Episode 519: The Last Frontier: Can AI Finally Conquer BC Report Layouts?

Why Every Partner Needs A Pioneer

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So I think I mean we already know a few guys, right, that are now telling everybody how to do stuff. But I think each organization has to get have someone like that that will pioneer.

Directions Recap And Guest Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. When you get started with AI, do you use all the tokens? Or are you a little bit more stingy? Because I am sometimes. I'm your co-host, Chris.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

And this is Brad. This episode is recorded on May 6th, 2026. Chris, Chris, Chris. Here we are, fresh back from Directions North America with another episode talking about how you can use AI within your business central environment and your development workflow and process and other things. With us today, we had the opportunity to speak with another great Microsoft MVP, Bill John. That is right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Lack asleep.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Yeah, well, that's not good for you. It's not good for you to have lack of sleep. Good afternoon. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Hi, doing well. You too, guys. Excellent, excellent.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

It was nice to see you last week uh over at the Directions North America conference.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, it was quite an interesting conference, I would say. Quite uh new stuff coming around. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Was that your first time going to that conference?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah, it was actually my first time to the US in general. So everything new for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I hope you were able to get out while you were here and explore.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Well, at least it's at least it's Orlando, right? The first time, at least they've got the good the good weather, places to go. So did

First US Trip And Rocket Launch

SPEAKER_00 2:00

you enjoy that? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I mean it it's um it's a bit, you know, whenever you go to a country first, you you see the the different mentality. That's always kind of refreshing for me to see how the people think on the other part of the world. But yeah, I also went to Kennedy Center to I also managed to see the rocket launch. Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

I remember I remember when we were walking into the event uh hearing about that. That's exciting. You you hit on something that was inter that was a key point. Uh one time I noticed I went over to Iceland and I was meeting with a group of individuals from many different countries. Uh, we went over there for a meeting. And as you had mentioned, the it's the mentality or the difference, it's it's great to get the perspective of seeing a different culture or talking with people of different cultures in person versus sometimes what you may see or hear because of what you may see online, what you may see on the news, or what you may see somewhere else. So um it it's it is, it's refreshing to see what that is like. Uh without saying too much, did it match? Did it all match your expectations of what you thought, or was it anything different? And you don't have to say if it's good or bad. I'm not asking for that. Just did it match your expectations?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, I didn't have that many expectations, except for what I have seen from movies. But I I would say it's matched for the most part, I would say. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:38

So it's good. It's exciting that you were able to go see the rocket. I if I had known, I would have taken a quick ride over there as well, too, to see the rocket. Uh I know for you guys, I remember talking to you that night, it was you didn't know. You were just going over to sea, and you happened to see the rocket launch. That must have been impressive.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah, we just went and like five minutes in the uh after there was like a rocket launch. So yeah, didn't expect that.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

No, it's uh it's something and you can feel it as it goes all through you, right? It's were you close enough to feel it?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Uh yeah, I mean the sound when it comes back, especially then you really uh hear it and it's it's you have no, it's shaking a bit, you know, because it's uh and and it's it has a delay also, uh also on the monitor, but also with the sound. So quite quite interesting, I would say, uh experience.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

That's excellent.

Who Bill John Is And What He Builds

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Uh okay, we want to talk with you a lot about things, but before we get into that conversation, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah, um I'm uh business central developer, uh techie guy, so to say. Um lately been playing a lot with uh AI stuff. Uh was also busy with uh layouts. But generally speaking, uh I'm with Business Central since 2008, so quite a while. I'm also uh titled as M Mv, meaning I chat quite a bit uh about Business Central. And yeah, that's that sums it up, I would say.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Great. Great. So I definitely would like to speak with you about the AI and in the development and how it's helping you and some of the things that you're doing, because I think that's it's it's an important part of Business Central now, not only uh with Microsoft adding a lot of AI features to Business Central the last few years and individuals working with AI to help with the implementations, but there's also a lot of individuals working with the development. But you had mentioned there's a lot of new things coming out just to take away from the conference. Um, what are some of the features or some of the new things within Business Central that are with 2020? Where are we? I forgot where we were right now. 2026 wave one perfect for a moment. I really thought it was October. Like, I don't know what's going on, but I was about to say something like 2025. You also have a lack of sleep, but I the you know you know last night I had like the best sleep. I had a 91 sleep score, so I'm not I'm refreshed today. So um for 2026 wave one, what are some of the exciting features either from the application that you we saw that they had presented

