- Feature
- Recently searched in Tell Me
- Availability
- Generally available (October 2026)
- Industry focus
- Tour operators and travel companies
Tour operators' finance teams are some of the busiest multitaskers in any office. In a single morning they might pay hotel suppliers in three currencies, reconcile customer deposits, check foreign exchange rates and chase a ground handler's invoice. In Business Central, Tell Me is the fastest way to jump between pages and reports. Business Central 29.0 makes it faster still.
The industry challenge
A tour operator's finance team regularly moves between:
- Vendor payment journals for hotels, airlines and ground handlers
- Customer ledger entries for deposits and balances
- Currency exchange rates and revaluation
- Reports on supplier balances and booking margins
Tell Me (Alt+Q) lets users search for a page, report or action by name. Experienced users rely on it constantly. But many tasks are repeated many times a day, and typing the same search again and again adds up, especially when interruptions are constant and people lose their place.
What Microsoft delivered in Business Central 29.0
According to Microsoft, users can find pages and reports faster by accessing recent searches in Tell Me (Alt+Q).
An MVP walk-through explains the behaviour. When you open Tell Me without typing any search terms, a Recents section shows your three most recent searches. This mirrors the new "recently used" capability in lookups, also introduced in 29.0.
Where the value shows up
| Business area | Impact for a tour operator |
|---|---|
| Speed | Return to frequent pages and reports with one click |
| Focus | Easier to pick up where you left off after an interruption |
| Onboarding | New staff find their recent work without remembering page names |
| Peak periods | Faster navigation when booking volumes surge |
| Consistency | Less chance of opening the wrong page from a mistyped search |
The saving per search is small, but finance teams in travel companies search dozens of times a day. Small savings compound, especially during peak booking and payment seasons.
A worked scenario
Consider a specialist tour operator selling escorted holidays across Europe (an illustrative example). Its finance assistant spends the morning on supplier payments.
She opens the vendor payment journal, then switches to currency exchange rates to check the euro rate, then back to the payment journal, then to a supplier balance report. Each time, instead of retyping, she presses Alt+Q and selects from the three recent searches shown. When a sales colleague interrupts with a deposit query, she checks the customer ledger and returns to the payment journal from Recents in one click.
Adoption considerations
- Tell users about it. Many people don't notice small UX changes, so a quick mention in a team meeting helps.
- Encourage Tell Me. Teams that use Alt+Q heavily benefit most.
- Combine with bookmarks. Use role centre bookmarks for daily essentials and Tell Me recents for ad hoc work.
- Remember it's personal. Recents reflect each user's own searches.
- Train new starters. Include Tell Me and Recents in onboarding.
The bottom line
For busy finance teams in travel, the speed of moving between tasks shapes how much gets done. Recent searches in Tell Me in Business Central 29.0 is a simple convenience that saves time every day. It's a reminder that productivity improvements don't always need to be big to be valuable.
If your team spends a lot of time navigating Business Central, it's worth a short refresher on Tell Me, bookmarks and role centres with an experienced adviser.
Sources: Microsoft roadmap 573371 · Dynamics 365 Lab: Show recently searched in Tell Me