Business Central release waves explained
How Microsoft's twice-yearly release waves work for Business Central — preview, general availability, mandatory updates, and managed extensions.
Microsoft ships major Business Central updates twice a year, on a fixed cadence called release waves. Understanding the cadence — and what it requires of you — is essential for keeping a SaaS tenant healthy.
The schedule. Wave 1 lands in April; Wave 2 lands in October. Microsoft publishes a Release Plan about six months ahead and a Release Notes document closer to launch. Each wave brings new application features, new AL platform capabilities, performance improvements, and deprecations.
Preview. A preview build is available roughly six weeks before general availability. Customers can spin up a preview sandbox from the admin centre, install their own extensions against it, and run regression tests against the upcoming version. This is the canonical window for partners to certify AppSource apps.
General availability and rollout. GA is a fixed date, but Microsoft rolls the update out across the tenant base over several weeks. Customers can request an early rollout from the admin centre. Mandatory upgrades happen by a published cut-off date — there is no opting out indefinitely.
The update window. Customers configure an update window (a span of hours on a day of the week) when Microsoft is allowed to take their environment briefly offline to apply the update. Configure it carefully — outside business hours is the obvious answer, but pay attention to weekend cron jobs and bank file batches.
Extensions. A wave update reinstalls every installed extension against the new platform version. Extensions published to AppSource are pre-tested by Microsoft for compatibility; per-tenant extensions (PTEs) are not, so it's the customer's or partner's job to recompile and republish them against the new runtime before the update window.
Monthly updates. Between major waves, Microsoft pushes monthly hotfixes — bug fixes, security patches, and small enhancements. These don't change the major version and don't require extension recompiles.
Practical advice. Treat each wave like a small project: install preview in a sandbox six weeks out, validate critical processes, recompile PTEs, brief power users, and lock the update window. Most teams get through both waves a year with a half-day each.
Related guides
- Application areas in Business CentralHow Application Areas in Business Central control which features users see — Basic, Essential, Premium, and how customisations can extend the application area system.
- Batch posting in Business CentralHow Business Central handles batch posting of journals, orders, and documents — performance, background processing, and the trade-offs against single posting.
- Business Central environments and sandboxesHow environments work in Business Central SaaS — production vs sandbox, capacity, copies, and lifecycle management.
- Business Central feature managementHow Business Central's Feature Management page lets administrators preview, opt-in to, or delay new features within a release wave.
- Business Central integrations with the Power Platform and Microsoft 365How Business Central plugs into Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and Copilot.