Business Central 28 – Happy GA Day!

# Business Central 28 Is Here — What You Need to Know About 2026 Release Wave 1

It’s April 1st and Business Central 28 just went GA. No April Fools’ joke — this is the real deal. And while BC28 doesn’t ship a brand-new headline agent like Wave 2 did with the Sales Order Agent and the Payables Agent, don’t let that fool you. This wave is arguably more important because it takes all those bold AI bets and turns them into production-ready infrastructure.

Let me walk you through the features that matter most — with a clear focus on AI, agents, and developer experience, but covering the full picture.

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## AI & Agents: From Experiment to Operations

BC28 is a consolidation wave for AI. The message from Microsoft is clear: agents are becoming citizens of the platform, not just cool demos.

**MCP Server Goes Mandatory.** The Model Context Protocol server access is now enabled by default. This doesn’t mean every tenant automatically exposes data to external agents — it means the capability ships turned on, and the admin configures which APIs are exposed. That’s a significant shift in posture.

**MCP Server for Admin Center (Preview).** This one is fascinating. AI agents can now discover and execute admin operations through MCP — checking update status, listing installed extensions, copying environments to sandbox, scheduling updates. All through a standardized, self-describing protocol. Think about what this means for automated environment management. No more PowerShell scripts for routine tasks.

**Payables Agent Gets Smarter.** Processed emails are now tagged with a “Processed by Payables Agent” category in Outlook. Sounds like a minor thing, but if you’ve ever shared a mailbox between humans and an agent, you know the chaos that can cause. This is direct user feedback turned into a feature — and it’s an important step in the human-agent relationship.

**Dedicated Agent Task Pane.** All agent tasks are now managed from a single, centralized pane. No more jumping between different agents to see what’s running. You can also stop all active tasks for a selected agent — a proper kill switch when things go sideways.

**Review Agent Content on Pages.** Users can now review what agents have generated directly within Business Central pages. This keeps the human-in-the-loop approach intact while making it much more practical.

**AI Resources for Copilot Extensions (Preview).** This is a big deal for ISVs. Third-party extensions can now tap into Microsoft-managed AI infrastructure instead of spinning up their own Azure OpenAI deployments. That removes a massive barrier for smaller partners who want to build Copilot features but can’t justify the infrastructure cost.

**Item Insights with KPIs and Summary.** The new Item Statistics page gives you AI-powered insights with advanced KPIs right on the item level. This is where Copilot starts to feel genuinely useful for day-to-day business users, not just tech enthusiasts.

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## Developer Experience: The Real Gems

This is where BC28 gets dense — in the best way.

**Semantic Search in AL (GA).** AL developers can now query Business Central using semantic similarity, not just exact text matching. The new codeunit “Semantic Data Search” offers methods like `SetMaxResults`, `SetSearchTarget(RecRef)`, and `FindSimilarByField()`. If you’re building custom agents, this fundamentally changes how they discover relevant records. One caveat: the codeunit is currently `Scope = ‘OnPrem’`, so cloud extension support may still be coming.

**Troubleshooting MCP Server (Preview).** During active debugging sessions in VS Code, GitHub Copilot (or any MCP-compatible coding agent) can analyze your call stack, inspect variables across frames, retrieve source code, and even set breakpoints programmatically. This is not a replacement for traditional debugging — it’s a complement for complex, multi-layered scenarios where you need AI-assisted diagnostics.

**BC-Bench (GA).** Think SWE-Bench, but for Business Central. A benchmarking framework for evaluating coding agent performance on real-world AL tasks — bug fixes, test creation, the works. This is how you measure whether your Copilot setup is actually getting better over time.

**New Agent Template.** The `AL: New Project` command in VS Code now includes an Agent template. Scaffold a custom Business Central agent from scratch — complete with instructions on how to get started.

**Symbols from NuGet (Preview).** The new `AL: Download Symbols from Global Sources` command pulls app packages directly from Microsoft’s public NuGet feeds — no connected environment required. Supports country-specific packages and custom feeds. For anyone running CI/CD pipelines, this is a workflow game-changer.

**AL Tests from VS Code (Preview).** Finally — run your AL tests directly from the IDE. No more switching back and forth.

**Mandatory Platform Changes.** Keep an eye on these — they could break things:

– Advanced Tell Me (semantic search) becomes the default

– Calculate only visible FlowFields — performance boost, but extensions that assume all FlowFields are always calculated will break

– Auto-save with every field change

– Server certificate validation for HTTP requests

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## Supply Chain: Quietly Massive

Nobody will write a headline about these features, but they’ll impact daily operations for thousands of users.

