Summit 2026 Recap: Practical AI and PLM for Business Central

We spent the second week of October at Community Summit Nashville 2026 as exhibitor and sponsor. Summit is one of the main conferences for the Dynamics community, and it was a great event with a lot of people and many good discussions. Two themes came up in almost every conversation. People want AI that helps with the work at hand, at their desk, today. And manufacturers on Business Central want real control over their engineering data.

AI is getting practical

AI was everywhere at the show, as you would expect. What changed was the tone. People asked different questions. What can it do on a normal Tuesday? Who does it help? How much time does it save? Visitors at our booth did not want a vision of the future. They wanted to see what an agent does with their data, in their system, today.

Agents that help with the task at hand

We showed three copilot agents in Bluestar PLM. All of them run inside Dynamics 365.

• The ECM agent supports engineers through an engineering change, from the first idea to execution. You describe the change in plain language, and the agent turns it into a structured ECO draft, using your Outlook emails and Teams chats as input. It recommends dispositions for affected items, calculates the cost impact and summarizes the change for approvers.
• The product overview agent gives people a fast view of a product and its related data. It starts from the object you are working on and shows all related data: upstream from the engineering processes, and downstream into production and manufacturing from the ERP. You can also start from a batch or serial number to see the exact machine at a customer, including its service history.
• The release agent helps with the final step of the engineering phase: releasing a product into the ERP and into production. It picks the right template for you and guides you through the steps.

Because engineering is embedded in the ERP, the agents see engineering data from the PLM and operational business data from Dynamics 365. There is no connection or sync in between, and no second tool to log into.

Business Central manufacturers want more than a CAD import

The second theme was Bluestar PLM for Business Central, which we recently launched. Many Business Central companies know they have a gap. Their engineering data lives somewhere else, and they have to get it into the system and keep it under control. We heard about two approaches, and both fall short.

• Importing or linking CAD data into Business Central brings in data and BOMs, but nothing manages them once they are there. Who approved this revision? What changed? Business Central cannot answer.
• Putting a CAD vendor's PDM system next to Business Central leaves teams struggling with the interface between the two. Data gets stuck, drifts out of sync or needs manual rework.

A better answer is to manage engineering data in Business Central itself, with real processes around it. We had good talks with smaller manufacturers in particular: companies that need proper change and revision control, but do not want a heavy PLM project to get it.

What to do next

Want to see the agents at work? Watch our on-demand webinar, where we showcase the product overview agent and the release agent. If you run Business Central and your engineering data still lives in files, emails or a separate system, we would like to hear how you handle it today.

Want to learn more about Bluestar PLM for Business Central? Watch the launch webinar on demand.