The AI Expense Agent And Wave 1

SPEAKER_03 6:20

or from the development from the technical area? Uh I always like to hear individual perspectives.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, I think I think I mean uh from technical, there are many stuff from technical, but uh from technical side, but I think generally speaking, what's what's the biggest highlight for me for business central in general is the expense uh management uh agent. And I'm looking forward to seeing it and to seeing how it actually works. How will it be access accepted? Uh but it's an AI feature. Uh and I but I think this is the feature that might you know change how people uh use Business Central. Uh I know it was developed completely using AI and it was developed at a faster pace than the other features. So I'm really wondering how it will be accepted and how it will it work out at the end, you know, in the wild and it's released in the wild when people start using it. So that's the top one, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah. I think what I think to me was expense management. I I appreciate you bringing that up, Malik, because to me that was kind of like the almost like the the story that I've been sort of waiting to hear that a solution was released purely created, almost purely created by AI itself. Obviously, there's still a human in the loop, but that that to me that was like, okay, I see the capabilities now from an ERP perspective that they release in a very short period of time. And it was pretty well done uh in a very short period of time. So that to me was like, okay, now we're grooving. I mean, and now I see it in live of what they could do with it. So that was mind-blowing

Agentic Code Review And BC Quality

SPEAKER_00 8:10

for me at least when I saw it.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, yeah. Did they also adopted this new way of I mean, I'm not sure if you're you're contributing actively on Microsoft repos, but they already uh started uh rolling out this workload that they have, like adjanting triad uh code review and everything.

SPEAKER_03 8:29

PC quality, I believe that was the repo.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

PC quality, yeah. But even before they released it officially, they started using it on their repos, on on the issues created for their repos. And I'm also um kind of keenly waiting to see, you know. I mean I already see some interesting stuff like the stuff that gets caught by agents in development process. So I'm also interested, you know, interested to see how that will roll out at the partners.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

I I think it may take some time for for the adoption. I mean, for some, uh it's it it was the I've had had many conversations with many partners about the technical portions of business central, primarily development, uh, while I was at the event. And partners are at different stages of using AI in the development. Seeing how the BC quality workflow works, I appreciate that and I like it. I have been doing that or had been working with that over the past couple months, a similar process, and it does work well. But the key is you have to know what it's doing from a high level at least, and then be able to review it. So I like how the BC quality will have the Microsoft, I uh use the word rules or instructions, the community instructions, and then partners can put their own instructions in there as well to help monitor the code that gets in there because you have to make sure that you properly test. Just to say that something was developed by AI doesn't mean it was perfect, nor does it mean it's not good, because uh again, Microsoft was um open enough during the event to state that the expense agent was written, I think was 90% by AI, was what they had mentioned, or some number. It's still it was still a significant number, and it only the period of time it took to develop was six months in that period of time, or from like idea to release, I think. Um that's what I recall from the discussion. If I'm incorrect, then it's just my old age.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I think you're right. It was like the the moment they talked about it all on all up to the delivery in terms of the development was like very short as well. So I think that's pretty impressive for what they were able to show in a short period of time.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Yes, and it it does show how you can expedite the development process of features within the ERP or for PTEs for customers. Uh, not everything can be done fully by AI at this point, but it's nice with the assisted development and to be able to basically build your own rules with it uh to help with the quality of code, which is something that I think we need.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Uh yeah, for sure. For sure, I would say. I mean, looking at the partner code, that's something that's that's desperately needed. It's just the question that you already asked is about the adoption base.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Yeah, yes, it's it's tough, I think, from the partner point of view, because it's almost the equivalent of changing the wheels on the bus while it's moving in some cases, because the partners are working with customers and they're trying to continue through the process that you do have to allocate some uh some time or some resources or some individuals to focus on that to set that up because it's not something you can just say, I'm going to clone the repo, throw this into my workflow, and everything will just be fine. Uh, you re uh it's something that really needs to be understood.

