Directions EMEA 2025: Microsoft unveils new AI-first development options for Dynamics 365 Business Central
One of the clear messages Microsoft leaders delivered to Dynamics 365 Business Central partners at Directions EMEA 2025 was that AI won’t replace your people, but professionals with AI skills will.
And the list of skills and tools for BC will be growing as the R&D team plans for new AI agent building and customizing tools for both functional consultants and developers.
“We are at the dawn of a new coding era,” Microsoft group product manager Dmitry Chadayev told the Directions EMEA 2025 audience. Generative tools or development have advanced rapidly in the last year. The newest models have allowed the BC team to introduce a coding agent that goes far beyond last year’s capabilities of suggesting and finishing code.
The role of coding agents
The team demonstrated that agents can now plan and execute entire coding tasks in a loop autonomously based on a goal described in natural language. The agent demonstrated at the event creates source code, accesses compilers, tests its outputs, creates online documentation, uses source control, and understands new approaches like MCP, they said.
The company presented a scenario in which a consultant writes an in-depth set of functional specifications that identifies key behaviors, rules, outcomes, and tests, and lets a coding agent build it out in a matter of minutes. Within BC, the agent generated tables, pages, extensions, and code units for both demo data and copilot features to accompany the customization.
This type of agent is not a replacement for professional development, the Microsoft team stressed, but it will give functional consultants the ability to prototype richer solutions in less time before involving professional developers to create a quality finished product. They explained that their vision for developers working with coding agents will account for:
- Guardrails and quality standards
- Hardening and optimizing code
- Architecting solutions
- Building reusable components
- Mentoring and reviewing
“This is great news for professional developers,” said Microsoft principal engineering manager Steffen Balslev. Developers looking at this kind of generative output will see a clearer intent, higher quality details, and an overall better specification that they can then professionalize, he explained.
"My job remains the same [as a BC developer],” he said. The engineering focus is still on engineering excellence and high-quality solutions.
The tools showed to the Directions EMEA audience are essentially AL-specific, and Microsoft plans to add even more for testing, diagnosing, and fixing bugs. Balslev also noted a new development environment, working with VSCode in GitHub Codespaces using an AL extension and other tools, including access to MCPs.
ARC: Why native BC agents?
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