We are excited to announce that the Application & Platform binary update package is generally available in LCS! The package has been validated by a series of customers and partners who participate in our early access program. After evaluating the feedback, we have now made the experience generally available.

To update your 8.0 environments to 8.1, follow the documentation outlined here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/dev-itpro/migration-upgrade/appupdate-80-81

We are excited to announce the availability of a highly requested feature: Refresh Database Self-Service. This is available using the Maintain > Move database menu option in your sandbox environments.

This has been made available as a self-service action that allows you to copy a database from Production (or another sandbox) in to a target sandbox without needing to create a Service request. To learn more about Database refreshes, see the latest updates in Request sandbox database refreshes.

Important considerations

• We will continue to take Service requests for “Database refresh” through January 2019. Any requests after that will be rejected by our Service Engineering team.
  • Before we start rejecting these requests, we will provide a means for customers and partners to schedule this operation off-hours or with recurrence.
  • This does not impact Sandbox to Production service requests for Go-Live scenarios.
  • Existing requests that are for dates after January 2019 will be rejected.
• Sandbox environments are not supported for Production Reporting scenarios. Customers who want to report daily on production transactions should review the BYODB functionality, which is fully supported.
• In case of failure, the option to perform a Rollback is available. By clicking the rollback option after the operation has initially failed, your target sandbox environment will be restored to the state it was before the refresh began. This is often required if a customization is present in the target sandbox that cannot complete a database synchronization with the newly refreshed data. To determine the root cause of the failure, download the runbook logs using the available buttons before starting the rollback operation.
  • If needed, contact Support for assistance with your environment's ActivityID.

When setting up your Azure DevOps (VSTS) project in Lifecycle Services (LCS), if you use an inherited process template with custom fields, you may receive the following warning message: "The selected VSTS project is based on a custom process template. Custom process templates are not supported and may cause errors when synchronizing Business Process Modeler libraries with VSTS. Lifecycle Services supports the standard Agile, CMMI, and Scrum process templates."

This error occurs if there are syncing issues related to changes in the custom process template that causes issues between Business Process Modeler (BPM) libraries and Azure DevOps. If you follow the best practices noted below, you can safely ignore this warning message and continue using the custom template inherited from Agile, CCMI, or Scrum process templates.

Best practices for using custom process templates include:

• Do not delete any work item types or out-of-the-box fields. You can add custom work item types or fields, but do not delete any default work item types or fields inherited from process templates.
• Do not delete any state of a work item type. You can add additional state to a work item type, but do not delete any default state inherited from a process template.
• Do not add any required fields to a work item type. That is, if you added custom fields, do not make them mandatory fields.

We are working on removing this warning for connections that do not make any breaking changes.

Mapping of requirements

If use a custom process template, you can map requirements to “Tasks” or “Bugs” only. It's helpful to know that requirements are only stored in Azure DevOps (they are not stored in BPM and then synchronized). This mapping is only a shortcut to allow creation of requirements from the BPM user interface. If you don’t want to use “Tasks” to track requirements and prefer to use “User Story” for example, you can do this directly in the Azure DevOps. For example, you can create the work item in Azure DevOps as a child of the desired Feature or Epic. To follow this best practice, you can add the following tag to your requirement work items in Azure DevOps (LCS:RequirementsGap or LCS:RequirementsFit).

You can re-establish the LCS Project settings connection to Azure DevOps mapping via Restore to default mappings during the setup. This will only restore the default mapping between LCS and Azure DevOps, you will not lose any data in Azure DevOps.

We are working to enable the selection of “User story”, “Backlog Item”, or “Requirement” when mapping requirements to the respective custom process template (Agile, Scrum, or CCMI), but we do not have timeline as to when this will be available. This should not block you from proceeding with your implementation.

Start/Stop buttons will not be available during an ongoing servicing operation

Starting with this release the Start and Stop button visible on the environment details page for non-Production environments will not be available during an ongoing servicing operation. This is to prevent issues where customers stop the environment during an ongoing operation causing the environment to get into a weird state. To avoid this situation, the Start and Stop button will be not be available if the environment is in a Servicing state.

Other than this, the rest of the release was focused on making performance and reliability improvements.

As the end of year approaches, the Microsoft Dynamics Service Engineering team is reducing available manual-upgrade slots for customer Sandbox and Production environments.  This is to help stabilize environments and the overall service during the holiday season.

