Welcome back to my blog and today we are going to cover what is new in Business Central. One of the main focuses is the ability to not only email directly from business central but also set email policies when a user sends directly from business central to a customer or a vendor.

As of business central 19 a new functionality that allows you to send an email from business central without going into outlook. It also allows you to see what you have sent directly from business central and synchronizes to your sent folder. One of the coolest functionalities and why this is important is because you will have a seamless integration with outlook. Without having to print to a PDF or save to a different format and then manually attach it to your new outlook message you can do so directly from business central. You also have the same functionality in terms of formatting the body of the email or use a word template to configure the body of the email when you're sending from business central.

Now this is great that you can send an email directly from business central, however, you still need to consider some the security or privacy concerns. This is where the email policy comes into place. In Business Central 2022 wave 1 release, there is now a feature designed for administrators to set user email policies.

To search for this function, look for “user email policies” by searching it via the global search menu. From there, you can specify a user who is allowed to send emails directly from business central and what kind of “email view policy” they are allowed. So here are the options under the email view policy and what it means.

The first option is “view own emails”, this means they can view the emails that they had sent directly from business central, it is straightforward regarding that policy. They only get to see their very own emails. The next option is “viewing all emails”, which can be assigned to a supervisor for that department that needs an oversight or visibility on who sent emails, for example, customer statements, sales order confirmation, etc. The third option is “view if access to all related records” and the fourth option is “view if access to any related records.”

So what this means from an administrator standpoint? It is great that business central is now allowing you to send emails and communicate directly from business central without having to jump to Outlook. Business Central now allows you to interact with Outlook, without leaving the application since it tracks your communication in synchronize it with a user's inbox sent folder, however, as I noted above we still need to make sure that a policy is in place to accommodate the security and privacy concerns.

I love how Microsoft is focusing on the ability for an organization to have better control, set securities in place, and seamless integration with other business applications from Microsoft.

Business Central version 2022 release wave 1 is now in general availability. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out.