What's New: Designing Generative AI Experiences (2024 Release Wave 1)

Overview

The session explains how to design Copilot features in Business Central. It covers how AI is positioned as a collaborator with the user, how to build user trust, and how to manage AI risk with preview and undo. It separates two kinds of value: action (faster or more efficient work) and insight (getting to knowledge).

On the technical side, it introduces the prompt dialogue page type with input, generating and output modes, plus prompt options, system actions for generate and cancel, and the prompt guide. It also shows where Copilot actions appear: the Copilot menu on list pages, a floating overlay, dialogues and subpages. Demos include suggesting sales lines from free text and mapping e-document lines to purchase order lines.

Key points

• The prompt dialogue has three stages: input mode, generating mode and output mode. Input mode can be skipped when all needed data already exists, as in the e-document line mapping demo.
• Prefer structured data where you have it, since it can save clicks. Unstructured input adds uncertainty in interpretation.
• Undo principle: the system must provide a preview or a way to completely undo what AI suggested. Generated output must go only to temporary tables, with no side effects on permanent data.
• Developers supply AL code for the generate system action and must make the cancel action clear all traces of the output.
• Prompt options must be option fields and should never be required. Only the prompt itself can be required.
• The Copilot menu appears on all list pages and the floating overlay shows the topmost action, which users can hide. Cards and documents do not have the menu yet, but prompt actions can be placed on subpages and in dialogues.
• To find Copilot features, check the Copilot and AI capabilities page. Only English is currently supported, so English must be selected as the language. The features come from version 24 (2024 release wave 1).

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.

• page 42 “Sales Order” at 4:43
• page 50 “Purchase Order” at 10:41
• page “prompt dialog” at 23:55

Not found in BC28-30: page “prompt dialog”.

Quotes

• 0:36 “AI is here to stay and it’s bringing more transformation than most of us have seen in our lifetime”
• 2:01 “the computer is working with the human user to solve the task and that distinction that way of placing the AI in relation to”
• 6:47 “it has three stages it has the input mode it has the generating mode and it has the output mode”
• 7:28 “consider really if there’s an opportunity to save a few clicks by using structure data if you have it”
• 11:01 “we actually skip the input mode because we had all the input we needed no need to directag the user through an input stage”
• 13:19 “most business users are not AI experts it’s not necessarily clear what AI um is best for at this point in time”
• 13:40 “building trust using AI uh requires that the users are comfortable with uh the limitations of AI”
• 14:41 “faster or more efficient and a i can help gain insights uh get to knowledge”
• 17:02 “instead of trying to rule out all um wrongdoings of AI we need to bracket it we need to control Ro we need to”
• 17:42 “no AI will be ever perfect because no model can interact with the physical world in a complete way so human needs to be”
• 19:04 “the system in this case business Central must always provide a preview or a way to completely undo what AI suggested”
• 23:34 “the promt dialogue is going to be with us from now and going forward and and it will complement the other page types we”
• 25:26 “it’s a good practice never to require the user to choose the prompt options what can be required is the prompt but the prompt”
• 26:43 “it’s very very important that when you are developing a new prom dialogue that you obey to this principle of uh undoing”
• 27:19 “don’t make any side effects of the generated output because that way you are uh not allowing the user to roll back”
• 28:48 “prompting is not going to feel natural to every user so this is an important way of giving them some templates to work from”
• 29:28 “we have actually placed it front and center of all list places so there is now a thing called the co-pilot menu that is”
• 31:27 “use that space wisely for an action that actually is supposed to be very prominent um so uh we are making good use of”
• 33:48 “consider the best use of the prompt dialogue for every scenario meaning what type of input do you have what kind of output do”
• 34:48 “right now we only support English language so make sure that English is selected as your language and also this is from what we”

Disclaimers in the video

• 21:17 not-in-this-release: currently there is no uh partner extensibility for the chat in uh business Central
• 32:16 other: we don’t have any co-pilot menu on the entity page yet so cards and documents don’t have that capability that lists have yet
• 34:48 other: right now we only support English language so make sure that English is selected as your language

Presenters (as heard): Yovinda, Soren Alexanderson, Cern, Yakob, Soren.