Adoption Reality For Partner Teams

SPEAKER_03 12:10

I think that's just that's key, Brent.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

I think that's key. I think that's key because like if you uh you know, with with all these features coming out for smaller partners is a little tough. So um for uh maybe slightly larger partner, you do have to um invest the time. So meaning as a partner, you have to at least have one person and say, okay, this is what you need to learn. Give 30 days, maybe, you know, just like building a habit, right? So 30 days is all you need to do. Help us build a framework, spend that, you know, invest that time, and then come back together and say, okay, where can we at, you know, where can we transition to this workflow? Uh I think that's gonna be the struggle because as a partner, you want to, you know, you gotta build your time somewhere, get gonna make some revenue. So that's gonna be an interesting balance.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

That's a whole different discussion, but it's it is having individuals focus on it is helpful. And uh from what I found, it it has to be collaborative as well because every everybody will have different ideas. Uh it's not even ideas like you have to take everyone's ideas, but it's all so new and there's also much that's changing that having different perspectives in the process is important. But one thing that I've I I have witnessed firsthand is the consistency in an organization and how you're doing it. Because if people are using AI and development in your organization, you want them to follow the same flow, not have someone going down one road and another person going down another road, because then it it becomes I think it becomes more difficult to manage than it would be if everyone's just doing code on their own anyway. I think it I think it magnifies and accelerates inconsistent processes if you don't have a standard workflow.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So exactly. And I think I think the challenge will be in the following period actually finding out which people are going to be those managing in you know, introducing the processes, right? So I think I mean the we already know a few guys, right, that are now telling everybody how to do stuff. But I think each organization has to get have someone like that that will pioneer the the way through the adopting adoption.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

Yes. And it's changing fast.

GitHub Copilot Workflows And Token Spend

SPEAKER_03 14:30

And I wonder uh you you work with it too. What are some of the things that you're working with it? Because then I have some questions on that as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Uh well primarily I'm I'm I I I'm using the GitHub compiler so far. Um I also have played a bit with the plot code. And uh I I use it, I mean, currently I'm developing either um stuff that are uh for uh partner, one partner I'm working for, or for another project I'm working on, or for Microsoft actually, as a contribution. And in all of those uh different projects, um it's a challenge for me to have the one rule that applies for all of those. That's why I like the idea that Christoph uh uh talked about on in Orlando about having these uh how did he call it? I forgot, but basically the game that that's gamification.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Gamified it.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

That blew my mind. I I sat with both he and and Tinay, uh Starch as well, and my mind just went.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Have you started already playing with it?

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Or you played. I have it planned out. Uh we we just got back uh some days ago and I had to get caught up. I think when did we get back? Last end of last week? This weekend?

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Thursday. Yeah, last week, Thursday.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

I'm in a time warp for some reason. Uh I do have planned out what I want to do with it. And I spoke with both of them, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with both of them at the conference as well. And they were able to share with me how they architected that. And I've plotted out the game that I want to replicate for my youth, and I'm going to try to set that up.

unknown 16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

So have how about you? Have you done anything with that?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

No, no. Um, I I I generally have a like a constant feeling. Uh my aha moment with AI can came somewhere uh around the last uh end of the last year, actually. And I think I'm still uh I mean, I I I think there is still a lot to learn for from my from for myself and and to explore, and I feel like when I hear Christoph or somebody uh like that, I feel I haven't uh I haven't explored enough yet, to be honest. Uh and I I also have I'm also attending the Jeremy's uh course on on agent development just to get uh different perspectives and to try different stuff out because currently it feels like I'm just burning all the tokens that I have available. I am achieving pretty good results, I would say. Uh or let's put it this way my code is less buggy when the AI does it. And I think I'm at the mark that probably 95% of my code is written by uh GitHub Copilot, actually. That's GitHub.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