If upgrading before end of year is an urgent matter for your business, please signup for the Self-service Upgrade Preview Program at the below URL. This program will provide you with a free Sandbox environment with which to perform the upgrade:
https://aka.ms/SelfServceUpgradePreview

At the end of the above survey is a Private Yammer Group link.  This Yammer group is managed by the Product team and will be able to assist your upgrade questions throughout December.   More details can be found on Process for moving to the latest update of Finance and Operations.

Self-service upgrade becomes generally available

After you complete the code upgrade and are able to perform an end-to-end data upgrade in your development environment without manipulating data in Microsoft SQL Server, you can begin the upgrade process in your sandbox environment.

Self-service upgrade allows the provisioning of a free sandbox on your target version.

You can apply one or many software packages to prepare this new infrastructure, depending on what you require for Platform updates, ISV packages, and your customization packages. When you're ready for your planned downtime, you can start the Data Upgrade and the new infrastructure will be connected to your existing database to execute the upgrade scripts.

Customers have 10 calendar days to sign off on upgrade for their Sandbox environment. After this, customers can upgrade their own Production environment in the exact manner.

For more details, refer to scenario #3 in the updated documentation, Process for moving to the latest update.

Self-service database export becomes generally available

The process to export a backup file to bring down to Tier 1 Developer environments is now much simpler.

To move a database, use the self-service action to export the database from Azure SQL Database and then import it into Microsoft SQL Server. Because the file name extension for the exported data is .bacpac, this process is often referred to as the bacpac process.

The high-level process for a database move includes the following phases:

1. Export your source environment to the LCS Asset Library.
2. Import the database into SQL Server.
3. Run a SQL script to update the database.

For more information, see the updated documentation, Copy Finance and Operations databases from Azure SQL Database to SQL Server environments.

Translation Service now supports multiple target languages in a single request

Starting with this release, Dynamics 365 – Translation Service customers can select multiple translation target languages in a single translation request when the source file stays in the same language. Customers can now track the progress and the details from a single request in one view. This saves time, as customers no longer need to manually create individual language requests for the number of necessary target languages, as well as access and manage the result of each request.

We are excited to announce the availability of self-service deployment for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations cloud environments. While most changes will be transparent to you, in the coming weeks you will see some changes in the Lifecycle Services (LCS) experience for new customers. For now, the experience for existing customers will remain unchanged. Please note that the functionality noted in this topic will be made available to users based on the geographic location recognized by Microsoft Azure.

What’s new or changed

Customers with the self-service capabilities will see the following changes in their LCS experience.

• Deployment is self-service and can be completed within an average time of 30 minutes. There are no longer lead times and wait times for deployment. You can control when you deploy and verify that the environment is deployed. This experience is the same as the current experience.
  
• You will no longer have Remote desktop access to the Tier 2+ Sandbox environments. All operations that need Remote desktop access are now available as self-service actions. The following image shows some of the operations in the environment’s Maintain > Move database menu option.
  
• The diagnostics capabilities will remain the same, which enables troubleshooting without remote desktop access.
  

• You will be able to deploy Tier 2 Standard Acceptance Test environment (Sandbox) only after you complete project configuration. To complete project configuration and unblock deployment of the Sandbox environment, check the notification in the Action Center on the Project Dashboard page.
• You will not have SQL Server access on Tier 2+. You will continue to have SQL database access using just-in-time access.
• You will need to provide a combined deployable package for customizations. Delta packages will not be supported. This was always a recommended best practice and is now enforced.

Additional resources

Please see the Self-Service Deployment topic for more information.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (January 2019, release 1).

Delete implementation projects

With this release of LCS, we allow users with the organization admin role to delete an implementation project owned by their organization. The organization administrator can delete a project only if all the environments within that project have been deleted. If there are any actively deployed environments, the administrator should clean up those environments before deleting the project.

To delete an implementation project, the organization admin can go to the LCS dashboard, click the All Projects tab and select the project to delete. The Delete button will display if there are no actively deployed environments in the project. After Delete is selected, a confirmation dialog box will display where the admin can enter a name and confirm the deletion.

Database movement

We are pleased to announce two new self-service Database movement actions that have been added to private preview. These actions focus on Point-in-time restore. If you’re interested in signing up for any of these new flows, please visit https://aka.ms/SelfServiceDatabaseMovementPreview.

• Sandbox Point in time restore allows you to restore your Sandbox back to a previous date and time without a service request.
• Point in time restore PROD to Sandbox allows you to take a prior snapshot of your Production environment and load that to a Sandbox environment without a service request.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (January 2019, release 2).

