DynamicsCon Fall 2021 Preview: The future of collaboration with Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Teams

Editor's Note: MSDW is a media sponsor of DynamicsCon 2021, a free four-day event starting on September 20.

ERP users tend to develop patterns of working to complete tasks that are important and often complex, but that also become routine over time. Those patterns often involve a combination of work directly in the ERP interface, along with data exports and some type of collaboration through reports, document repositories, and, of course, email.

Microsoft believes that Teams offers a new alternative for collaborative business processes, and Dynamics 365 Business Central is one of the ERPs that is on the forefront of the Teams integration model. The Business Central product team has already delivered a first wave of Teams integration features with more on the way. At the same time, Teams advances on Power Platform integration offer new possibilities for reporting, process automation, and custom app development that could benefit traditional Business Central use cases.

Microsoft MVP Shannon Mullins will be exploring the future of Dynamics 365 Business Central and Teams in a session at the upcoming DynamicsCon 2021 and she spoke with MSDW about what users can expect from her session and the broader event.

Making the most of Teams and Business Central

Mullins is a partner and Chief Revenue Officer at Arbala, a firm that specializes in security services, including Microsoft cloud platforms like Azure and Dynamics 365. She leads the firm's Dynamics 365 practice, which also provides implementation services.  

During her DynamicsCon session, Mullins will share her recommendations on how Business Central users can incorporate Teams to improve collaboration. She sees new opportunities emerging in functional scenarios involving budgets, master records, Power BI, Power Automate, and other topics. She explained:

My whole session will be about cool tips and tricks when using Microsoft Teams as a platform to work on collaboration with Accounting Teams when using Business Central. I am excited to share the new features being released with both Teams and BC and what I envision the future looking like.

Business Central customers can get started with Teams by searching and sharing contact information, Mullins suggests. Teams can also help with document storage in combination with SharePoint, budget planning, and collaboration on other data from Business Central. Microsoft now even offers Power BI dashboards in Teams.

I see Teams being able to do [a customer's] whole month-end and year-end close with collaboration with master records as well as reporting all in real-live time. I also see great features where both sales and customer service can fully support their customers directly through BC. Microsoft is on a mission to fully embed Microsoft 365 with Dynamics 365.

An opportunity for the community to learn and grow

DynamicsCon's virtual events have provided one of the most popular community-driven opportunities for Dynamics professionals to network and learn online since 2020. For anyone still weighing whether to attend, Mullins makes a case for joining the event.