That's wild. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

With that, you're saying 95% is uh created by GitHub Copilot. How did you set are you using co are you using GitHub Copilot straight? Or did you use any of instruction files? Did you create any instruction files, create any agents, creating? Are you using any of the ones that are available? A lot of people are doing it. And just to go back, I I feel like with you, I have been pretty deep into it since the end of last year. And I've been doing a lot of things and working with a lot of things with AI. And then I went to the conference as well, and I was pretty, I don't say comfortable, I don't think anyone can be an expert because it changes every day. Something new comes out every day in this technology. So but I was comfortable with saying, Oh, I have a good understanding. And then I was talking with others, like you said, like with KB and with Tina and a few others, and I just went, I don't know anything. I really felt like I really felt like I was at the like, I don't even know what I'm doing. And I'm I I thought I was doing a lot, but uh the the the point with that is everybody's at a different level and applying it differently, and it is a new technology. I will say a year ago, if you hadn't started with it, you you had some time. I think we're at the point now this year, if you haven't started with it, you're probably starting to fall behind uh as well. But to to go back to the question of how did you set that up um as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Well, I actually uh I haven't used many instruction files. I I knew I knew always that it existed. So right now, uh I mean, uh as an MVP, I have the access to the Pro Plus version like you do, which means a lot of uh uh tokens, I mean how they call it professional credits or something like that, are available to me. So right now I'm burning it completely, uh switching between those um reasoning models and and the normal ones. And I don't have much of a setup as I said, I have three different projects, and it's always different challenges. So I'm just starting to to explore how to exploit uh sub agents and instructions more. But so far I would say I was I was just I wouldn't I wouldn't say excelling, but managing to write uh the my requirements properly. And right now I'm in a phase where I figure I'm figuring out okay, sometimes when I when I when I'm developing, I often repeat stuff you know that got wrong during development. Maybe I should have now um a sub agent or or a skill for that purpose. But I'm not uh I'm not I'm not there yet. That's my uh thing. So I'm I'm currently using it without much of a setup, and that's what I would recommend everybody who's charting to try without setup because it works actually also without a setup. Yeah, it it it it will burn the the the tokens, it will you know you'll sit after the first weekend seeing that you don't have any remaining, but you should shout.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Yes, you you did say

Instruction Files Versus Starting Simple

SPEAKER_02 20:35

something uh that caught my attention.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

When you start out, start out plain to start working with it, to use it to see what it does, to see what the different models do. The instruction files, the skills, the subagents, the agents, uh again, whatever term you want to use, right? Because every day I think I hear a new term. That's where I personally struggled at first because I saw a lot of things that everybody was doing, and I just felt overwhelmed because I'm like, oh, I have to use this file. And I really didn't understand it. But by starting base, as you had mentioned, uh you get the point to understand the platform, you get to understand how it works, and then those files seem to start making sense. And 95% of your code being done without any of those additional setups, that's rather impressive. And it can be done.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

What's what's your statistic? How how far are you with with that?

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Have you managed to I am it it I you I'll say I'm almost near a hundred percent. And I use the near a hundred percent because sometimes things will come back that don't work properly or look properly, and I make the decision. I always review it. And I have my workflow is I'll have the

Multi-Agent Development And QA Habits

SPEAKER_03 22:05

tests for it. You know, I'll create the I'll I'll plan out what the modification needs to be. So I'll go through the whole planning phase. Then I'll break it up into smaller issues to complete it. And then I'll set the um agents to go through and do the work, right? Uh planning. I do have a planning agent, I do have a working agent, I do have a reviewing agent. Uh I don't I do a lot of the documentation with it, but I don't use an agent for that because within that framework, I still can do it. Once the code is there, if I look at it and there's something in what I what I feel is incorrect, and sometimes it's incorrect because it won't even compile, rather than prompt it to fix it, if I could it's faster for me to change it, I'll change it. Then depending upon what it is, I may add it to a rule so that hopefully next time, which seems to work, so now it will have the the agent that's working on the task will have a little more experience on what to do. Um I got a question for both of you, really quick.

Auto Documentation And Screenshot Talk

SPEAKER_00 23:10

So when you're mentioning all the agents, Brad, and well if you're using agents as well, for all the little tasks, you know, to say maybe have uh a different models for those agents. The last component's always documentation. Obviously, you can have an agent create uh documentation, but do you right now, Brad? You should you said you may have done a manual documentation in terms of like screenshots. Do you know anyone that has used an agent to create screenshots for those? Like click here, do that. Um, or is that still done manual? Because uh obviously you're gonna have to hand it to somebody that's like follow the screenshot kind of deal. But I don't know if anyone has used an agent to create the screenshot. I'd be surprised, I'd be surprised if anyone, if anyone's goes into this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I have heard somebody, I think when I was in Nordics, Doc uh there's Norish Nordics that was uh two or three uh a month ago. I cannot remember who told me, but there somebody started playing with it already. Um making a mechanism that will you know try to look, I mean, based on instructions, go through the interface and then make screenshots. I'm not sure who told me that, but I think people are already playing with that.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