Environment monitoring changes

Currently, because telemetry data is required to generate the Activity monitoring page, that data is queried when the page is loaded. (The query goes back 15 minutes from the current time.) In this release of LCS, the Activity monitoring page doesn't load the telemetry data by default. Instead, the page is blank when it first appears, and customers receive the message that is highlighted in the following illustration. To see the data, they must enter a specific time and select Submit Time. All the data is then loaded on the page and is ready to use.

We’re excited to announce the release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations version 10.0 (April 2019) for preview through Lifecycle Services (LCS). This release is packed with some great features. To see what's included in this release, check What's New article. This is a Preview release and is not meant for Production use.

This release is available as an update package in the LCS Shared asset library, as shown below. You can import this package into your project and apply it on any Tier 1 or Tier 2 sandbox environments to preview the features. You will not be allowed to mark this package as a release candidate in LCS and apply it to a production environment.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (February 2019, release 2).

Maintenance mode for environments deployed using self-service deployment

With this release of LCS, we’re adding the ability for customers to put their environment in maintenance mode for the environments that are deployed using the self-service deployment option. Maintenance mode is a configuration in Finance and Operations that allows system administrators to make system-wide configuration changes without much disruption. Once the system is in maintenance mode, only the system administrator can sign in and make the change. To use this feature, in LCS got to the Tier 2 and above Environment details page. Under Maintain, there is a new option called Enable maintenance mode. Select Enable maintenance mode to put your system in maintenance mode. After you are done making changes, the menu item under Maintain will have the option to Disable maintenance mode. Selecting this option will take the system out of maintenance mode. The environment history is updated on completion of this operation.

Database movement operations: Import and point-in-time restore

Database movement operations are a suite of self-service actions that can be used as part of Data Application Lifecycle Management (also referred to as DataALM). These actions provide structured processes for common implementation scenarios such as golden configuration promotion, debugging/diagnostics, destructive testing, and general refresh for training purposes.

In this release of LCS, the following operations are generally available for use on your Sandbox environments.

• Import database

To import a database prepared from a developer environment to a standard user acceptance test (UAT), or a database previously exported from a UAT environment, follow the steps outlined below:

• • 1. Go to your target sandbox Environment Details page, and select Maintain > Move database.
    2. Select the Import database option and choose your source database backup (.bacpac format) file from the Asset library.
    3. Note the warnings. Review the list of data elements that are cleaned up from the backup file.
    4. The import operation will begin immediately.
    5. After the import operation is completed, you must sign off on the operation before you can perform another servicing operation, such as package deployment, database movement, or upgrade.
• Database point-in-time restore (PITR)

To restore the database of a standard user acceptance test (UAT) environment to a previous point-in-time, follow the steps outlined below:

• • 1. Go to your target sandbox Environment Details page, and select Maintain > Move database.
    2. Select the Point-in-time restore option and choose a point-in-time.
    3. Note the warnings. Review the list of data elements that are not copied from the previous point-in-time.
    4. The restore operation will begin immediately.
    5. After the restore operation is completed, you must sign off on the operation before you can perform another servicing operation, such as package deployment, database movement, or upgrade.

Production point-in-time restore service request

For customers performing destructive testing in their Production environment as part of a 'mock go live' activity, the ability to roll back to a prior point in time has been made available via a service request.  To create this request, go to the Service Requests page from your Implementation project and find the Production Point-in-time restore type.

This is only for customers who are not yet live. If you are already live and need a point-in-time restore of your Production environment, it is advised to create a Support ticket.

Data upgrade preview package available for Dynamics365 for Finance and Operations version 10.0

Along with the previous announcement of version 10.0 (Preview), we have made data upgrade packages available in the Shared asset library.

These packages can be used on your DevTest environments to validate the data upgrade process from 7.x or AX 2012 respectively.  The ability to upgrade a Sandbox environment to 10.0 will become available when the 10.0 version is out of preview.

Validation for Financial Reporting Binaries on Database Refresh

One of the most common reasons for database refresh to fail has been that the binary versions of Financial Reporter are different between the source and target environments.  We now have added validation in LCS that will detect this scenario and prevent the refresh.

For instructions on how to correct the version incompatibility, please visit our documentation article:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/dev-itpro/database/database-refresh#incompatible-version-of-financial-reporting-between-source-and-target-environments

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (February 2019, release 2).

