Get to Know Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central’s Admin Center

Most businesses generally underutilize Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central’s Admin Portal. However, this portal is critical to the effectiveness of Business Central.

The Business Central Admin Center enables users to perform administrative tasks, such as: 

• Manage apps 
• Schedule updates 
• Update notification settings 
• Manage storage capacity 
• Rename, move, test and restore environments  

How to use the Business Central Admin Center  

Users can complete a variety of important tasks within the Admin Center portal, including: 

• Notifications: Administrators determine who receives notifications from Microsoft on outages, updates and other general communication regarding the Business Central environment. A notification may be an alert for events in tenant environments, such as when extensions require changes for them to be compatible with upcoming updates.  

• Updates: Microsoft schedules two major updates per year, typically in April and October, in addition to monthly minor updates. Although Microsoft manages the base application and platform, administrators can schedule the timing of updates, typically during non-working hours, and view when the updates were completed. Administrators can also designate who within their organizations needs to receive update notifications.  

• Capacity: To monitor data costs, administrators can access the “Capacity” page through the Admin Center and view their company’s total database storage usage. This page includes details about storage in every environment. If data is nearing capacity limits, notifications can be sent to the appropriate people for action. 

• Databases: Through the Admin Center, certified users can export databases to an Azure storage container.  

• Environments: The Admin Center allows users to prepare their software for new updates or functions by creating preview or sandbox environments. These test environments give users the opportunity to become familiar with new features — before they’re required to use them. Administrators can also manage production environments through Admin Central, including moving, renaming or restoring environments.  

• User Sessions: Manage user sessions through Business Central’s Admin Center by viewing information about active sessions on an environment or cancelling selected sessions. 

The Influential Role of the Business Central Admin Community 

The Admin Center is critical to the effectiveness of Business Central. Internal administrators, users assigned Global admin or Dynamics 365 admin roles, can access the portal. Users assigned help desk agent and admin agent roles through the Microsoft Partner Center, can also access the BC Admin Center.  

Users, partners and customers also can share feedback with Microsoft about ways to improve Business Central through its Dynamics 365 Ideas site. If you want to contribute to the future of Business Central, add your ideas to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Experience forum. Community members have access to the Business Central Ideas portal to tell Microsoft its wishes.   

Microsoft collects the feedback and encourages community members to vote in support of any suggestions. Whatever ideas that garner enough votes from the community are applied to future releases.  

Where to get more information on the BC Admin Center 

Questions? To ensure you’re getting the most from your Admin Center, reach out to our Enavate experts.  

Microsoft also has great documentation on the BC Admin Center. Access that documentation here.