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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Small and medium business | Business Central, N... / Sales Order Agents
Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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Sales Order Agents

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Posted on by DP-19051228-0 171
Hello, is there any way to get Sales Order Agents to have OCR capabilities to recognize PDFs? I understand that the Payable agent can, but it would be useful if the SOA could as well, as a lot of companies receive orders through PDFs. If this is possible in any way, please let me know. Any help on this matter is appreciated!
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Dynamics 365 Business Central
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  • Verified answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    YUN ZHU 99,086 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Hi, This major update includes the following new features. As far as I know, there is no OCR function. You can submit this idea to Microsoft.
    Missing a feature? Post or vote for ideas on: aka.ms/BCIdeas
     
    Thanks
    ZHU
  • Suggested answer
    Sumit Singh Profile Picture
    Sumit Singh 11,757 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Hi,

    As per my knowledge, Sales Order Agent (SOA) doesn’t offer OCR PDF attachments.
    • Microsoft’s Sales Order Agent (preview) analyzes the email content, converses with customers, and creates quotes/orders, but its documentation doesn’t state support for parsing attached PDFs (no OCR on attachments). It generates a quote PDF, it doesn’t read one.
    • By contrast, the Payables Agent explicitly extracts invoice data from PDFs using Azure Document Intelligence (OCR) as part of its processing pipeline.
    That said, you have workable approaches to give SOA‑like flows OCR for customer PDFs:

    Practical options

    1) Power Automate + AI Builder (or Azure Document Intelligence)

    Build a flow that:
    1. Watches the shared mailbox where SOA also listens.
    2. When an email arrives with a PDF order, extracts header/line data using AI Builder’s “Recognize text in image or PDF” (or a trained form processing model).
    Use the text recognition prebuilt model in Power Automate - AI Builder | Microsoft Learn
    Extract text from Image and PDF - Using Power Automate and AI Builder
    How To Grab Data from PDFs with Power Automate AI Builder – The Analytics Corner
    1. Either create the Sales Quote/Order directly via Business Central APIs, or compose a structured email body (e.g., JSON/table) that SOA can interpret. (BC’s APIs and Power Automate patterns for handling PDFs are documented.)
    How Do I: Get Business Central (Pdf) Documents in Power Automate? – think about IT
    This route keeps you on Microsoft stack, requires no BC customization, and can be rolled out quickly while approvals and security stay within your tenant.

    2) Third‑party document capture for Sales Orders (full OCR)

    If you want a turnkey, in‑client experience (including line recognition, templates, approvals, archive), Continia Document Capture supports a “Sales Orders and Credit Memos” category that OCR‑reads customer POs/PDFs and creates Sales Orders in Business Central.
    The Sales Orders and Credit Memos category
    • Continia’s OCR is available for BC online and on‑prem; it uses cloud OCR (and Azure’s model online) and is widely deployed.
    OCR-Processing a Document
    • See the app on Microsoft AppSource.
    Find the right app | Microsoft AppSource

    3) “Incoming Documents” OCR (built‑in) — limited fit

    Business Central’s built‑in Incoming Documents + OCR can turn PDFs into electronic documents and create purchase invoices/sales invoices/credit memos/journal entries. It’s not designed to create Sales Orders, so it’s usually not a fit for customer PO‑to‑SO scenarios.
    Use OCR to turn PDF into e-invoices - Business Central | Microsoft Learn
    dynamics365smb-docs/business-central/across-how-use-ocr-pdf-images-files.md at main · MicrosoftDocs/dynamics365smb-docs · GitHub

    What to expect from Microsoft

    • SOA is a production‑ready preview and “subject to change,” so capabilities may expand, but current docs don’t mention attachment OCR. Keep an eye on the SOA documentation and release updates. [1]
    • Microsoft has already demonstrated OCR on the AP side with the Payables Agent (preview), which does parse PDF invoices via Azure Document Intelligence; if Microsoft brings parity later, they’ll update the SOA docs/release notes. [3]
    Please mark it “Verified” if it helps.
  • Suggested answer
    Rishabh Kanaskar Profile Picture
    Rishabh Kanaskar 6,219 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at
    Hi,
     
    Currently, the Sales Order Agent in Business Central does not have built-in OCR for PDFs. It works with email text, not attachments. If you need OCR for PDF orders, you’ll need an external service or ISV solution. Popular options you can check:
    > Continia Document Capture – OCR for incoming documents (supports orders and invoices).
    > mseDoc365 OCR – AI-powered OCR for orders and invoices.
    > OCRDocs by Q-Team Solutions – Lightweight document scanning and OCR.
    > Power Automate with AI Builder – Can integrate OCR and automate order creation.
     
     
    Please share your country/region, as availability varies.
     
    Thanks
    Rishabh

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