Implementation user role in project users screen

Now you can also specify the implementation role in the LCS while creating or editing the project users. There a new addition of toggle button to define if you allow Microsoft to contact. When this is enabled, Microsoft may contact the users based on the user role when appropriate. For example, Project managers will be contacted for Go-live assessments and architects will be contacted for any Architect workshops.

To update this, go to the Project users page and create/edit the existing user.

Restart services for environments deployed using self-service deployment

With this release of Lifecycle Services (LCS) we have added the ability for customers and partners to restart services directly through LCS on environments deployed using the self-service deployment option. This feature is available only on Sandbox (Tier 2 through Tier 5) environments and to users in the project owner or environment manager role. With this feature you will be able to restart AX, MR (Management reporter), or DIXF services. To use this feature, go to Maintain on the environment details page and select Restart service. This will open an option where you can select the service that you want to restart. The environment status will be updated to Restarting service and on completion will return to the Deployed state.

Access SQL database on environments deployed using self-service deployment

Today, on the sandbox environments (Tier 2 through Tier 5) deployed using the self-service deployment option, customers and partners have no way to connect to the Azure SQL database associated with this environment for troubleshooting or validation. Starting with this release you will now be able to request just-in-time access to the AX, MR (Management Reporter), and EDW (entity data warehouse) databases through LCS. On the environment details page you will see two new fields - Reason for access and Details as shown in the image below. After you select the reason to connect to the database, a request to create user specific credentials is submitted. The request is auto-approved and expires after 8 hours. Once approved the connection string and access details will be available on the environment details page. The access granted will be based on the reason that you select. For example, if the reason is AX troubleshooting then you will be granted read-only access to the database. If you select Performance tuning, you will be granted write access.

To connect to the Azure SQL database, you need to whitelist the IP address of the machine that will be used to launch SQL Management Studio. This can be done by adding a new Azure SQL firewall rule by going to the Maintain menu on the environment details page and selecting Enable access. Add the IP address of the machine that will be used to connect to the database and click Confirm. This rule also expires after 8 hours.

After the above step is complete, you can launch the SQL Management studio from the whitelisted machine and use the connection string and access details to connect to the required database.

Health metrics on environments deployed using self-service deployment

With this release of LCS, we have added a new tab to the environment monitoring page called Health Metrics, which shows critical metrics associated with environment, specifically the CPU consumption and Memory available. To access this, go to the environment details page, select the Environment monitoring link and click the Health Metrics tab.

With our latest releases, partners with an Advanced Support for Partner (ASfP) support plan are now required to link the unique ASfP Contract ID/Access ID combination in LCS. For online incidents the default PartnerSource Business Center Account no longer applies.

If you do not know your unique Contract ID/Access ID combination, reach out to your account manager (TAM or SAM).  He or she can create one for you.

To link your Contract ID/Accces ID to your account, complete the following steps:

From within a project, click Support from the main menu, and then click Manage Support plans.  Click Add contract.

Enter your Access ID and your Password or Contract ID, and then click Add contract.

On Monday February 18, 2019, some customers began experiencing failures for package deployment and other maintenance operations, such as database movement and upgrade triggered through Lifecycle Services (LCS) for their Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations environments. We have been actively investigating this issue and have already made a fix that will address some of these failures. We are actively working to resolve the other failures. We will keep this post updated as soon as we have more information.

Symptoms – This may affect the maintain operations, such as apply updates, move database, upgrade, and maintenance mode. You may see increased times to complete and failures due to timeouts. This does not affect usage of the Finance and Operations client.

Mitigation – For sandbox environments, you can try using the Stop the environment and Start the environment options from the environment details page before starting any of the maintain operations noted above. If any operation fails, you can try to "resume" the failed operation from LCS. For production environments, please contact Microsoft Support.

We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve package deployments and other operations. For questions, please contact Microsoft Support.

The legacy user interface in the Business Process Modeler (BPM) is planned to be deprecated by end of April 2019.

The new BPM user interface is the default BPM page, and the legacy BPM interface will not be accessible from LCS after it's deprecated, the link to view the legacy BPM user interface will be removed.

Features that are in the legacy interface but not in the new interface will be enabled before the legacy interface is deprecated. These features include:

• Visio attachment indicator -  If there's a Visio diagram attached to a business process, there will be a Visio icon added as a visual cue.
• Reviewed By and Reviewed At - After a process is marked as reviewed, the reviewer's name will be filled in the Reviewed by field and the reviewed date/time will be filled in the Reviewed At field.
• Export to Microsoft Excel - Exporting processes from a BPM library will be supported from the new BPM user interface. 

These features above are planned to be released by March 4th, 2019.

