Episode 519: The Last Frontier: Can AI Finally Conquer BC Report Layouts?

Overview

The guests discuss how AI is changing Business Central development. They cite the expense management agent, described as about 90 percent written by AI with roughly 6 months from idea to release. They also describe the BC quality workflow, and one developer’s own use of GitHub Copilot for AL, with about 95 percent of code generated. The workflow uses planning, working and reviewing agents, and agent-generated documentation with Playwright screenshots.

The second half focuses on report layouts. The speaker says AI handles RDL reasonably well because RDL is HTML-like, with a 60-70 percent success rate in his tests. AI can produce good-looking Word layouts, but he has not yet succeeded in mapping fields. The discussion also covers Microsoft moving standard documents from RDLC to Word layouts, with RDLC still supported. It ends with telemetry analysis through MCP and the effect of AI on programming habits.

Key points

• The expense management agent was described as about 90 percent written by AI, with about 6 months from idea to release.
• Microsoft’s BC quality workflow adds agentic triage and code review with community instructions, and partners can add their own instructions.
• One developer reports about 95 percent of his code is written by GitHub Copilot and says it is less buggy than his manual code. He uses MVP access to the Pro Plus version.
• Multi-agent workflow: a planning agent, a working agent and a reviewing agent, with the output always reviewed manually. Switching between models burns through credits quickly.
• Advice for starting with Copilot: begin without instruction files, sub-agents or skills, and add them after learning the basics.
• Asked about RDLC-to-Word conversion, the guest rated his AI results about 60-70 percent successful. Generated RDL sometimes does not compile and Word field mapping has not worked yet, but the output is a good starting point.
• Claude can design an appealing Word invoice layout from an existing BC invoice. The missing link is connecting the fields properly.

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 “BC quality” at 8:23
• other “Playwright” at 24:25
• other “RDL” at 29:33
• other “Word layout” at 29:00
• other “RDLC” at 32:28
• other “XRechnung” at 28:36
• other “ZUGFeRD” at 28:36
• other “KQL” at 40:26
• other “MCP” at 40:26

Quotes

• 6:34 “the expense management agent. And I’m looking forward to seeing it and to seeing how it actually works.”
• 6:59 “it was developed completely using AI and it was developed at faster pace than the other features”
• 9:42 “the community instructions, and then partners can put their own instructions in there as well to help monitor the code”
• 10:04 “the expense agent was written I think it was 90% by AI was what they had mentioned”
• 10:20 “the period of time it took to develop was 6 months. And that period of time or from like idea to release, I think.”

Disclaimers in the video

• 6:59 coming-later: I’m really wondering how will it be accepted and how will it work out at the end you know in the wild when it’s released in the wild
• 29:23 preview: that area in which AI help to create new layouts is not yet fully covered in AI workflow yet. But I think that might also change
• 30:04 preview: the workflow is not 100% covered yet because I think the AL development is already covered. And this area is not yet covered.
• 33:29 preview: The mapping in word layout I haven’t succeeded yet. we’re not made the complete journey yet.
• 40:40 coming-later: set that up next week um is is my plan. Uh cuz I’m going to bring back an initiative

Presenters (as heard): Neil Johnson, Chris, Brad, Kristoff, Tynan Stark, Jeremy, Twilio, Torben, Milan, KB, Tine.