Business Central

Læs siden på dansk The Business Central connector gives your AI read-only access to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (online). Your AI can find your environments and companies, read a company’s master data and fetch data such as customers, vendors, sales and purchase invoices, general ledger entries, chart of accounts and trial balance from Business Central’s standard API. You connect with your Microsoft work account, and your AI never sees the access itself.

• Price: 449 DKK/month excl. VAT. Business Central is billed only in DKK. No lock-in, cancel at any time. The price covers 1 user and 1 agreement (one connection to your Microsoft tenant, that is, your organization at Microsoft). Each extra user and each extra agreement costs 224.50 DKK/month excl. VAT. Also included in the Consile Studio membership and the free edition. See Pricing.
• Users: whoever buys Business Central automatically gets the included access. If more colleagues need Business Central in their AI, an administrator gives them access under Team in the portal (choose All tools next to Business Central on the person’s page). An extra user is billed pro rata from the day access is given. A colleague without access can still see the tools in their AI, but every lookup is refused with a message to ask an administrator for access. If you have the Consile Studio membership, an administrator instead gives one membership licence per person, and it also covers Business Central. See Team.
• Multiple Microsoft tenants and companies: the portal calls each connection to the system an agreement. One agreement covers all environments and companies in your Microsoft tenant that the connected user has access to. You need one more agreement if you have Business Central in several Microsoft tenants, or if each company should have its own connection in the same tenant, locked to exactly that company (see the section on locking below). An administrator clicks Add agreement on the Connections card on the connector’s page in the portal. Each agreement gets its own address, for example https://mcp.consile.ai/business-central-2/mcp, which you add as a separate connector in your AI. Under the Consile Studio membership there is no button to add an agreement, so write to support@consile.dk instead. See Connect Business Central.
• Endpoint: https://mcp.consile.ai/business-central/mcp (your own named connector in your AI).

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What does it require?

• Business Central online. The connector reads from Microsoft’s cloud edition of Business Central. Business Central on-premises is not supported.
• A Microsoft work or school account. You log in with an account in your organization at Microsoft. A personal Microsoft account cannot be used.
• A Business Central user with access. The user who connects must have a Business Central licence and access to the companies your AI should be able to read. Your AI only sees the companies and data that this user can see in Business Central.
• Preferably a user with read permissions. We recommend connecting with a Business Central user that only has read permissions. See Read-only below.

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Prerequisites

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Read-only

Microsoft does not offer a pure read permission for Business Central. When you connect, you therefore approve Microsoft’s permission Financials.ReadWrite.All (read and write) plus offline_access, which keeps the connection alive. Consile itself limits the access to reading:

• The connector has no write tools. All five tools can only read.
• Consile only sends read requests to Business Central.
• If Microsoft’s approval contains permissions other than the access to Business Central and the standard login details, the connection is refused.

Because the approval at Microsoft technically covers both reading and writing, we recommend connecting with a Business Central user that only has read permissions. Then Business Central itself also limits the access to reading, wherever it is used from.

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Environments and companies

Business Central divides your data into environments (for example Production and Sandbox) and into companies within each environment. One connection covers your whole Microsoft tenant: all environments and all the companies the connected user has access to. You do not choose one company when you connect. Without a lock, your AI finds the company per question with list_companies and uses the Production environment, unless you ask for another one. If several companies match what you write, the answer marks it, so your AI can ask you which company you mean instead of guessing. The choice of environment and company applies only to the single lookup. An administrator can also lock an agreement to one environment and one company. Then every call on that agreement keeps to that company. See the section on locking below.

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What can it do? (tools)

You do not need to know the tool names. You ask in natural language, and your AI picks the right one itself. The connector currently provides five read-only tools. When your AI calls them, they are called business-central__<tool> (for example business-central__list_companies).

