Microsoft presents: Next level administration skills with the admin MCP server and agents

Overview

The session explains MCP as a protocol that wraps APIs in JSON RPC with natural language descriptions, then shows how the Business Central admin MCP server applies it to administration. The server is remote, stateless, SaaS-only and close in design to the Admin Center API. Authentication uses Entra ID with OAuth 2.1 and a well-known discovery endpoint.

Demos cover a single-tenant setup in Visual Studio Code, where the agent discovers 42 tools and queries environments, quotas and database usage, and investigates a failed upgrade. A Copilot Studio custom connector is set up with an Entra app registration. For partners with many customer tenants, an MCP proxy sample from the BC Tech GitHub repository is used with GitHub Copilot CLI. The Q&A covers multi-tenant authentication, extension limits and on-premises support.

Key points

• The admin MCP server is in public preview, is SaaS-only and does not cover on-premises.
• In VS Code the server is added in settings and the agent discovered 42 tools; no custom client is needed for the admin flow.
• Destructive operations are deliberately not exposed: no uninstalling apps, deleting or renaming environments, setting or clearing security groups, or linking/unlinking Power Platform. This may be reconsidered later.
• Publishing extensions is not part of the admin API; the team says it would like to add it, with no timeline given.
• Copilot Studio needs an Entra app registration, a manual redirect URI and a custom MCP connector with OAuth endpoints, client credentials and scopes. Only delegated flows work, so a user must sign in interactively.
• For partners with many tenants, the BC Tech repository has an MCP proxy sample that adds a tenant ID parameter and per-tenant authentication tools, and stores authentication data encrypted on the local machine.
• The proxy sample can be changed to use S2S authentication, but this needs code changes and an application setup. It is sample code, not a turnkey solution.

Features

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• codeunit “Demo PTE codeunit” at 10:51
• other “BC admin center” at 37:20
• other “CP tools” at 37:20
• other “get environments tool” at 39:52

Not found in BC28-30: codeunit “Demo PTE codeunit”.

Quotes

• 1:58 “MCP is sort of like a USB-C protocol for providing tools and resources for AI agents.”
• 2:14 “it’s just an API that is wrapped in a JSON RPC too and provided to agents with a sort of natural language description that”
• 3:14 “we are kind of providing the very very close experience to admin API that we already have in Business Central for administrative purposes”
• 4:46 “we’re exposing uh uh all things that are already available on Admin API except some that are considered as a uh disruptive destructive changes”
• 5:18 “this is a public preview and um we are hoping to open up more more APIs and more scenarios going forward”

Disclaimers in the video

• 1:02 preview: that we enabled for our partners by providing some samples on our open-source BC Tech repository on GitHub
• 5:18 preview: this is a public preview and um we are hoping to open up more more APIs and more scenarios going forward
• 13:19 preview: This is a security measure for our public preview.
• 40:43 not-in-this-release: you can even use them S2S authentication if you have the application and you uh, change this sample a little …
• 41:14 preview: this is a a public preview. It’s version one.
• 43:29 other: We deliberately removed or kind of did not implement these dangerous APIs or destructive APIs. But we might reconsider maybe adding this going forward.
• 43:53 coming-later: we would like to add it to admin API. So, it most likely will appear in in the future.

Presenters (as heard): Yuri.