Use AI resources for your Copilot extensions

Business value

A key feature of the developer tools for Copilot in Business Central is that publishers in their AppSource apps now can use large language models through Microsoft-managed Azure OpenAI resources when they extend Copilot in Business Central. This approach eliminates the need to independently procure and manage Azure OpenAI subscriptions for customers. Using the Business Central AI resources is the default and recommended approach. However, some partners or customers might have special requirements that require them to use their own Azure OpenAI subscription when running the feature in production or when developing and testing in sandboxes, which is also supported in the developer tools for Copilot in Business Central.

Feature details

Using the AI resources provides several benefits, including:

• Reduced operational overhead: Avoid the need to handle infrastructure management, updates, monitoring, troubleshooting, or maintenance of custom Azure OpenAI subscriptions, which frees up resources to focus on core business operations and provides value-adding intellectual property (IP) to customers.
• Simplified onboarding: Quickly integrate AI capabilities into your solutions without having to navigate the complexities of setting up and managing your own Azure OpenAI subscription.
• Improved reliability: Proactive scaling, throttling, load balancing, and fault tolerance measures, ensuring consistent performance during peak demand.
• Enhanced security compliance: Built-in compliance measures and governance, including robust protection from malicious and harmful content, ensuring compliance with data residency requirements, reducing the burden of ensuring regulatory compliance for ISVs.
• Streamlined experience for customers: Customers experience a more seamless AI resource management process, and avoid the need to maintain different configurations for separate ISV solutions.

Additionally, this capability delivers a cohesive AI consumption tracking and billing experience for Business Central customers. Customers using AI resources across multiple AI-enabled solutions built with Business Central customer developer tools for Copilot benefit from a unified approach to AI consumption monitoring and invoicing, and thereby avoid the need to reconcile multiple invoices or metrics from separate ISVs.

For details on billing costs, see AI tools at Message scenarios.

For most publishers, the default Business Central AI resources are enough. However, if you have needs that aren't fulfilled with the Business Central AI resources, such as specific models including fine-tuned ones, you can bring your own (BYO) subscription to customers. If that's the case, the publisher is responsible for the deployment, maintenance, scaling, and security of the service—and the billing of AI resources to customers.

The default and recommended approach is to use the developer toolkit AI resources when extending Copilot in Business Central. All you need to do is to authenticate with the SetManagedResourceAuthorization method in the AI Module AzureOpenAI codeunit. As part of this, you also need to provide your own Azure OpenAI subscription details, but this won't be used.

// Example of using the default toolkit AI resources in AL 
AzureOpenAI.SetManagedResourceAuthorization(Enum::"AOAI Model Type"::"Chat Completions",AzureOpenAIAccountName,AzureOpenAIApiKey,AOAIDeployments.GetGPT4oLatest());

If you instead want to use your own subscription, you must authenticate that using the SetAuthorization method.

// Example of using your own Azure OpenAI subscription in AL 
AzureOpenAI.SetAuthorization(Enum::"AOAI Model Type"::"Chat Completions",GetEndpoint(),GetDeployment(),GetApiKey());

Note that this AI billing model isn't intended to replace the existing AppSource monetization pathway for publishers making Business Central apps. Instead, it serves as another option to simplify AI consumption for customers and partners, with the AppSource monetization option available to ISVs to monetize their IP.