20260713 - From Zero to Agent Building agents in Business Central

Overview

An Areopa webinar that explains what agents are, lists the existing agents (sales order, payables, expense), and then walks through building a custom agent. A live demo uses an inventory check scenario: the agent reads an email, checks stock, creates a purchase order when items are missing, and replies, with human-in-the-loop requests and an audit trail.

The second half is aimed at developers. It covers the task, task builder and task message builder codeunits, the external orchestrator, job queue use for email, instructions and memory, role center and page restrictions, permission elevation, consumption monitoring, and creating agents in AL with the Agent Factory, configuration dialogue pages, capability registration and a KPI page. Custom agent creation is in preview and works only in sandbox, with no production date given.

Key points

• Custom agent creation is in preview, works only in sandbox, not production, and needs version 27.4 or higher.
• Billing must be set up because agent actions consume credits; if credits run out, agents stop working. Agent admin and agent diagnostic permissions are needed.
• Agent execution is based on tasks and task messages linked by conversation IDs; the agent task builder and task message builder codeunits create them, and an external orchestrator runs tasks.
• Instructions drive agent behavior. Memory holds actions, not state, and must be requested in the prompt. Instructions need guards against prompt injection, such as blocking price changes.
• Restrict agents with a dedicated role center and page customization. Agents have no Tell Me search, and they read tool tips and error messages, so clear UI text matters.
• When a user approves an agent action in a review dialog, the agent gets the combined permissions of the user and the agent for that action.
• In AL, use the Agent Factory codeunit and Agent Beta Data interface, register capabilities with billing type build, and test with many variants again after any model change.

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.

• other “Sales validation agent template” at 8:35
• other “Inventory check agent” at 10:20
• codeunit 4303 “Agent Task” at 19:05
• codeunit 4315 “Agent Task Builder” at 19:05
• codeunit 4316 “Agent Task Message Builder” at 19:05
• page 31 “Item List” at 24:46
• page 9307 “Purchase Order List” at 25:12
• other “Agent Factory” at 38:18
• interface “Agent Beta Data” at 38:18
• page “Configuration Dialogue” at 39:21
• codeunit “Agent Creation Codeunit” at 40:33
• page “setup page” at 39:09
• page “KPI page” at 41:15
• codeunit “create activate” at 40:33

Not found in BC28-30: interface “Agent Beta Data”, page “Configuration Dialogue”, codeunit “Agent Creation Codeunit”, page “setup page”, page “KPI page”, codeunit “create activate”.

Quotes

• 3:50 “an agent is more like an a piece of software that can perform task on behalf of your self it it will listen to”
• 4:49 “The sales order agents that was the first agents for it. The purchase agent and now we have a merchant or purchase agent it’s”
• 6:14 “it cannot be implemented inside the production uh the minimum version is 27.4 for it will automatically uh install it”
• 6:29 “You need to have an agent admin and an agent diagnostic. And it’s quite important that you have to have set up your billing”
• 9:22 “You have to set up instructions. So in that case that tells the agent what he needs to do inside this central what kind”

Disclaimers in the video

• 6:14 preview: it cannot be implemented inside the production uh the minimum version is 27.4
• 7:18 preview: it’s currently is just for prototyping because it’s only working in in sandbox
• 7:58 preview: please be aware it’s uh currently possible inside production because it’s still in preview
• 38:18 preview: Agent Factory codeunit and Agent Beta Data interface - part of agent development framework
• 39:21 preview: Configuration Dialogue page type is a new page type for agent setup
• 43:31 coming-later: later on the road map there will be also that copilot agents can interact with AL agents
• 43:51 preview: it is prototyping only. It’s working only on an sandbox for it
• 45:00 not-in-this-release: agents are only available on sandbox environments at the moment
• 45:23 preview: It is still on on on preview. They are really testing right now
• 45:23 coming-later: there is no end date from or there’s sorry no date from when it will be available for uh production environments

Presenters (as heard): Tobias Fencler, Bat Fabake.