Every business knows this moment. A customer order arrives, and suddenly a dozen tiny tasks spill out behind it--checking inventory, verifying pricing, comparing vendors, preparing a sales order, updating someone, and finally closing the loop.
The work is necessary, but rarely strategic enough to push the business forward.Every business faces such situations several times, every single day.
AI agents change the way we have traditionally been working.
Businesses are now using AI Agents to take on repetitive tasks and run them reliably, which helps companies boost productivity, spend less, and free resources to focus on high-value work that drives revenue.
Understanding AI Agents
Before looking at where these agents help, it is useful to understand what they are.
An AI agent is an independent, proactive system that can watch and find a specific trigger, figure out what's going on, and carry out multi-step workflows on its own without any help or instructions. It works on its own, just like a user, with permission sets, audit trails, and a clear set of responsibilities.
- Agents continuously monitor signals such as inboxes, system records, data changes, events, and business triggers across connected systems.
- Agents understand context beyond raw text, combining structured data, conversational history, business rules, and user intent to make informed decisions.
- Agents take action autonomously or semi-autonomously, executing predefined and dynamic tasks such as drafting content, reconciling or matching data, generating summaries, routing exceptions, and escalating issues when needed.
- Agents operate within clearly defined guardrails, including configurable rules, approval thresholds, compliance boundaries, and usage limits.
- Agents pause or seek human input at decision points where confidence thresholds are not met, risk is high, or domain judgment is required.
- Agents provide transparency into their actions, explaining what they did, why they did it, and which inputs, rules, or signals influenced the outcome.
Autonomous AI Agents in Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central now comes with two built-in autonomous AI agents: The Sales Order Agent and the Payables Agent. They take the core ideas of observing, interpreting, and acting, and apply them directly to everyday work.
Sales Order Agent
It is an autonomous AI agent that automates the sales order taking process. It identifies and interprets customer order emails, resolves missing details, and generates a draft quote or sales order for review.
What the Sales Order Agent Actually Does
The Sales Order Agent steps in right at the point where most of the repetitive backend work of executing a sale begins. It reads customer requests directly from a shared inbox and starts sorting through the details without waiting for someone to open the email first.
Here’s what it handles on its own:
- Reads emails and attachments to understand the request
- Identifies the customer, items, and quantities
- Checks availability against current inventory
- Applies your pricing and customer rules
- Tracks clarifications across multiple messages
- Prepares a complete sales quote
- Routes the quote to an end user for review and approval
- Converts the approved quote into a sales order
- Sends the order confirmation to the customer
By the time the draft quote reaches the reviewer, most of the effort that normally clogs up the process is already done.
Benefits of Sales Order Agent in Business Central
The Sales Order Agent quietly removes the small bottlenecks that slow the sales team down. It helps by:
- Reducing manual entry work
- Keeping orders moving even during peak volume
- Improving accuracy through consistent logic
- Spotting missing or unclear information early
- Shortening the order processing cycle
This is how a process becomes easier to manage without changing how customers communicate.
What Still Needs Human Judgment
The agent does all the work, but people still make the decisions that matter. Reviewers fine-tune pricing, confirm commitments, and approve the final quote.
The split is simple:
- The agent handles the routine
- The team handles the judgment
This keeps control exactly where it belongs while clearing the repetitive steps that hold everything up.
Sales Order Agent: Step-by-Step Workflow
1. Email Intake
The agent picks up the customer email from the shared inbox and reads the request.
2. Detail Extraction
It pulls item lines, quantities, and customer details from the email or attachment.
3. Draft Creation
The agent checks item availability and prepares a draft sales quote in Business Central.
4. Human Review
You review the draft, adjust pricing or terms if needed, and confirm accuracy.
5. Customer Review & Approval
The quote is sent to the customer for review and approval.
6. Sales Order Finalization
The quote once approved by the customer, is converted to a sales order that moves through your normal flow.
