The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the LCS June 2018, release 1. This release was focused on making performance and reliability improvements.

User Experience: Affected users may be unable to access projects through the Lifecycle Services portal.

More Info: As of now, most users will be able to access their Lifecycle Services projects, however, a small number of users may still encounter the following experience:

When attempting to access the Lifecycle Services portal, users may experience a blank page or may receive the following error: “Failed to retrieve details for the action center. If this continues, please contact support with the following error identifier. An unexpected client error has occurred. An unexpected error has occurred. Please try again later. If the problem persists contact support for further assistance.”

Current Status: We are currently applying configuration changes to Lifecycle Services to restore project accessibility. We will provide updates as we monitor your service health for improvements when they become available or by the time listed below.

Update 5: We continue to apply the configuration changes as we actively monitor your service health for improvements. We will provide updates as they become available or by the time listed below.

Update 4: The configuration changes remain in progress. We will continue to monitor your service health and provide updates as they become available or by the time listed below.

Update 3: The configuration changes are 90% complete and we are continuing to apply them to the affected infrastructure. This process is expected to take an extended amount of time, and we will continue to monitor your service health and provide updates as they become available.

Update 2: We have made configuration changes to the code and are in the process of applying these changes to all impacted environments.

Update 1: We were able to reproduce the issue and identified that a code configuration has caused some Lifecycle Services projects to become inaccessible. We are making configuration changes to correct this issue.

Incident Start Time: Friday, June 15, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

Next Update: Friday, June 15, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

When you submit an incident by using the Lifecycle Services Support flow, you might receive a message which says, "Misconfigured professional error." This error prevents you from submitting a support case to Microsoft.

This error occurs when an email address is missing from either the PartnerSource Business Center (for partners) or CustomerSource (for customers).

To work around this issue, an administrator in the PartnerSource Business Center or CustomerSource must complete the following steps.

Partners

1. Sign in to https://businesscenter.mbs.microsoft.com. If you are asked to select an account, select the account number from the error message.
2. Go to Partner Focus > View all professionals.
3. Locate and select the name of the user who is receiving this error.
4. Click Edit, and enter the user’s email address.
5. Click Save.

Customers

1. Go to https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource and sign in, if needed.
2. In the upper right corner, select your name, and in the drop-down menu, select Our CustomerSource Accounts.
3. Find the name of the user who is experiencing the error, and then update their profile with an email address.

User Impact: Affected users may be unable to access projects through the Lifecycle Services portal intermittently.

Current Status: We are continuing to restore service for users that may be experiencing Lifecycle Services portal issues and will provide an update when new information is available, or by the time listed below.

Update 1: We are currently restoring service for some users that were attempting to access their Lifecycle Services portal and may have experienced a blank page or the following error: “Failed to retrieve details for the action center. If this continues, please contact support with the following error identifier. An unexpected client error has occurred. An unexpected error has occurred. Please try again later. If the problem persists, contact support for further assistance.” During this period, users may experience intermittent Lifecycle Services portal outages. The full recovery is estimated to take approximately four hours to complete and will provide an update when new information is available or the time listed below.

Incident Start: Friday, June 15, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

Next Update: Saturday, June 16, 2018, 7:30 AM UTC

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the LCS June 2018, release 2.

Update to Cloud-hosted environments page

We have recently made some improvements to the Cloud-hosted environments page in LCS. This page provides a list of all environments hosted by the customer or the partner in their own Azure subscription. For customers who have multiple cloud-hosted environments (20+), it becomes cumbersome to search through the environments. We previously added the ability to filter the environment list. However, with this release we are augmenting that experience by giving the LCS user the option to the export the list of environments as a .csv file, which includes details such as Deployed by, Deployed on, Environment status, Environment name, and Topology type. To use this feature, go to your LCS project and open the Cloud-hosted environments page. In the tool bar, click Export to export the environments list as a .csv file.

Reduced downtime when updating the Production environment 

With this release of Lifecycle Services, we have reduced the time needed to apply updates in your Production environment to less than one hour. Additionally:

• This improvement is applicable to all application and platform versions. This means that after this release, all customers will start seeing these improvements.
• This applies to all types of packages, including application deployable packages, binary updates, or merged packages that are applied through the Apply updates flow in LCS.
• Other than applying the code updates, the majority of the downtime is used to synchronize changes to the database. This means that the total downtime might vary based on the size of the database and can take anywhere from 20 minutes to just under an hour.