Recent system updates to the LCS Support flow framework have prevented some questions from displaying for the Incident details steps when a support case is created.

The missing questions are Problem type, Problem area, and related sub-questions. However, this does not prevent users from submitting a support case.

We are actively working to resolve this issue and will update the blog post when this issue has been mitigated with a release.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (March 2019, release 1).

Maintenance mode for sandbox and production environments

With this release of LCS, we are happy to announce the general availability of a self-service action to turn maintenance mode ON/OFF directly from LCS on your sandbox and production environments. For details on how to use this feature, see Maintenance Mode.

Changes to production deployment flow

We have seen many instances where customers need to change their estimate after the production deployment request has been submitted. However, they are unable to do so as the production slot is queued for deployment and activating a new estimate is not allowed. To help unblock this flow, starting with this release, the project owner and environment manager will be able to clear the sign off for the environment even after the environment has been queued for deployment. This will cancel the deployment and enable you to activate a new estimate, if needed to make the relevant changes.

BPM user interface improvements

To support feature parity between the BPM user interface and the legacy user interface before the legacy interface is removed, the following features are enabled in the new BPM experience:

• Visio attachment indicator -  If there's a Visio diagram attached to a business process, there will be a Visio icon added as a visual cue.
  
• Reviewed By and Reviewed At - After a process is marked as reviewed, the reviewer's name will appear in the Reviewed by field and the reviewed date/time appear in the Reviewed At field.
  
• Export to Microsoft Excel - Exporting processes from a BPM library will be supported from the new BPM user interface.
  

We are happy to announce the availability of features that will enable you manage continuous service updates from Microsoft. Following are the different features we  are releasing today. Visit the One Version service updates topic for more details.

Configure Service Updates

This feature allows for the customer to be in control for when service updates will be auto-applied to the sandbox and production environment.  Customers also have the option to choose which sandbox environment for the auto-update to be applied.  This feature is currently available for customers on version 8.1.x and 10.0 to configure the Service Updates in Lifecycle Services.

Customers that are on 8.1.x version and higher will see a new notification in the project's action center with a link to the Update settings page tab under Project settings where you can change the default update settings. 

NOTE:  This feature is currently only available to customers who are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations version 8.1 and later, and who are NOT part of the First Release program.  Microsoft is working to make the feature available to First release customers and customers who use older versions of the product.  For details on how to configure, see Configure Service Updates.

Pause Service Updates

Microsoft is committed to delivering cumulative service updates for our customers, although we know there may be circumstances when you will not be able to take the monthly service update.  We are pleased to announce the Pause capability in Lifecycle Services.  You can pause a maximum of two continuous updates at a time.  For details on how to configure see,  Pause Service Update.

Get notified about Service Updates

Microsoft uses service updates to update your configured sandbox and production environments to the latest version.  Several new notification types have been added with this release:

Email Notification

Notification bar on the environment details page

Upcoming updates schedule to reflect the updates that will be applied to that environment.

For details see, Get Notified About Service Updates.

Service Updates Schedule

After you set the update environment and update cadence, Microsoft generates an update calendar for the next six months to provide you with visibility and predictability of the Service Update.  This calendar shows exactly when the configured sandbox and production environments will be updated.  To view the calendar and learn more see, Configure Service updates.

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS (March 2019, release 2).

Configure your project for continuous service updates

With this release of LCS, you can now configure your project for continuous service updates from Microsoft. Customers and Partners can configure an update cadence for production environments, select an alternate sandbox to be patched prior to the production update, view the update calendar for the next six months, potentially pause getting updates to their environments, and get notified prior to an update all directly through LCS. Continuous service updates is a result of the feedback we’ve received from you over the last couple of months. For details about the features being released, refer to the announcement blog post and the One Version service updates overview documentation.

Self-service upgrade to version 10.0 and update 24 now available

Customers on versions 7.0 - 7.3 can now use self-service upgrade directly to application version 10.0 with platform update 24.  For information on self-service upgrade for your sandbox and production environments, please see the Process for moving to the latest update article.  If you're running application version 8.0 you can use the simplified update process to 10.0.

Self-service upgrade critical hotfixes

With increased use of the self-service upgrade process, we have found several hotfixes to be critical to success for various target versions. For example, if you're upgrading to version 7.3 a list of KBs that have consistently resolved issues with data upgrade, retail components, or performance will display.

The goal is to have this list empty before you start the Data Upgrade step of the process. These KBs need to be installed on your Upgrade-in-progress environment.