Integrating Business Central with Microsoft 365
How Business Central plugs into Outlook, Teams, Excel, SharePoint, OneDrive, and the rest of Microsoft 365.
One of Business Central's enduring strengths is how naturally it lives inside Microsoft 365. The integrations are first-party, mature, and configured rather than coded.
Outlook. The Business Central Outlook add-in opens a side pane from any email. The system recognises the email's sender as a BC customer, vendor, or contact and surfaces their record inline. From the pane the user can: review open documents, create a new quote or invoice for the contact, look up product availability, and even post a payment — all without leaving Outlook. Calendar appointments can sync as activities. The Outlook integration is the single feature SMB sales and AR users adopt most readily.
Teams. A Business Central app for Teams lets users:
- Share a customer, vendor, or item card into a chat or channel as a rich card.
- Click through from the card to the record in BC.
- Run a quick lookup from the Teams compose box.
- Receive approval requests as adaptive cards that approve directly in Teams.
For organisations that operate substantially in Teams, this collapses the friction of "switch to ERP, find the record, take action".
Excel. Almost every list page in BC offers Edit in Excel — opens the list in Excel as a live, two-way connected workbook. Sort, filter, edit, save — changes post back to BC. Used heavily for bulk price updates, mass item edits, dimension changes, and journal preparation. The single feature Finance teams love most.
Power BI. Pre-built Power BI apps for finance, sales, purchasing, and inventory consume BC data via the API. Embed Power BI reports inside BC role centres for inline dashboards.
SharePoint and OneDrive. Document attachments on BC records are stored in OneDrive for Business or a configured SharePoint site, not in the BC database. Keeps the database lean and gives users normal Office collaboration on attached files. Configure a SharePoint storage location for shared documents (versioning, permissions, search).
Microsoft Search. A BC connector for Microsoft Search lets users find BC customers, vendors, and items from the M365 search box in any Office app.
Word. Posted invoice, quote, and statement document layouts can be customised in Word by editing a layout template. Power users with no AL skills design document layouts directly.
To-Do and Planner. Through Power Automate, BC activities can sync to To-Do for personal tasks or Planner for shared work boards.
Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot increasingly has cross-product awareness — drafting an email in Outlook can reference open BC documents, and Word-generated proposals can pull from BC pricing.
Setup. Most integrations are tenant-wide, enabled with a few clicks in BC's Set up your business with Microsoft 365 assisted setup.
Related guides
- Integrating Business Central with SalesforcePatterns for connecting Business Central to Salesforce — accounts and contacts, opportunities to orders, and the choice between iPaaS and direct integration.
- Integrating Business Central with ShopifyHow Microsoft's Shopify connector for Business Central works — items, orders, inventory sync, fulfilment, and the operational realities.
- Common Business Central ISV add-onsCategories of Business Central ISV add-ons that customers most often install — country localizations, document automation, EDI, banking, and vertical industry apps.
- EDI with Business CentralHow EDI integration works with Business Central — direct EDI vendors, AppSource connectors, document mapping, and the trade partner setup.
- Integrating Dynamics 365 with Azure servicesHow Dynamics 365 plugs into Azure — Service Bus, Logic Apps, Functions, API Management, Event Grid, and the iPaaS patterns that actually work.