I've heard several different uh people have done it with different ways. Uh playwright, you you can use playwright to run um uh to record a screen and do it. I know Dulio had done some presentations on how he was able to build and take screenshots and build documentation uh and instruction manuals using page scripting, even when we did the page scripting session. He went through the example of how he was able to have an agent create a user's guide, including screenshots using playwright and that stuff. So interesting. Okay people are doing it. I I haven't done it for the screenshots yet. How about you?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Me neither, but the question, the playwright, does it mean that somebody has to actually click on the interface? The human.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

No, based on page script, though, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:11

No, no, I I think you can do it autonomously to pull the information out. I haven't worked with it to do the screenshots, to be honest. I've worked with playwright only in the extent of page scripting, not in the from the respect of coding. But I know individuals are pulling screenshots, um, even in some of the groups that we're in, they talk about it. It's it's um yeah, yeah, documentation. It uh far better documentation than I've ever created, or any other developer that I've created, or any other consultant for that matter. It may not be 100% perfect, but if it comes back at 90% and it gives you a nice detailed document, and I have a few minor adjustments to make, I'm happy.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Yes. Yeah, so I I definitely haven't I haven't uh had a contact with uh that yet, but I would love to know more about who's playing with it.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

There's so much going on with it, so that's uh uh yeah, it's uh it's an exciting time to say the least. It's I feel like I've never been busier than I have in my life. And sometimes I have to go back and say, what am I busy doing at some points? Because sometimes it's it's it's having fun, just you know, a lot of those things that I never were able to a lot of those things I was never able to do, I can now do. Where it would have taken weeks or months to complete, now I can get done, and sometimes hours or days.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

But do you feel you have more spare time? Because I don't.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

It's a misconception, right? Like everyone thinks like, oh, there's this AI supposed to do all the things for you. You I I think I think a lot of us that loves the product or just love building things, when you have a new tool, you always want to play with a new tool, right? So you always want to do something with a new tool. So you you you you you lose that time. I mean, just like um it's for example, when I when I got a motorcycle, I just want to get on a motorcycle all the time because it's like it's a new thing. Um, but yeah, no, you I don't have a lot of time. You want to play with this thing, you want to do more.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

So it's so fun. That is the I think the the common message from a lot of people that use it and get into it is any free time that I have, I would gain, I'm actually I'm able to now do the things that I was not able to do before. Because if you want to create a note-taking app, or if you want to create something uh else, you can now do it in a in a faster pace. So you can get more you have more time to do more things, and it's it's almost like feeding a fire. So it's to answer your question, no. I have to no, I do not. I have to remind myself to get up and and stretch and to eat and to do stuff sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

So yeah, yeah, I share the sentiment.

Word Layouts And The Future Of Reports

SPEAKER_03 28:20

It's good that you were in you working with it though, and uh you're doing some other things. You said you're working some Microsoft stuff as well, too. You're doing contributions.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Yeah, so generally speaking, uh my work is dominant predominantly connected to the German market right now. I'm also I have done some fixes in in relation to the local formats being applied there for extra electronic exchange of invoices. It's called Reckon or Zugfair, if you have heard of it. If not, that's also fine. Um, I'm also uh you know that Microsoft is also uh changing a paradigm regarding the layout. I mean changing, let's say I don't want to have the hard cut, but we can clearly see that the reaction is set towards uh swapping the layout, the document layout, report layout. That's also a topic where I'm kind of uh familiar with. I'm wondering, for example, that area in to which extent can can you know AI help you with to create a new layout? And I think that's uh one of the areas which is not yet fully covered with this um AI workflow yet, but I think that might also change, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

I would think so. Uh so have you used AI in any of that at this point?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Or yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. And my impression is it can already do RDL quite decently because RDL is already HTML formatted. I think it struggles more with uh with words, generally speaking. I mean it really depends. I mean when I say struggle, it can actually create really good looking layouts out of the box, but then the mapping is more trickier part, I would say. So I would say the forkflow is not 100% covered yet, because I think the AL development is ready to be covered, I would say, and this area is not yet covered, right? And I would definitely like to see it covered. Imagine that, like you are saying to the business central your topic here is the check, here is how it looks like. Build me a word layout, and you know, map me the fields in there and take care that the dimensions are important, they should be precise. That's you know what you know, in the ideal world, what would AI should bring us as a quality? We're not there yet, that's for sure. But yeah, some of the task that I'm uh thinking about right now.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

