Microsoft's agents cover the common cases. For your own, Copilot Studio and the Business Central MCP server let you build one. A walkthrough of a simple, useful first agent: one that finds overdue customers, drafts a polite chaser, and leaves it for credit control to send.
The built-in agents handle sales orders, supplier invoices and expenses. Credit control isn't covered yet, and it's a good first custom agent: rules-based, repetitive, and easy to keep a human in the loop. This is a walkthrough of the shape of it, using Copilot Studio and the Business Central MCP server. Menus in Copilot Studio change often, so treat the steps as the sequence rather than exact clicks, and check Microsoft's current documentation as you go.
In Business Central, configure the MCP server to expose only what this agent needs: customers (name, contact, email), customer ledger entries (open items, due dates, amounts) and perhaps notes. Nothing it can write to. (See configuring the MCP server safely.)
Create the permission set the agent will act under: read-only on those tables. If someone later wants it to do more, that's a decision, not a default. (See permissions.)
Create a new agent and connect it to Business Central as a tool source through the MCP connection, signing in with an account that has the narrow permissions above. Give the agent instructions in plain language:
You help the credit control team. Each morning, find customers with invoices more than 14 days overdue. For each customer, list the overdue invoices with number, due date and remaining amount. Draft a short, polite reminder email addressed to the customer's contact. Never threaten legal action. Never offer discounts or changed terms. Do not send emails; save them as drafts for review. If a customer has a note saying "on hold" or "in dispute", skip them and list them separately.
Keep the instructions short and explicit about what it must not do.
The simplest design is drafts in the credit controller's Outlook (via the Outlook connector in Copilot Studio) or a list in Teams. The person reviews, edits and sends. Over time you might let it send the gentle first reminder automatically, once it has proven itself.
Point it at a sandbox copy of production first (use a sandbox). Check it finds the right customers, gets the amounts right, respects the disputes, and writes something you'd be happy to send.
A month with a person checking every draft. Track accuracy and time saved (the five numbers). Adjust the instructions as you learn. Give it a named owner in credit control.
It only reads; it never posts; a person sends everything; the business benefit (cash in sooner) is easy to measure; and it teaches you how custom agents behave before you trust one with anything that changes data. It's also not covered by Business Central's built-in reminders automation in the same conversational way, so it adds something rather than duplicating it (reminders).
