Introducing: Copilot for Finance: Why Is This a Game Changer (2024 release wave 2)

Overview

The video, from the 2024 release wave 2 series, presents Copilot for Finance as a product in the Microsoft 365 suite of role-based agents. It starts with the cost of task switching, citing about 4 hours of switching, which the speaker puts at about 5 weeks per year, or roughly 9% of annual work time. It then shows how Copilot for Finance brings data from other applications into the flow of work.

The first focus is accounts receivable and collections. The Outlook integration lets a collections manager summarize email threads, see customer information and update Business Central without leaving Outlook. Excel gets a semi-integration to reconcile data sets with Business Central, with variance analysis coming soon. Managing receivables from Teams is on the roadmap. Custom fields on Business Central entities can be exposed through APIs and surfaced in apps such as Outlook, with Copilot Studio used for authoring.

Key points

• Copilot for Finance sits in the Microsoft 365 suite of role-based agents, alongside Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service.
• Current focus is accounts receivable and collections; the speaker says more is to come.
• The Outlook integration summarizes email threads, surfaces customer information and updates data back into Business Central without switching applications.
• The Excel integration is described as a semi-integration to reconcile data sets between Business Central and Excel; variance analysis is coming soon.
• Managing accounts receivable from within Teams is still on the roadmap and not yet released.
• Custom fields on Business Central entities can be exposed from APIs and surfaced in apps like Outlook; Copilot Studio is needed to author these experiences.
• The speaker cites research saying task switching costs about 4 hours per week, which adds up to about 5 weeks per year, roughly 9% of annual work time.

Features

Every feature below: status not stated.

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.

• other “Copilot Studio” at 6:33

Quotes

• 0:06 “co-pilot for finance is a new product in the Office 365 the Microsoft 365 Suite of applications it lives among what we call the”
• 2:38 “those 4 hours actually become 5 weeks per year that’s about 9% of the annual work time that we spent switching task switching context”
• 3:18 “copilot for finance as I said before this is a new product that lives within the Microsoft 365 suite and really it empowers Finance”
• 3:38 “this is now natively integrated with business Central in Outlook first and foremost but stay tuned”
• 3:58 “there’s also an integration uh well semi integration to excel as you know business Central has very cool integration to excel already”
• 5:36 “if you go to the road map right now and look at what’s planned for copal the finance there are some really interesting things”
• 6:12 “the extensibility option basically what this means is that if you have custom fields on your entities in business Central you can surf those”

Disclaimers in the video

• 3:58 coming-later: variance analysis as well soon interesting features will come
• 5:19 coming-later: there’s a lot more to come here this is only the beginning
• 5:36 coming-later: the ability to manage your accounts receivables from within teams if you go to the road map right now and look at what’s planned for copal the finance there are some really interesting things coming