If it can do a US check, which I will always say I still don't understand why we use checks, but if it can do a US check, that would be rather impressive because for some reason I s after doing this for decades, I still don't understand why checks are so troubling. And it's not business central, it's just replicating the check, I think, for some reason. And sometimes people just get stuck on having a particular check format. I don't understand it versus me. I would say, okay, I can buy stock, this check fits it, okay, done.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

But some people like to have yeah, but we don't. I mean, let's forget the check. Let's say that in any country or in any partner there might be some customer-specific uh report or layout that they want to print out. I mean, labels, whatever. And that's what I dream of. Like here is the prompt. I may give you something that looks appealing to me and bring it on. Right, here is the data set design everything. Because I think I I think a lot of the time partners charge today is at least in Germany, is related to the reports themselves. I mean, and not only in Germany, but like all over the world. And if we could, you know, get that out of the way, that would be the next step forward, I would say. I agree with you.

SPEAKER_03 32:15

Yeah, checks are I mean, not checks, yeah. Reports are a big part of some of the implementations, and having a way to make that easier. Uh custom report layouts was one step, then adding the word add-in was another step to making the transition to having report and and well, even back up doing report extensions to some extent. All these things helped make the reporting easier, but I think seeing it where you had mentioned that AI can now work with the Word document. I haven't experienced it, so if it can do it, or if anyone else that's listening has done it, I'd uh we'd like to hear about it. But I think that would be great. Or I was even just thinking as you were speaking, even having an RDLC to Word, I don't even know if it'd be possible, but conversion or some type of uh setup would also be great.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Yeah, so I tried it out. It's I would rate it like I don't know, 60-70% success rate. So you still have to fill it a bit. I mean not a bit, but more than a bit. Uh so sometimes it produces the RDL which cannot be compiled. Uh the mapping in Warlayout I haven't succeeded yet. But still, I would still apply it and then like finish up the rest. So at this point of time, I'm just saying we haven't um made the complete journey yet.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

So you haven't gone the full path with it, but it still helped out enough to where it was a good start, where it wasn't sometimes you go through these exercises and you say, Wow, it's so poor that I have to spend more time fixing it than if I were to just do it myself. But you're saying that from your experience, it's a good starting point.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Yeah, that's my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

I mean, for for start, uh I I don't know, Claude can already chew up. I mean, the the prompt that I gave him is like here is the invoice from the business central. How it looks like it's a bit uh how they say old fashioned. I want appealing invoice in the war layout, and it's fitted out really good. So the cloud can already do quite a lot with PowerPoint, Word, and so on. I the missing link is you know connect it properly.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Now my mind's coming. Well, I I'm sure that you'll be able to get that. It's a good journey for you to to explore, and I'd be interested to hear the results of how far you get with it as the technology increases as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah, but you're you're what you're one of the few that loves to do reports. Uh I wouldn't phrase it that way.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Yeah, I don't know whether we can make that statement for anybody. It's just, you know, some topics land on you at some point in time and you want to get them done. I'm sure I mean some people are more successful on avoiding the topics. I'm I'm not. So this is in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Can I get it done?

SPEAKER_03 35:29

I won't say it too loud, but I've been very successful at avoiding that topic for some years.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Someone's gonna ask you, Brad, the next time you go speaking. Good for you, good for you, good for you.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

No, I've done I've done, I can count how many reports I've created on one hand in the past year or two, maybe two, less than two hands. Uh yeah, maybe one hand. Uh thankfully.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

If you do everything right, you probably will not have to touch them, you know, because you'll just say, give me what I need and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Yeah, that's uh that'll that'll be nice. Um I've always primarily focused more on uh the data portion of it, you know, being able to have the data that someone else can either write the report or they can use the information somewhere else to report and analyze their data. So uh I'm not if I'm not touching those, that project to get AI to do uh word layouts, but I think it would be a good one to see. Uh and I know again, as you had mentioned, that Microsoft's making a push to replace a lot of the standard customer-facing documents, as we'll call them, from RDLC layout to word layout. Uh, from my understanding, there isn't a date that says RDLC won't work. Uh anybody that has RDLC reports will still be able to create those, they'll still be able to work with those. Uh, I'm sure as as technology advances, though, RDLC will fall off because uh it's my understanding that they're not doing a lot to improve it as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Uh it's actually not even the business central topic at all, right? So it's not the business central team that's maintaining it. So I would say it's probably uh a bit out of their hand. I mean, I I think they will support it as long as they can.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Because they don't want to lose customers because of that. But like I I think they are not controlling the plug.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