Payables Agent
This agent was made to solve one of the greatest issues of all time: end-to-end processing of vendor invoices.
What the Payables Agent Actually Does
The Payables Agent takes incoming vendor invoices, reads the details, matches them against purchase orders or receipts, and turns them into draft purchase invoices that are ready for review.
What the Payables Agent can handle on its own:
- Monitors emails, imports and reads attachments to identify vendor invoices
- Identifies the vendor and extracts details such as quantities, prices, and totals
- Prepares the purchase document draft for user review
- Finalizes purchase invoice post approval
Where It Makes a Difference
The Payables Agent reduces the manual work for Account Payables team, especially when invoice volume is high or formats vary by vendor.
It helps by:
- Cutting down repetitive data entry
- Reducing the chance of missing or mistyping values
- Highlighting issues earlier so they don’t reach approval unnoticed
- Standardizing how invoices are handled
- Keeping the AP process moving even during busy cycles
The result is invoices that move faster, exceptions that are easier to manage, and accuracy that prevents human error. It gives teams more time for vendor communication, reconciliation, and higher-value work instead of decoding PDFs all day.
What Still Needs Human Judgment
The agent prepares the invoice, but the final call is still made by the team. AP teams handle the parts that require context or policy decisions.
Humans still:
- Review the draft
- Confirm or correct flagged mismatches
- Validate pricing exceptions
- Approve the invoice before posting
With the Payables agent, teams have more time for vendor communication, reconciliation, and higher-value work instead of decoding PDFs all day.
Payables Agent: Step-by-Step Workflow
1. Invoice Capture
The agent collects vendor invoices from the designated mailbox and reads the attachment to identify vendor invoices.
2. Data Extraction
It identifies the vendor and extracts quantities, amounts, and invoice details.
3. Purchase Document Draft Creation
It uses the line list details to draft the purchase document to be validated by the user.
4. Reviewer Check
As a user, you review the draft, resolve any flagged mismatches, and make corrections if and where needed.
5. Invoice Posting
Once approved, the draft becomes a posted purchase invoice through the standard AP flow.
Designing Custom AI Agents in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft’s built-in agents automate two significant workflows, but most organizations have additional processes that need automation and are not yet addressed by out-of-the box agents. Copilot Studio fills that gap. It gives teams a simpler way to create custom agents tailored to their specific workflows, using the same principles that power the Sales Order and Payables Agents.
What is Copilot Studio
Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s platform for building, configuring, and deploying your own autonomous AI agents. You describe what the agent should handle, connect the data it needs, and define how it should act across channels like email, Teams, or Business Central. Instead of developing a full application, you outline the scenario in plain language and guide the agent into the role you need it to perform.
How to Build an AI Agent in Copilot Studio
Inside the platform, teams can:
- Connect Business Central data, files, or other systems
- Describe the agent’s responsibilities in natural language
- Set triggers and actions that define how it behaves
- Test the agent iteratively and refine its logic
- Publish it across the environment once it’s ready
How It Benefits D365 Business Central Users?
With Copilot Studio, you can extend automation to other workflows that the inbuilt agents don't cover. You can build agents for tasks like vendor onboarding, internal requests, contract renewals, or any workflow that takes time but follows a predictable pattern. And because these agents operate within your Microsoft environment, they inherit the same permissions, security, and audit controls that already safeguard your data.
Making AI and Agents Work for You
AI agents in Business Central are not about replacing people or rewriting how companies operate. They are about removing the friction that has lived inside everyday processes for far too long. With capabilities like the Sales Order Agent and Payables Agent, routine steps stop turning into bottlenecks. Work moves in a predictable rhythm because the small, repetitive tasks no longer require larger efforts.
At Alletec, we help businesses not only embed and adopt Microsoft’s built-in AI agents quickly but also help them design custom agents for workflows that need to be streamlined and automated. The aim is simple: to make Business Central work for your business.
