the agent the information it needs to get unblocked and go back to work.

All agent tasks appear on a tab in the Copilot chat pane. You can give the agent extra instructions. In the Additional instructions field, enter your own instructions or select some from a predefined set. When you provide more instructions, you'll get more control over the agent. It's easy to correct the agent's course.

This feature applies to all agents in Business Central.

A new Billing Type column is added in the Copilot and Agent Capabilities page. This indicates whether consumption is billed by Microsoft, custom-billed by a partner, or not consumption-billed. A capability can be billed by Microsoft either if it's delivered by Microsoft, or if the partner building the capability has chosen to opt in to using Business Central AI resources. The following example shows billing types for various capabilities.

Additionally, this wave enhances the chat with Copilot preview feature released with 2024 release wave 1. Copilot chat now offers the following improvements:

• Resize the Copilot pane.
• Faster performance and increased reliability.
• Later this wave: support for 20 more languages.

User experiences

The 2025 Release Wave 2 continues to refine the Business Central user interface, delivering more flexibility, security, and comfort in the web client:

• Adjust width of Copilot, help, and page scripting panes
• Use the Concealed text field type for sensitive data

Users now have more control over how they view and interact with side panes such as Copilot, Help, and Page Scripting. Each pane’s width can be freely adjusted, allowing users to optimize screen space based on their task, whether they want a wider workspace for data entry or a larger Copilot window for reviewing AI-generated insights.

Also, Business Central introduces a new MaskType field-level property that allows developers to hide values in text fields. When you apply the property as MaskType = Concealed, Business Central masks the field's value by default, and only shows the value when you choose the reveal button in the field, as illustrated in the screenshot. This is useful for scenarios where you must protect sensitive data, such as personal identifiers, financial details, or confidential notes, from casual observation.

Reporting and data analysis

The 2025 Release Wave 2 significantly enhances reporting and analytics capabilities in Business Central, giving users more flexibility, deeper insights, and improved integration with Power BI. With open-source apps, modernized reports, and advanced forecasting tools, organizations can make faster and more data-driven decisions than before:

• Access open-sourced Power BI apps
• Add data fields to report layouts using Word add-in
• Deferral reporting enhancements
• Use drill-back and dynamic dimension names in Power BI apps
• Use enhanced Financial Reporting
• Use the enhanced Inventory Power BI app to forecast future inventory flow
• Use the enhanced Power BI app for Projects to analyze project profitability
• Use the enhanced Power BI Finance app to improve your cashflow
• Use the enhanced Power BI Manufacturing app and modernized reports in manufacturing analytics
• Use the enhanced Purchasing Power BI app to analyze risk related to vendors
• Use the enhanced Power BI Sales app and modernized reports in sales analytics

Microsoft has made several Business Central Power BI apps open-sourced, enabling partners and customers to explore, customize, and extend them to meet unique business needs. This means you can fully customize semantic models and reports to match your unique processes, KPIs, and reporting needs. Instead of starting from scratch, you can build on high-quality, ready-made models and visualizations, saving significant development time and effort.

Power BI apps now support drill-back capabilities in situations where you want to go to Business Central to dive into the specifics of a number shown in Power BI.

The overall suite of Business Central Power BI apps has been significantly enhanced in this release, delivering modernized visuals, deeper insights, and predictive capabilities across all core business domains, including Inventory, Projects, Finance, Manufacturing, Purchasing, and Sales. These updated apps help organizations better forecast inventory flow, analyze project profitability, improve cashflow management, evaluate manufacturing efficiency, assess vendor risks, and monitor sales performance through intuitive, data-driven dashboards. With richer analytics and improved usability, businesses can make faster, smarter, and more connected decisions directly from within Business Central.

Additionally, the new task pane in the Word add-in streamlines the process of inserting data items and repeaters, making report creation faster and more intuitive. It provides a more user-friendly alternative to working directly with the XML Mapping pane for dataset fields.

To open the task pane in Word, select the Business Central tab and then select Add Data.

Governance and Administration

The 2025 Release Wave 2 brings important updates that make cloud migration and support automation scenarios for Business Central environments easier and more efficient:

• Migrate record links and notes with cloud migration tooling
• Tenant administrators can set Feature Management switches with an API

The cloud migration setup has been enhanced to include record links and notes, ensuring a more complete and accurate data transfer from on-premises environments to the cloud. This improvement helps organizations maintain business context and historical references after migration.

Also, tenant admins can now control entries on the Feature Management page using an API. This allows them to automate setting feature switches across multiple companies and/or environments.

The following operations are possible with the new API:

• Get a list of current feature switches and their state.
• Get the current state for a feature switch.
• Set the current state (activated/de-activated) for a feature switch.

Microsoft has also announced many other exciting features in the Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2 that were not covered in this blog. You can find the full list of released and planned features in the official documentation: What's New or Changed in Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2

To explore the new features in more detail, Microsoft has published 45+ What's new in Business Central 2025 release wave 2 sessions on YouTube.

These short, focused videos cover the latest updates across development, application, AI, and administration areas directly from the Microsoft engineering team. They’re a great way to see the new functionality in action and hear practical guidance straight from the experts.

Do you happen to have any knowledge about  Xpand?

Xpand is a product and service software development company with over 15 years of market experience and a Microsoft Partner since 2016, assisting organizations worldwide in managing their Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems. We provide a broad range of services for clients and partners, including implementation and development for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, as well as upgrade from earlier versions like Navision Financials 2.0. Learn more about our services at https://www.xpandsoftware.com/services.

We would be pleased to discuss cooperation and upgrading your systems or your clients' systems to the latest versions of Business Central. You can easily request this service here, and our team will send you a quote promptly.

Are you curious about the key highlights of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 Release Wave 1? Our Xpand experts have picked out the most important updates. Read the full article here.