No, I mean I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the other topics

Performance Tooling And Telemetry With AI

SPEAKER_01 37:30

I'm dealing with right now are the performance, for example. Um stuff, and I think um uh I I have looked at the stuff that Torben did with this um uh website web to app up that can analyze your profile profilers and it's something also which I see potential, right? Uh imagine yourself uh solving the performance problem by giving you know the food to some of the tools which will tell you what to improve right away without you having to think that is a big place.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

I know there's there's many initiatives now that are all working towards having AI analyze code, analyze telemetry to be able to help identify non-performant code and and ways to improve the code, which I think is extremely beneficial. I support all those initiatives because I think that Business Central is a great application, and you know, maybe because I've been using it for decades now and I've been in it for decades, and it's it's how I've made my career, basically. I want successful implementations, and if you have non-performant code at an implementation, it can make a customer extremely unhappy with Business Central, and it's not even the Business Central application that's the problem. So having tools that allow developers from anywhere, from ISVs, partners, customers, anybody who's developing with Business Central, having the tools to analyze the code to be able to help identify performance issues helps the product because customers will be happier with the performance of the product. Because I think we've all heard this is slow, this takes too long, and all those other things over the years. So it's um it's great to have tools now or in in the works to be able to help uh mitigate some of those uh performance bottlenecks.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Exactly. I've yet, for example, to to explore. I'm not uh telemetry prof you, not sure how do you did you deal with telemetry so far?

SPEAKER_03 39:50

I've worked with uh I worked with a lot of telemetry. Uh I did not ex I'm it's on my list now to work with Waldo's BC telemetry tool because we have a lot of telemetry. Uh unfortunately, I have a lot of things on my list to do.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

And that list AI is supposed to be making better, Brad. Come on, it's supposed to be faster.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

You still have yeah, it's it's I'm just messing with you. No, I know you are. It's it's um it's it's one of the next things that I want to look at.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

And then it's also a topic where I'm also falling behind. That's my feeling right now. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:27

I I've been using a I'm I'm used to doing a lot of KQL and stuff like that, but from what I understand, to not have to, you know, to be able to read the telemetry logs uh through the MCP is uh exciting. So I'll probably set that up next week is my plan. Uh because I'm going to bring back an initiative that we have to um better utilize telemetry.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Yeah, I think that's yeah. I think the whole community actually should work. I mean, improve on that area, generally speaking. My feeling is actually not that many people are are not that many partners are really onto that, but they should yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

100%. 100% because the telemetry you can identify many more I don't want to say problems, but you can I will say problems. You can identify many issues quickly within telemetry, uh with identifying code that's non-performant or identifying other issues. It's uh either even issues outside of code, I think you can identify because you can capture errors that the users are making as well, too.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

So for telemetry, I mean it you know, I haven't really played with telemetry at all in Business Central, but you know, uh in passing. So if you if you were to work on telemetry and having an agent read the telemetry data, you could you could probably perhaps take an agent and look at um uh maybe some patterns that are uh you know kind of weird uh or it's something that's out of whack and create issues um out of it as well. So then you can immediately take action against it. Um maybe create automatically create GitHub issues and say, hey, look, based on telemetry, we see these weird patterns that's happening around this time. Uh rather, right now, I mean I'm assuming everyone's gonna look at looks at the telemetry and says, Oh, okay, I think maybe that's an issue. It's it's sort of a manual process right now. I think what's everyone doing.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

No, it's it's you can use it to be proactive. Telemetry was always one of those things you could use to be proactive if you had the right dashboards, if you had the right queries set up that you could run and monitor, but with AI and then utilizing some of these tools, you could absolutely again be proactive. So you could identify issues. And I use the word issues loosely. You could identify you could see code that needs to be refactored, you could see other uh things with telemetry. And I've kind of tried to list all the things you can identify that you can, again, as you had mentioned, maybe if you make an issue for someone to take a look at or even AI take a look at within the code, will help make the customer have a better implementation. And when I say customer, it's not just partners, not just ISVs, it's even customers that have their own internal development team, they can take advantage of these tools as well. So it's it's anybody that's in that space. Um it's it's tough to keep up with all this though.