**Approval Workflows for Item Journals and Requisition Worksheets.** You can now send item journal batches and requisition/planning worksheet batches for approval before posting or creating purchase documents. This has been a gap for a long time.

**Quality Management (Preview).** A complete quality module arrives as an extension — covering purchase receipts, production output, assembly output, manual and scheduled checks, quarantine procedures, quality certificates, and certificates of analysis. This is not a lightweight addition.

**Drop Shipments Reworked.** Multiple improvements: create purchase orders directly from drop shipment sales orders, post purchase invoices independently of sales invoices, reverse drop shipments when documents aren’t invoiced. The entire flow is now significantly more flexible.

**Item Variants Get Pictures and Attributes.** You can store pictures for item variants and define variant-specific attributes. Simple but impactful for anyone managing product lines with color, size, or material variations.

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## Finance, Reporting & Administration

**Withholding Tax (Preview).** Automatic withholding tax calculation when posting vendor invoices or payments. Setup through Withholding Tax Codes, posting groups, and revenue types.

**Plastic and Sugar Tax (Preview).** New excise journal capabilities for weight-based and content-based tax calculation. The framework is there — country-specific declaration forms are left to partners.

**Financial Reporting Enhancements.** Report layouts now have a lifecycle: Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, Retired. This brings governance to something that was previously a free-for-all.

**Permissions Overview.** A new page that shows permissions across all installed apps and extensions in a unified view. Filter by object, scope, extension, or permission set. Essential for security audits.

**Database Index Management.** View index usage and cost per company, and turn off unused indexes. Performance tuning directly from the UI.

**Cloud Migration from Any SQL Database (Preview).** Not just from NAV or older BC versions anymore — from any SQL database.

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## Shopify Connector

The Shopify story keeps getting tighter: custom collections for exported items, product options based on item attributes, variant image sync between BC and Shopify, and checkout currency support when creating sales documents from Shopify orders.

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## My Take

BC28 is not a wave that will generate big headlines. And that’s exactly why it matters. Microsoft took the bold bets from Wave 2 — agents, MCP, semantic search, the AI Development Toolkit — and spent this cycle making them production-ready. The MCP server going mandatory is a signal. Semantic search landing in AL is a signal. BC-Bench existing at all is a signal.

At the same time, the supply chain and developer tooling improvements are substantial. Quality Management as a full module, approval workflows for journals, symbols from NuGet, AL tests from VS Code — these are real productivity wins.

If you’re a partner: spin up a sandbox today. Test the mandatory features against your extensions. Explore the MCP server. Build your first agent from the new template.

This is the wave where BC’s AI story stops being a preview and starts being the platform.

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## Sources & Further Reading

For this post, I’ve pulled from the official Microsoft documentation and several excellent community analyses. Here’s where to dig deeper:

**Official Microsoft Documentation**

1. [What’s New or Changed in Business Central 2026 release wave 1 – Update 28.0]

2. [Feature details in update 28.0 public preview]— Full descriptions of every feature, including MCP Server, Semantic Search, BC-Bench, Quality Management, and all supply chain improvements.

**Community Analysis & Deep Dives**

3. [Business Central 28.0 Preview: the 2026 Release Wave 1 is a consolidation play] — Tech Sphere Dynamics with the best overall analysis of this wave, including mandatory feature implications and the ISV AI Resources story.

4. [Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1: A Mix of Platform Evolution and Practical Improvements] — Steven Renders on think about IT with a thorough supply chain and developer tooling breakdown.

5. [Dynamics 365 Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 (BC28)] — visicn blog with a strong focus on AI/Agents maturity and the Agent Designer direction.

6. [AL developers can use semantic search on data and metadata] — Yun Zhu (Dynamics 365 Lab) with hands-on testing of the Semantic Data Search codeunit, including the `Scope = ‘OnPrem’` limitation.

7. [New template for getting started with creating agents] — Yun Zhu walking through the new Agent template in VS Code.

8. [Download Symbols from Global NuGet Sources] — Yun Zhu with a practical walkthrough of the NuGet symbol download feature.

9. [Weekly Review: BC AL Development – March 8–14, 2026] — DvlprLife.com covering MCP Server Configuration, AL Development Tools MCP Server, and GitHub Copilot modes in AL projects.

10. [BC28 Preview – Early Access Now Available] — Dynamics Insights with a list of mandatory features from 27.x and platform test areas.

11. [Deprecated features in Business Central 2026 release wave 1 (BC28)] — Yun Zhu summarizing what’s being removed or replaced in this wave.

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