Hidden Champion in Business Central

Business Central 2024 Wave 2 has just started it’s official rollout and I am truly amazed that a feature, imho one of the hidden champions in Business Central, has gotten even better.

I am talking about the analysis mode. Hope that you know what i am I am talking about, if not shame on you….I am just kidding. I am talking about this little button you can find on every list page in Business Central:

This little friend turns your page into this:

to this:

If you use Excel or other BI tools, you may be familiar with this view. Have you seen his buddy?

These guys, Analysis Mode & Copilot, are good buddies. If you are an Excel dummy like me, you can get by with Analysis Mode and do your stuff. But if you use Copilot to enhance this feature, then you have a super power. Let me show you:

For example, you want to know what your best selling item was last year.

The result:

Tbh, not bad for three simple prompts.
Doing this all in one prompt, gives you slightly different result:

Now let’s sort and add the amount:

For in total four simple prompts, that looks really good. And this is just a really simple example what your are capable of doing. But there is more:

Done with creating your analysis mode? You can share it with “copy link”:

You can send your analysis view to your colleague, and as soon as he clicks on the link, the view is saved in his Business Central as well. Can you do that with a report? Not really. You can also decide whether or not to create this link to a specific company. Great.

But there is more (are you bored yet?)
Right-click inside your view:

This is for you, my Excel friends. You can also export this view – including your pivot if you have one – to Excel and continue working:

Yes, I know you may already have a lot of reports for analysis or some BI tool (Power BI only, of course!).

But for a feature that is available on every list page, comes out of the box, and has Copilot integration, man, that’s huge.

Just one more thing to add – try it and use it!