Using the AI resources provides several benefits:

Reduced operational overhead: Avoid the need to handle infrastructure management, updates, monitoring, troubleshooting, or maintenance of custom Azure OpenAI subscriptions. This benefit 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 ensure consistent performance during peak demand.
Enhanced security compliance: Built-in compliance measures and governance, including robust protection from malicious and harmful content, ensure compliance with data residency requirements. This benefit reduces the burden of ensuring regulatory compliance for ISVs.
Streamlined experience for customers: Customers get a seamless AI resource management process without maintaining different configurations for separate ISV solutions.

This capability also provides a cohesive AI consumption tracking and billing experience for Business Central customers. Customers who use 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. They don't 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 need specific models, including fine-tuned models, that the Business Central AI resources don't provide, you can bring your own subscription for customers. In this case, the publisher is responsible for deploying, maintaining, scaling, and securing the service. The publisher also handles billing AI resources to customers.

We recommend using the developer toolkit AI resources when you extend Copilot in Business Central. You just need to authenticate with the SetManagedResourceAuthorization method in the AI Module AzureOpenAI codeunit. You also provide your own Azure OpenAI subscription details, but the authentication process doesn't use them. (Update 2026 release wave 1: There's now a new method signature for SetManagedResources that doesn't require you to provide your subscription details anymore. You should use that going forward.)

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

To use your own subscription, authenticate it with the SetAuthorization method.

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

This AI billing model isn't designed to replace the existing Marketplace monetization pathway for publishers who create Business Central apps. Instead, it offers another option that simplifies AI consumption for customers and partners. ISVs can use the Marketplace monetization option to monetize their IP.