Note that there is no change to the experience of  scheduling the update in your Production environment or to the experience of viewing the progress of the updates. At this time, these improvements only apply to customer-initiated updates. We are planning to bring these improvements to Microsoft initiated code updates (such as Platform and Financial Reporting updates), reduce the required lead time and the downtime window needed when scheduling updates in an upcoming release of LCS.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (July 2018, release 1).

Change in the process of applying updates to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations on-premises environment

With today's release of LCS, you will see a change in the process of applying updates to your Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations on-premises environment. Previously for an on-premises deployment, after you clicked Apply Updates in the Environment details page it would mark the start of the downtime for your environment even though the update steps that directly impacted the environment would start much later. The initial time was spent on downloading the package and preparing the environment for the update, however the environment was not updated during the execution of these steps.

To reduce the overall downtime and increase reliability we have divided the servicing operation into two activities – Preparation and Servicing. The Preparation activity is where all tasks needed for servicing (such as formatting the package, downloading the package, taking code backups, etc.) are completed. During this time, the on-premises environment is not accessed and there is no downtime for the environment or the users using the system. The Servicing activity is where the actual deployment takes place, this is a downtime for the environment. Customers now have the option to prepare the environment before starting the actual downtime for servicing. This will reduce the overall downtime needed to update your on-premises environment. To use this feature, you will need the latest version of the local agent (such as Version 2.1.0). For details on how to use this feature, refer to the Apply Updates documentation.

Performance Improvements to the Cloud Hosted Environment page and Azure Connectors page

With this release of LCS, we have made performance improvements to the Cloud Hosted Environments page and Azure Connectors page. This should help to improve the overall experience of using these pages.

We are not releasing a new version of Lifecycle Services (LCS) on Monday, July 23. The next release will be Monday, August 6.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the availability of the release notes for LCS (August 2018).

Export updates to CSV

When you download updates from the tiles in environment details, you can now export the KB information to CSV format on the Review and download updates page using the Export updates to CSV button. This export includes the KB number, title, release date, problem description, and solution.

Issue Search sorting improvement

When using LCS Issue Search to search for KBs, the order by Date descending or Date ascending wasn't sorted correctly. This fix corrects the sort by information when the released date is available on the KB.

Due to an Azure outage in some regions impacting services like Visual Studio Team Services, Azure Active Directory, etc. some customers might get an "Unexpected client error" when logging into the Finance and Operations or Lifecycle Services product, accessing your code in VSTS, trying to sync BPM libraries, trying to submit a support incident from the product, or when trying to submit a service request (for environment deployment, updating production or moving databases across environments) to our service engineering team.

To submit a support incident to Microsoft, you have two options:

1. If you are able to login to LCS, you can submit an issue to Microsoft through LCS "Submit to Microsoft" button.
2. If you are unable to login to LCS, you can contact support directly via phone. For region specific support numbers, please check the Contact support site.

There is currently no workaround for submitting a service request, as a result, this will be enabled once the issue has been resolved

We are working with the Azure team to get this issue resolved quickly. We will update this blog post once this issue is resolved.

We are pleased to announce the availability of the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Dynamics 365 for Retail Newsletter in Lifecycle Services. This will be a monthly newsletter highlighting key announcements and spotlighting features in the products that you can use. There are also a set of resources on the road-map, how-to videos and tech talks. The August 2018 version  is now available for download. To view the newsletter navigate to Lifecycle Services and check the Announcements section.

You may have noticed that in addition to the latest release of features in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), VSTS has rebranded the service to Azure DevOps. Here’s how this affects Lifecycle Services (LCS), Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail.

In general, all functionality and processes requiring Azure DevOps do not change. This includes work item tracking, support requests, code upgrade service, build and test automation, source code version control, and Business Process Modeler (BPM). However, note the following changes that may affect you:

• • When you create a new organization, for this example let’s call it <myorg>, the URL of your organization and all projects under it will start with https://dev.azure.com/<myorg>. The legacy URL https://<myorg>.visualstudio.com will still work. When you connect an LCS project to a VSTS project, you will need to use the URL https://<myorg>.visualstudio.com.
  • When you create a new Azure DevOps project, by default there is Git version control. You will need to add a Team Foundation Version Control repository to the Azure DevOps project.
    • Go to Project settings > Repositories.
    • Select New repository.
    • In the Type field, select TFVC, and then click Create.
      
