Profiles in Business Central: Roles, Role Centres & Layouts

Profiles in Dynamics 365 Business Central (also called Roles) control what users see when they sign in — from the Role Centre “home page” to shared page layouts for teams. Get them right and people fly; get them wrong and everyone works around your ERP like it’s a badly organised shed.

It’s productivity by design — not security by wishful thinking.

Profiles, explained simply

A Profile in Business Central is basically a fancy costume your users put on before they enter the ERP. Accountant? Pop on the green visor and carry a ledger the size of a door. Warehouse? Hi-vis jacket, clipboard, and a perpetual sense of urgency. Sales? A phone glued to one hand and optimism in the other.

When you assign someone a Profile, Business Central rolls out a red carpet to their Role Centre and says: “Here, mate — these buttons are for you, those ones are for someone else, and that page you never use, I’ve hidden it behind a cupboard.”

Then your users immediately personalise everything anyway, like rearranging the supermarket so the milk is next to the crisps “because it feels right”.

It’s not security. It’s not permissions. It’s more like interior design… but with invoices.

Previous Glossary Term: Blanket Orders

Profiles, explained properly (the version you can trust)

In Dynamics 365 Business Central, a Profile is the mechanism that determines a user’s Role Centre (their home page/workspace) and can also define shared page customisations for that role. In the Business Central client, profiles are referred to as Roles, and users can switch roles from My Settings when they need a different workspace.

What a Profile actually controls

A Profile primarily affects the user experience, NOT access:

• Role Centre: the landing page with cues, tiles, lists, KPIs, and navigation tailored to a job role.

• Shared layout changes (profile customisations): admins (or delegated users) can customise pages for a profile so everyone assigned to that profile sees the same improved layout — handy for standardising workflows across a team.

What a Profile does not control (this is where people mess up)

Profiles are not permissions. Permissions decide what users can access; profiles decide what users see first and how pages are arranged. Microsoft’s admin guidance treats profiles/roles and permissions as separate concerns.

If you try to “secure” Business Central using profiles alone, you’ll end up with users who still technically can access things — they just have to go looking.

Why profiles matter

Profiles are one of the fastest ways to get ROI without paying for heavy custom development:

• Fewer clicks, less training: a Finance role that surfaces posting, approvals, and cash flow beats a generic layout every day.

• Consistency: when you customise pages at profile level, you reduce “everyone does it differently” chaos.

• Cleaner onboarding: new starters land in the right workspace on day one.

Admin superpower: customise once, roll out to many

Business Central supports customising pages for profiles (shared changes) and managing those customisations (view, troubleshoot, clear).

And if you’re moving from sandbox to production (or standardising across tenants), the client can export and import user-created profiles and page customisations.

Practical best practice

• Start with Microsoft’s standard roles and only create new profiles when a role is genuinely different.

• Treat profile changes like process changes: document what you changed and why.

• Use profile customisations for team standards, and allow personalisation for personal preferences — but keep a lid on it, or you’ll be supporting “unique ERP versions” forever.

Profiles in Business Central: FAQs

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