What’s New in Business Central 2025 Release Wave 2
The Autumn brings the second major release of the year for Business Central, as part of the 2 wave annual update cycle. Here we look at the highlight features.
Office 365 Premium
New business apps in Office 365 Business Premium
Tanya Denton
New to Office 365 Business Premium
Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium has been the go-to solution for the SMB market; now with the new release of business apps, they have cemented this as the product of choice for growing businesses. The apps now included with Business Premium are:
- Microsoft Connections—A simple-to-use email marketing service.
- Microsoft Listings—An easy way to publish your business information on top sites.
- Microsoft Invoicing—A new way to create professional invoices and get paid fast.
- Office 365 Business Center – Manage everything from one place.
- MileIQ – The smarter way to track mileage
Microsoft Connections
There are a lot of marketing tools on the market, but Microsoft connections gives so much more than managing subscribers and sending email campaigns. With easy to use dashboards you can see what is working well, such as offer redemptions, as well as using segmentation to target specific groups of subscribers. With pre-designed templates for newsletters, announcements and customer referrals this provides a tool to really grow your customer base. With simple ways for people to join and unsubscribe from the mailing list, this could be the tool for small businesses looking to cover the GDPR requirement for consent.
Microsoft Listings
Modern search engines and listing sites often focus on local companies, and keeping the business listing up to date. Microsoft listings helps small businesses keep their details up to date on Google, Facebook, Yelp and Bing, with analytics on performance on all of those tools.
Microsoft Invoicing
Small companies need to focus on their core business operations, so tools that help with managing the back office are a must. The new Microsoft Invoicing app gives a range of tools to provide estimates and invoices in a quick and easy way. Further to this, the tools allow you to keep track of the payments, and integrates with PayPal so that you can accept debit and credit cards online.
Office 365 Business Center
Integrated Office 365 apps are all about bringing business functions together. The new Business Center provides a dashboard for Bookings, Connections, Listings and Invoicing, with key metrics and a news feed to keep you up to date on activity. Suggestions give an indication of what needs doing so that you can keep on top of business priorities.
The integrations mean that data such as contact details only need to be input once as the records are recognised across all apps.
Mile IQ Mileage Tracking
Keep track of your driving miles with Microsoft IQ; already one of the most popular of Microsoft’s apps, it is now available as part of the Office 365 Business Premium plan. Automatically recording your journeys via your mobile device, you can easily state whether the journey was for business or personal purposes.
Availability in the UK
All of these apps will be rolling out in preview for Office 365 over the next few weeks, with general availability due before the end of the year.
Mile IQ is an existing app and business premium users can get started by visiting www.mileiq.com/office365.
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