The Sales Order Agent for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
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How many hours do you think your office staff spends each week
- manually transferring information from customer emails into your ERP system?
- checking item numbers, reconciling quantities, inquiring about delivery dates, preparing quotes, and sending PDFs?
These are always the same tasks that take up far too much time. What's more, this work is very error-prone and ties up qualified employees in routine tasks instead of giving them space for customer consulting, sales, and value-adding tasks.
This is exactly where the Sales Order Agent in Business Central comes in. The new AI-powered co-pilot in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP system takes over order entry directly from incoming customer emails.
So while your team is still grabbing their first coffee of the day, the sales offer is already created as a draft in the system—including items, quantities, prices, and delivery dates. If necessary, the agent can also clarify missing information independently—by emailing the customer.
1. How the Sales Order Agent works in Business Central
The Sales Order Agent is an AI-powered assistant within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that automates order entry based on customer emails. Instead of employees manually reading, interpreting, and transferring incoming emails into sales quotes, the agent handles this process largely independently in the background.
For the sales department, it remains transparent at all times which customer email has been received, how the agent has interpreted it, and what proposal it has derived from it—including a prepared response to the customer.
The Sales Order Agent can be configured for both central mailboxes such as sales@... and individual or role-based mailboxes, depending on how sales is organized in a company.
Here is an overview of the key tasks of the Sales Order Agent in Business Central:
- Monitoring a mailbox
- Analyzing customer emails
- Reconciling with Business Central
- Interaction like a real user
- Consideration of all information in the system
From a technical perspective, the agent behaves like a user in the system: it navigates through pages, uses actions, reads field information, and creates sales offers based on the existing business logic. The individual steps of the Sales Order Agent are not hard-coded. The agent decides on a case-by-case basis which information is required and how to proceed in each case. This allows it to handle individual fields, customer-specific enhancements, and validation rules.
Conclusion: The Sales Order Agent reads, understands, and processes customer inquiries directly in the ERP system, thereby laying the foundation for significantly faster, more consistent, and less error-prone order entry.
2. This is how the Sales Order Agent converts customer emails into quotes and orders
The Sales Order Agent ensures a consistent process—from the incoming customer email to the completed order. All relevant data and documents are created or prepared directly in Business Central. The agent transparently shows which data records it would create or update before they are finally transferred.
In short, the whole process works as follows:
- Recognize incoming emails, understand content
As already mentioned, the agent is connected to a defined email inbox. Multiple inboxes are also possible. Here, it not only recognizes customer inquiries for quotes or orders, but also understands the content and relevant information such as items, quantities, delivery dates, or references. - Assign customers and check items
The agent uses the sender's address to identify the appropriate customer or contact in Business Central and assigns them correctly. In addition, it searches for the appropriate items, checks availability, and independently clarifies any missing information as needed—via email with the customer. If it is a new customer, the agent shows which master data they have identified from the email and which fields they would fill in accordingly. - Create and approve sales quotes
Once all the necessary information is available, the agent automatically creates a sales quote in Business Central. This includes, among other things: items and quantities, prices and taxes, delivery dates, and external references. The offer is prepared as a PDF for sending. Before it is sent to the customer, an employee checks the draft. Adjustments can be made at any time. In addition to the sales offer, the agent also creates accompanying tasks in Business Central and keeps all information and documents together centrally in the system. - Offer becomes order
If the customer confirms this offer by email, the Sales Order Agent comes into play once again. It recognizes the response, updates the document, and converts the offer into a sales order. This step is also traceable within Business Central. The agent automatically recognizes the customer's confirmation by email, updates the data, and, if desired, sends the order confirmation. If the response is made by telephone, the rest of the process is handled by an employee.
Conclusion: The Sales Order Agent ensures a consistent, transparent process—with a clear separation between automated email processing and manual processing via other channels.
3. How to maintain control within your team despite automation
The Sales Order Agent is not an autonomous “black box,” but rather a supportive assistant that takes on routine tasks and specifically relieves employees. The agent only creates drafts. It transparently shows which data it would create or update—there is no automatic, unchecked transfer. Control remains with the company at all times.
We have already outlined the tasks performed by the sales agent in point 2:
- Reading and interpreting customer emails
- Assigning customers and contacts in Business Central
- Determining items, quantities, and delivery dates
- Checking availability
- Creating draft sales offers
- Preparing offer and order documents, including PDFs
Your team remains deliberately involved in the following areas:
- Checking and approving all outgoing emails: The Sales Order Agent prepares texts and proposals, but does not send emails independently. All external communication is subject to approval and is deliberately released by an employee. No offer and no order leaves the system without their approval.
- Fine-tuning of offers: Discounts, special conditions, shipping costs, or individual agreements continue to be managed by the team and can be supplemented individually at any time.
- Clarification of special cases: Unclear customer inquiries, new contacts, or deviating requirements are specifically handed over to employees.
- Final decision on the order: The conversion from offer to order is controlled and traceable in the system. Only after final approval by an employee is an offer sent to a customer.
Conclusion: The entire process is designed so that automation and human control go hand in hand—with clearly defined approvals and a human being in the workflow.
4. For which companies is the sales order agent particularly worthwhile?
The Sales Order Agent is most useful when many customer inquiries are received by email and orders are currently entered manually. It is particularly suitable for companies where speed, reliability, and a high number of recurring inquiries play a central role.
Its use is therefore particularly useful for companies that ...
- regularly receive quote or order requests by email
- have large product ranges with many items
- often deliver just-in-time or work with changing availability
- lose a lot of time in sales checking stock and delivery dates
- want to relieve your office staff of routine tasks
- want to further automate your processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Even a few minutes saved per request make a difference here: at around 5 minutes per email and 20 requests per day, this quickly results in a noticeable reduction in workload for sales and office staff.
Typical application scenarios can be found, for example, in retail, wholesale, or companies with an active written internal sales department. Even saving just a few minutes per request makes a difference here: at around 5 minutes per email and 20 requests per day, this quickly results in a noticeable reduction in workload for the sales and office staff.
Typical application scenarios can be found, for example, in retail, wholesale, or companies with an active written sales office.
The Sales Order Agent is currently less suitable if:
- Sales are primarily conducted via online stores or third-party systems, and there are few email inquiries.
- Orders are highly project-driven and customized, such as in traditional mechanical engineering.
- There are very few inquiries per week, and the manual effort required is minimal.
In these cases, the benefits of automation often do not (yet) outweigh the organizational effort involved.
Fazit
The Sales Order Agent shows how AI can already be used in ERP systems in a practical way. Business Central is clearly a pioneer in this area.
The Sales Order Agent reduces the burden of manual data entry and takes over routine tasks using only information from customer emails – in a structured, traceable, and controlled manner. This frees up office staff to focus on what really matters: customers, consulting, sales, and revenue.
Would you like to know if and how the Sales Order Agent can be used effectively in your Business Central environment? Talk to us—we'll show you what's possible and how its use can bring you real added value.
