This is a continuation of my last post where I described the Copilot Inventory Queries extension that I developed (available for free in AppSource). I have now taken that concept and applied it to the Planning Worksheet in Business Central. With this you get a Copilot user interface that can help explain the suggestions created by the material planning (MRP).

I created this in a way that the AI model includes all the suggestions for the same item number, location and variant code for each query. So, if the plan makes multiple suggestions for the same item, you have the AI model look at all of the suggestions together, even to explain the one suggestion that you ask about. This is often how planners look at the messages, you can’t always look at individual messages, you sometimes need to look at the entire ‘picture’ for an item (by location and if used, variant) to get to the explanation.

The Item Availability by Event is typically the go-to page to interpret suggestions to determine if they should be acted on and in what way. With this Copilot feature there is now another option (like asking a co-worker). Since I think the Copilot dialog from the Planning Worksheet would mostly be used for explaining suggestions I developed it to have the prompts defaulting with ‘Please provide a detailed explanation to why a new order for XX EA due on XX/YY/ZZ was suggested, and include any relevant inventory information..’., like below.

With this the planner can just select Generate and Copilot (or technically the Azure OpenAI model in the background) will do its magic and explain the suggestion, like below.  

For suggestions to changes in quantities the prompt defaults to ‘Please provide a detailed explanation to why the order for XX EA due on XX/YY/ZZ was suggested to be changed to YY EA, and include any relevant inventory information.‘. Similar for reschedules, cancellations, etc… making it simple/fast for the user to submit a detailed prompt. The prompt can obviously be changed to anything inventory related for the item.

Our customers do not need to call us anymore to explain the messages (I have successfully eliminated myself from this 🙂 ), I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but you can’t stop technology.

You can test the different scenarios to see what it replies. Below is a change in quantity example.

And below is an example for a cancel message.

You can also have some fun with Copilot. You can manually make some changes to the suggestions and then ask why the system made the suggestion, like tricking a co-worker. 🙂

By the way, I also added it to the Requisition Worksheet, just to make it complete. Make sure you install this extension in your own Business Central environment and check it out, after all its free (at least for now). And if you already have it installed you can just updated it from your Admin Center and you get the latest features. Stay tuned for the next Copilot AI application for Business Central…