  • When you create a new project in a legacy organization (an organization that was created before Azure DevOps was released), you need to select Team Foundation Version Control. The default is Git. This has not changed.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (September 2018).

Delete on-premises environment

In this release of LCS we have added the option to Delete an on-premises environment directly through the environment details page as shown below. The Delete button displays only if the environment is in a Failed, Deployed, or an Unknown state. When you click Delete, you will be asked to confirm the deletion action by signing your name.

Diagnose and mitigate performance issues on Sandbox and Production directly through LCS

In this release of LCS we’ve added a new feature that enables customers and partners to collect performance metrics on demand, and execute a pre-defined set of actions to mitigate issues in their Sandbox or Production environment. This feature is available on Sandbox and Production environments that are connected to SQL Azure and is only shown to users who are assigned the Environment manager role in their projects. Users who are assigned the Project owner role will not have access to this feature. With this feature, you can query for the root blocker, get fragmentation details, add/remove index, run update stats on a table, or terminate a blocking statement directly through LCS. One advantage of this feature is that it queries SQL directly, returning the results in near real time and thereby enabling you to quickly diagnose performance issues. There is also an audit trail in the environment history on the action performed, so you can go back and determine who performed the action and when. To use this feature, go to a specific environment in LCS and open the environment details page. Select the Environment Monitoring link in the Monitoring section. Click the SQL Insights tab to access this feature. You will see 3 new tabs displayed under SQL Insights:

• Live View - Shows current DTU, executing statements, and blocking statements.
• Queries - Shows a list of pre-defined queries that can be used to retrieve metrics on demand. Examples of queries include a current blocking tree, a list of active plan guides, get XML for a plan ID, and a list of most expensive queries.
• Actions - Shows a list of pre-defined actions that should be taken to mitigate issues in the Sandbox and Production environments. Examples of actions include adding/dropping an index, updating stats on a table, rebuilding indexes, and terminating a blocking statement.

Because some of the capabilities of this feature overlap with the current functionality in LCS, we have consolidated the information in the available tabs under SQL Insights. With this change, the SQL Now tab that shows Current execution statements, blocking info, and lock info will be not be visible. All of this information is now available on the Live View page, which shows currently executing and blocking statements, and the Queries page, which shows the lock details in the Get Lock Details query.

Additional details on using this feature and a cookbook on query details and when it should be used will be available in docs.microsoft.com shortly.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations integrates with Microsoft Skype to enable real-time presence and communications for your users. On October 10, 2018, Skype will be updating the way it authenticates its users, including your Finance and Operations users.

With this update,  users will no longer be to login to your Finance and Operations service, unless you take the following steps to restrict the Skype integration.

If the platform version of your Finance and Operations environment is Platform update 15 with KB4458323

If you have not activated Skype integration in these environments, then no action is required. Skype is restricted in these environments by default.

If you have activated Skype integration in these environments, to avoid system connection issues related to the Skype update, you must manually turn off Skype in Finance and Operations. (See the steps below for more details.)

 If the platform version of your Finance and Operations environment is Platform update 12 with KB4091763

If the platform version of your Finance and Operations environment is Platform update 15 with KB4091764

To avoid system connection issues related to the Skype update, you must manually restrict Skype in Finance and Operations. (See the steps below for more details.)

Other combinations not listed do not provide the ability to turn off Skype integration within the product. To avoid issues with signing in to Finance and Operations you must update to a version of the platform that supports restricting Skype integration.

To determine your platform version and the updates that you’ve applied

Sign in to lcs.dynamics.com, select your project and click Full details on your environment on the Environments tab. Note your platform release. For hotfix information, click History > Environment Changes to see installed updates.

To manually turn off Skype

Sign in to Finance and Operations, select System administration > Setup > Client performance options > Client internet connectivity > Skype presence enabled. Set the toggle to No to turn off Skype integration for all clients in your environment.

To update to a platform version that supports turning off Skype Integration (or has Skype turned off by default)

Sign in to lcs.dynamics.com, select your project, and click Full details on your environment on the Environments tab.

Click the Platform binary updates tile and click Save Package. Select the KB associated with your platform version.

