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Configure Business Central MCP Server

Business Central provides an Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server that enables AI agents to connect to your environments and perform a range of interactions and tasks. With agents, customers and employees to conversationally engage with Business Central data and logic from various channels, like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, and websites.

The article explains how to enable and configure the Business Central MCP Server in your Business Central environment so agents can connect to the environment's APIs.

Configuration overview

By default, the MCP Server gives agents read-only access to all exposed Business Central API pages. If you want to enable agents to create, modify, or delete entities and data, you must configure these operations on the MCP Server. Configuring the Business Central MCP server involves adding API page objects in individual configurations and defining the allowed operations. The operations are available as tools in Copilot Studio. Learn more in How API page object entries map to MCP server tools.

Once the MCP server is enabled and configured, the individual configurations become available in Copilot Studio for agent makers to use in their agents. Learn more in Create agents with Copilot Studio.

Prerequisites

Create MCP Server configurations

  1. Search for and open the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server Configurations page in Business Central.

  2. Select New.

  3. Set these general fields:

    Field Description
    Name Specifies the configuration's name. This name appears in Copilot Studio to assign the configuration to MCP Server connection for an agent.
    Description Specifies a brief description of the configuration.
    Active Specifies whether the configuration is active. When this switch is on, the configuration and its tools are available for agents to use. If you turn off the switch, agents that currently use the configuration won't work as expected.
    Dynamic Tool Mode Specifies whether to enable dynamic tool mode for the MCP configuration. When this switch is on, agents search for tools within the configuration dynamically, which means the tools don't have to be explicitly added to agent configuration.

    This option is useful when you expose a large number of API pages because some clients, like Copilot Studio, limit the number of tools on an agent. Tools in excess of the limit aren't available to the agent.

    For example, Copilot Studio currently has a limit of 70 tools. If you add all standard APIs as tools in the configuration, only the first 70 are available to agents you build in Copilot Studio. To make all the standard APIs available, turn on the switch.
    Discover Additional Objects Specifies whether agents can access API page objects that aren't explicitly defined in the configuration. When this switch is on, agents have read-only access to all API page objects in the environment, even if they aren't added as tools in the configuration. This setting only works when Dynamic Tool Mode is turned on.
    Unblock Edit Tools Specifies whether APIs included as tools in the configuration can perform create, update, or delete operations. When this switch is turned on, the Allow Create, Allow Modify, Allow Delete, and Allow Bound Actions permissions control write operations. When turned off, all these permissions are set to false making the tools read-only.

  4. In the Tools section, add API page objects as tools to the configuration.

    You can add objects individually as separate entries. Select Add All Standard APIs as Tools to automatically add all Business Central API pages as tools.

    Permission Description
    Allow Read Specifies whether read operations are allowed for this tool.
    Allow Create Specifies whether create operations are allowed for this tool.
    Allow Modify Specifies whether modify operations are allowed for this tool.
    Allow Delete Specifies whether delete operations are allowed for this tool.
    Allow Bound Actions Specifies whether bound actions are allowed for this tool. A bound action is an OData action that is bound to a resource, like a table or record.

How API page object entries map to MCP server tools

When you add an API page object entry to the MCP Server Configuration, each allowed operation (read, create, modify, update, delete, or bound action) results in a corresponding tool in the MCP server. These tools can then be added to agents in clients like Copilot Studio.

Depending on the Dynamic Tool Mode setting, these tools are added explicitly by agent makers during design or dynamically by the agent at runtime. The following sections explain how tools are named and made available in each mode.

If the Dynamic Tool Mode is turned off, then agent makers specifically apply the individual tools to the agent during design. In Copilot Studio, the tool names follow this format:

Business Central object permissions Tool
Allow read List<object_name>_PAG<ID>
Allow create Create<object_name>_PAG<ID>
Allow modify ListUpdate<object_name>_PAG<ID>
Allow delete Delete<object_name>_PAG<ID>
Allow bound actions <bound_action_name>_PAG<ID>

For example, if you specify the following on the MCP Server Configuration page:

Object type Object ID Object Name Allow read Allow create Allow modify Allow delete
Page 30009 APIV2 - Customer X X X X

The following tools are made available in the server:

  • ListAPIV2 - Customer_PAG30009
  • CreateAPIV2 - Customer_PAG30009
  • ListUpdate APIV2 - Customer_PAG30009
  • DeleteAPIV2 - Customer_PAG30009

These tools appear in the MCP server and can be added to agents in Copilot Studio, allowing agents to perform the permitted operations on the specified API page objects.

Next steps

Create agents with Copilot Studio

Transparency note: Semantic Metadata Search in Business Central

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