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Try asking

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Lock to one company

One agreement covers all environments and companies in your Microsoft tenant. An administrator can lock an agreement to one environment and one company in that environment, so every call on that agreement keeps to that company. In the portal you first choose Environment and then Company. The lock is optional. Without a lock, the connection works as before. On a locked connection:

• list_environments only shows the locked environment, and list_companies only shows the locked company.
• list_companies cannot search by name. If your AI asks for a search, the call is refused.
• get_company_information and query_entity use the locked environment when your AI does not name one. They still need the company’s id (companyId), and it must be the locked one. If your AI names another company or another environment, the call is refused, and your AI is told what the connection is locked to.
• The Production environment is an exception. If the agreement is locked to a sandbox environment, and your AI asks for Production, the connection answers with data from the locked sandbox environment. The answer shows which environment the data comes from.
• query_entity cannot page on to the next page. The answer still shows whether there are more rows. Your AI must then narrow the lookup, for example with a filter or a shorter period, or ask for more rows at a time (at most 500) with fewer fields.
• list_entity_metadata cannot be limited to one company and is hidden. The four other tools are still there, and query_entity can read the same 85 standard data types as before.

A company can only be locked on one agreement at a time. A company and its copy in a sandbox environment count as the same company when the copy has the same id. If an administrator connects the agreement again with Reconnect or a link from your AI, all calls are refused until an administrator has chosen the environment and company again. If an administrator disconnects, the lock disappears. How to lock, and what else happens: Lock a connection to one company.

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Limitations

• Early access: there are no ready-made reports or calculations in one call yet. Your AI fetches data with query_entity and does the further calculations itself, so larger summaries can require several lookups.
• Read-only: the connector cannot create, change or post anything in Business Central. Consile enforces this itself, because Microsoft’s approval cannot be limited to reading. See Read-only.
• Only Business Central online and work accounts: on-premises and personal Microsoft accounts are not supported.
• Only standard data: query_entity reads the 85 standard data types in Business Central’s API. Your own API pages and data from extensions cannot be read. Not all data types exist in all environments. It depends on country and version. list_entity_metadata shows what your environment has, but not on a locked connection.
• No PDFs: the connector does not fetch invoices or other documents as PDF.
• The user’s permissions apply: if the connected user lacks a licence, a permission set or access to a company, Business Central answers with an error (403), and your AI is told about it. Reconnecting does not help. Instead, ask a Business Central administrator for access.
• Large answers are split up: a page is 50 rows by default and at most 500. If an answer gets too large, it is refused, and your AI only gets the general error “Tool invocation failed.” Ask for fewer fields or rows, or narrow it down, for example with a period.
• Microsoft’s call limit: Business Central allows 6,000 calls per 5 minutes per user, and the limit is shared with other programs that use the same Business Central user. If a lookup hits the limit, your AI is told to wait a little and ask for fewer rows.
• Response time: if Business Central does not answer in time, the lookup fails with the general error “Tool invocation failed.”
• Explanatory errors, but not always: for the common errors, the connector gives your AI an explanation: an access that must be connected again, missing permissions, an environment that does not exist, a wrong company id and a query that Business Central refuses. When an environment does not exist, the message names your environment if the connection only reaches one. Otherwise it asks your AI to look up the environments with list_environments. Other errors, for example an answer that is too large, a timeout or an error at Microsoft, only give the general error “Tool invocation failed.”
• The access is renewed automatically, but can stop: if the renewal fails, or Consile is removed in your Microsoft organization, your AI is told that the connection must be set up again from the Consile portal. The portal can still show Connected, because the stored access is still there. Only an administrator can reconnect: if the agreement says Access revoked, click Reconnect. Otherwise the administrator chooses Disconnect in the menu next to the agreement and then clicks Connect. You can also ask your AI for a new connection link in the connector that belongs to the agreement (for example business-central-2). If the agreement was locked, an administrator must choose the environment and company again afterwards. See Connect Business Central.

Is something not working as expected? See Troubleshooting.