Click Save Package and then select a name for the package in the asset library. Save the package and then select Done.

The package is now ready in the project’s asset library and a servicing operation can be completed with the saved package. For more information, see the Apply updates to on-premises deployments topic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will the Skype update make my Finance and Operations system have connection issues?

Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations integrates with Skype to enable real-time presence and communications for your users. In the coming weeks, Skype will be refactoring the way it authenticates its users, including your Finance and Operations users. During this update, you may not be able sign in to your Finance and Operations service, unless you follow the steps described above.

How do I determine if my configuration is "safe" from connection issues?

The Environment page in Lifecycle Services (LCS) provides information about your platform and hotfix versions. Sign in to lcs.dynamics.com, select your project, and then click Full details on your environment on the Environments tab. Note your platform release. For hotfix information, click History > Environment Changes to see installed updates.

When does the Microsoft Skype update occur?

Microsoft will be updating Skype during the first and seconds weekends in October.

  If I need to perform an update, what are my next steps? Can you expedite my request?

Sign in to lcs.dynamics.com, select your project, and click Full details on your environment on the Environments tab.

Click the Platform binary updates tile and click Save Package. Select the KB associated with your platform version.

Click Save Package and then select a name for the package in the asset library. Save the package and then select Done.

The package is now ready in the project’s asset library and a servicing operation can be completed with the saved package. For more information, see the Apply updates to on-premises deployments topic.

If issues arise that require Microsoft support, please create a support case by signing in to lcs.dynamics.com and selecting your project. The Project menu will have Support options that can take you through the support case process.

What if I don't want a platform update? Can't I just un-install Skype?

The Microsoft Skype integration is not included with your local copy of Skype. It is with the Microsoft Skype authentication using Active Directory.

Do I have to update all of my client machines?

The platform update is for your Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations host service. Client machines do not need to be updated.

Under “Client Performance Options" I don't see any options for Skype.

This means that the platform version that you are using needs to be updated. (See the steps above for more details.) 

When is it "safe" to turn on Skype presence enabled? Can you do that for me?

As an on-premises customer, you are in full control of your configuration options, which means that Microsoft does not have the ability to modify your settings.

If you have additional questions, please contact Microsoft Support. Support can be found on the Project page in LCS.dynamics.com under Support on the Project menu.

We’re excited to announce the availability of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations version 8.1 with Platform update 20 through Lifecycle Services (LCS). This release is packed with some great features. To see what's new, check out the Release Notes.

Customers and partners can get version 8.1 using one of the options listed below:

• Deploy a new environment of 8.1 with Platform update 20 through LCS.
• Upgrade version 7.x to version 8.1 using upgrade flows in LCS. For details, see Process for moving to the latest update.
• Update an existing 8.0 environment to 8.1. This will be available after October 15, 2018. For more info, see Update 8.0 to 8.1.

After you are on version 8.1, all Microsoft updates will be cumulative for platform and application via a single update tile. There will be no granular X++ updates. To view the applicable fixes for your environment, navigate to the environment details page in LCS and check the Monitoring section. You will now see a single tile, as shown below, that contains both the application and platform fixes as a single update package.

For customers who are trying to apply binary updates to a Finance and Operations version 8.0 environment, you will see the following error message incorrectly showing up.

"Modules on the environment do not match with modules in the package. Please verify if all modules on the environment exist in package or not."

We are actively investigating this issue and will hotfix Lifecycle Services to remove this check by end of day today, October 12, 2018. This blog post will be updated once this issue is fixed.

[Update as of 12th October 2018, 6PM PST -  The hotfix containing the fixes for the issues causing database refresh request failures in the last 3 days has been rolled out to Production. As mentioned below, please trigger rollback if your environment is in a failed state and then resubmit a new request to refresh you sandbox with production data. ]

Starting on Monday, October 8th 2018, there were technical issues that caused some Database Refresh requests to fail. We have investigated the failures and are releasing a Lifecycle Services hotfix that will address all the known issues by Oct 12, 5 PM PST.

What you can do
If you have a Database Refresh request that failed for any reason that is outside of your control (anything that it is not data related), we have added a new Rollback button to your target environment. Please roll back your environment to the last good known state and then resubmit a new Database Refresh request.

