Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Best approach for exposing local Business Central APIs to Copilot Studio during development?

Hi everyone,

I am currently developing an AI-powered inventory analysis solution using Dynamics 365 Business Central and Copilot Studio.
One challenge I encountered was exposing Business Central APIs running in a local Docker container so they could be consumed through a custom connector in Copilot Studio.
While researching different approaches, I found this Microsoft Learn documentation helpful:

https://learn.microsoft.com/connectors/custom-connectors?wt.mc_id=studentamb_621396

I experimented with:

- Custom Connectors

- Docker-hosted Business Central APIs

- Cloudflare Tunnel

- ngrok

- host.docker.internal

I would like to hear how others approach this scenario in development environments.

Do you typically:

- expose APIs through ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel?

- deploy to a sandbox environment first?

- use another approach entirely?