June 21, 2022 | By admin

Microsoft is changing the way it sends tenant-level notifications to Dynamics 365 Business Central customers

Microsoft currently sends all tenant-level notifications for Dynamics 365 Business Central tenants to email addresses that are listed in the Notification recipients list of the Business Central administration center page. Notifications are sent when a major update is available for environments, when an environment update has succeeded or failed, or when extensions require changes to be compatible with an upcoming update. When these and other similar events occur on the tenant, an email is sent to the notification recipients for the tenant.

Earlier this month, Microsoft began the process of transitioning Dynamics 365 Business Central notifications to the Microsoft 365 Message Center, which sits within the Microsoft 365 admin center. Microsoft will continue to send messages to the Business Central administration center page until August 2022. After this date customers will no longer receive notification emails.

It is therefore important that at least one administrator’s email address has been entered as a notification recipient to ensure proper awareness of events requiring administrative attention.

Why is Microsoft changing the notification process?

  • To align the Dynamics 365 Business Central primary communication channel with that of other Microsoft products
  • To give customers more flexibility in how they want to receive, view and react to communications.

What are the key features of Microsoft 365 Message center?

Message filter

Message center presents a view of all active messages in a table format and by default, it shows the most recent message at the top of the list. However, there are multiple filters available including Admin impact, Data privacy, Feature update, Major update, New feature, Retirement, or User impact messages.

Major updates

Major updates are communicated at least 30 days in advance of when an action is required. Updates may include:

  • Changes to daily productivity such as inbox, meetings, delegations, sharing, and access
  • Changes to themes, web parts, and other components that may affect customised features
  • Increases or decreases to visible capacity such as storage, number of rules, items, or durations
  • Changes to product branding that may:
    • Cause end-user confusion,
    • Result in changes to help desk processes and reference material, or
    • Change a URL
  • A new service or application
  • Changes requiring an admin action (exclusive of prevent or fix issues)
  • Changes to where your data is stored

Preferences

If administration is distributed across your organisation, you may not want or need to see posts about all Microsoft 365 services. Within Message center each admin can:

  • Set preferences that control which messages are displayed in Message center
  • Filter messages
  • Set email preferences to receive a weekly digest of all messages, emails for major updates only, and emails for data privacy messages.

Give feedback on a post

Message users can provide feedback on a message by selecting either the Like or Dislike icon at the bottom of the message details pane and provide Microsoft optional feedback in the text box that appears.

Get a link

Need to follow up with another admin to make sure they are aware of a change and taking the correct action? Users can generate a link to share in email or instant messaging, for example, that will connect the user directly to that message. It should be noted that the person you share the link with must have access to Message center.

Read and unread states

Like outlook, at a glance users can see read and unread messages. Any message in Message center that is unread will appear in bold. Opening a message marks it as read, however there is an option to mark a message as unread.

Archive and restore

If you see a message that is not relevant to you, or maybe you have already acted on it, users can archive the message to remove it from inbox. The view that you see in the Message center is specific to your user account, so archiving it from your view does not affect other admins.

Favourite messages

Message center allows you to mark a message as a favourite. Once messages are marked as favourite, you can also sort and filter them.

Track your message center tasks in Planner

Lots of actionable information about changes to Microsoft 365 services arrives in the Microsoft 365 Message center. Microsoft recognises that it can be difficult to keep track of which changes require tasks to be actioned, when, and by whom and to track each task to completion. Syncing your messages from the Microsoft 365 admin center to Microsoft Planner helps you stay on track!

What should you do next?

We are encouraging our customers not to wait until August and to start using Microsoft 365 Message Center now for your notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central. To do that visit Microsoft and follow its step-by-step guide. Please contact us today.