We understand that timely refreshes of data is imperative for your own diagnostic, testing, and training needs. We'll continue to actively monitor issues. If you still see issues after the hotfix, please raise a support request. We will update this blog post once the hotfix is released.

With the LCS release on Monday October 8th 2018, we are pleased to announce the general availability of a new Service request type that targets the Go Live experience.

Many customers and partners use what is commonly referred to as a “Golden Configuration” environment, which is a database populated with basic data elements and configurations for a business. In addition to the data, migration is performed and final smoke tests are executed as part of a typical Go Live.

To get a golden configuration database imported in to your Sandbox environments (Tier-2 Standard Acceptance Test or higher), follow the steps in this topic, Copy Finance and Operations databases from SQL Server to production Azure SQL Database environments.

Previously, to copy the prepared Sandbox in to the Production environment, one of the following processes needed to be performed:
• Support request of type “Other” -  This was needed to explain Go Live and timing.
• Support ticket - This required internal transfer from Microsoft Customer Support teams to Dynamics Service Engineering (SRE) teams.

Now, with this feature there is a dedicated service request type we hope to reduce Go Live issues and make this last step in your deployment a smooth one. To use this feature, click the Support menu item from within the project and select the Service Requests tab. When you click Add you will see a new request type 'Sandbox to Production' that you can use to move the golden configuration database to Production as part of the go-live flow.

As of October 13, 2018, we adjusted the configuration of  Finance and Operations Develop and Test environments for better performance. All new deployments have moved to Managed premium disks, optimized for DS12v2 VMs. Because of updates to code and metadata, development and testing requires extensive disk access operations. Moving to Managed premium disks will provide a much better performance experience for these operations.

We encourage you to deallocate, delete, and re-deploy new Develop and Test environments to take advantage of this new topology. Before you delete your Development or Test environment, make sure that you save all of your work, check your code into Azure DevOps (formerly known as VSTS), and make a local backup of any test database that you would like to preserve. Please allow up to 48 hours for a redeployment request to be processed (Most requests are processed faster).

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the changes made available in the October releases.

Sandbox to Production service request

We recently added a new service request type that can be used in the go-live process to move the database from Sandbox to Production. For details on where to find this and how to use this flow, see the blog post announcing the availability of this feature and related documentation.

Change to Sandbox refresh flow

With the last release of Lifecycle Services, we have made significant improvements to the Sandbox refresh flow, so it is now similar to how servicing/applying updates work. Below are some of the improvements we have made:

• Upfront compatibility checks.
• Updates are now emailed to customers on the progress of the refresh.
• Fixed known performance and reliability issues.
• Changed the flow so that on failure, the environment is not automatically rolled back. Instead there is an option for the service engineering team to retry and resume the deployment if it is an intermittent issue or to rollback if it is a genuine failure.
• Auditable Sign off captured to mark operation as complete or the rollback as successful, available from environment history similar to package deployments.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (October 2018, release 2).

Updates to the Performance troubleshooting tool in Lifecycle Services

We have made some improvements to the performance troubleshooting tools available under SQL Insights in the Environment Monitoring dashboard in LCS:

Live View is the default page under SQL Insights since that gives you a view of what is currently going on in your environment.

• Added collapsible tabs for the information shown under Live View to make consuming executing statements and blocking statements easier.
• Fixed the issue causing the "Get Currently Running" query to time out for many customers.
• We have most queries that run synchronously while few others that run asynchronously especially if that query is known to take longer to fetch the data. However, if your environment is having a performance issue or in some cases if it is taking longer to fetch the results running the query synchronously could cause the query time out. To help you get the data, we have added a new button called 'Use Fast query'. When you toggle this button off, the query is executed asynchronously and will most likely not result in a timeout.
• Added a link to the documentation from the Queries and Actions tab.

Schedule multiple Database Refresh requests

Based on customer feedback, we have enabled the ability to schedule multiple Database Refresh service requests in advance.  This supports scenarios such as scheduling a copy of Production data to your Sandbox Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the upcoming week.  Signoff is still required before another refresh on the same environment can be started. 

Start/Stop buttons will not be available during servicing operations

Starting/stopping the environment during an on-going servicing operation could have a negative impact on the environment state. To ensure a more reliable update flow, start and stop buttons on a Tier1 or Tier 2+ Sandbox environments will not be available starting with this release.