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Servicing, supporting and

maintaining Dynamics 365

Finance and Operations apps

Production instances

Davy Vliegen

Christopher Lim

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Dynamics 365 Implementation Guide

Collective experience gained through

thousands of Dynamics 365 implementations

General

guidance

Product

guidance

Checklists

Case

studies

Recommended

deliverables

Conceptual

graphic

support

Highlights

References to

other guidanceGuide

Experience

Available at: https://aka.ms/d365implementationguide

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Agenda Servicing

Supporting

Maintaining

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Agenda Servicing

Supporting

Maintaining

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Learn More• Service activity responsibilities

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Microsoft’s commitment is to build scalable platform and services

Processes and operations

Users

Servers Database

Analytics and reporting

Integration

Azure infrastructure

Standard solution

Customizations Data

DeviceIndependent

Vendor Software (ISV)

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Building blocks added during implementation

Processes and operations

Users

Servers Database

Analytics and reporting

Integration

Azure infrastructure

Standard solution

Customizations Data

DeviceIndependent

Vendor Software (ISV)

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Onboard

Implement

Monitor

Service

Learn More• Lifecycle Services • Lifecycle Services Resources

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Learn More• Administer Microsoft Power Platform • Environments overview

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Customer / Partner

Dynamics

Service

Engineering

(DSE)

Microsoft

Support

* Only appliable for Lifecycle Services (LCS) and not for Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC)

Learn More• TechTalk: D365 Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) and Operations

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➢ Environment deployment

➢ Package application

➢ Database movement operations

▪ Database refresh

▪ Point-in-time restore

▪ Sandbox to Production (prior to go-live)

➢ Turn maintenance mode on/off

➢ Pause upcoming automatic deployment of a service update

➢ Restarting services on non-production environments

➢ Azure SQL actions

Learn More• Database movement operations • Automatically create a service request • Service request types and SLAs

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➢ Database movement operations

▪ If not available as self-service action

➢ Other request:

▪ Production Tenant move

▪ Power BI Embedded activation

Learn More• Database movement operations • Create a service request on demand

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➢ Flag a regression in a service update and ask for an exception opt-out

➢ Restore a production database post go-live

➢ Performance related requests (for tasks not possible through self-service actions)

➢ Activate a new subscription estimate post Go-Live or after requesting production environment

➢ …

Learn More• Subscription estimator in Lifecycle Services (LCS)• Submit an issue to Microsoft support

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Service Level AgreementMicrosoft is committed to an availability of

99.9% per month of the service

▪ Databases are protected by automatic back-ups

▪ Production instances backups are retained for 28 days

▪ Sandbox (Tier 2+) backups are retained for 7 days

▪ Backups do not leave LCS Project

Learn More• Data backup and retention • Database movement operations

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• Dual-write is 1:1 link between Finance and Operations & Dataverse environment

• Database backup & restore operations as well as Data upgrades do not clean up Dual-write

configurations

o Example: Dual-write is enabled between Finance and Operations & Dataverse PROD environments,

you want to back-up Finance and Operations PROD environment and restore it to Sandbox (UAT)

environment

o It’s recommended to move both Finance and Operations & Dataverse databases from one linked environment (i.e., PROD) to

another environment (i.e., Sandbox)

o Once you restore the database from PROD to Sandbox in Finance and Operations, you need to follow few steps in Sandbox:

o Stop all Dual-write table maps

o Unlink the Dual-write connection

o Delete the data from tables e.g. DualWriteProjectConfiguration, DualWriteFieldConfiguration,

BusinessEventsDefinition

o Once you restore the database from PROD to Sandbox in Dataverse, you need to follow few steps in Sandbox:

o Delete the data from the Dual Write Runtime Configurations table on Dataverse.

o Relink the environment pointing to Sandbox (UAT)

o Enable Dual-write entity maps

Learn More

• Unlink and relink dual-write environments

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Production environments are protected through High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) features

Responsibilities for Disaster RecoveryBusiness continuity with high availability and disaster recovery

MicrosoftCustomer

Implementation Partner

Create secondary site in a

functional manner for the

Customer

N/A

Learn More• Business continuity and disaster recovery • Service description

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• Only Microsoft 365 Administrators have access

• View the service health status

• View recent incidents

Learn More• Service Health Dashboard • How to Check Service Health

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Learn More• Download updates from Lifecycle Services (LCS) • Apply updates to cloud environments • Feature management overview

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8 Updates /Year Min 2

Pause Up to 3Apply latest

update for UAT

Pause for Go-Live

Build RSATs

Critical Quality Updates

Quality Updates are Cumulative

Learn More

• Target Service Update Schedule • TechTalk: Continuous Updates • One Version service updates FAQ

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Learn More

• Configure service updates through LCS • LCS Notifications

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Learn More• Commerce component versioning requirements • Auto Update Commerce Scale Unit (cloud)

• Applying updates and extensions to

cloud scale unit follows the same

principle as deployments to back-office.

• Separating the servicing of the

components provides flexibility to find

downtime windows for stores and back-

office.

• Using multiple cloud scale units and

having few pilot stores allocated to one

of them enables a safe-deployment

approach.

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• For example, deploying code package or auto updates to Finance & Operations

• If Dual-write is enabled, take proactive actions to prevent user impact

• Dual-write provides capability to setup ‘Alert notification’ and take ‘Automated action’

Alert notification:

o Setup alert notification to send it via email

o Various types of alerts

o Especially useful for unplanned maintenance to notify ‘admin’ and take automated action

Automated action:

o To ensure business continuity during such maintenance window, you can pause table maps manually or automatically via alert

rules.

o It’s recommended to setup automated alert rule to pause Dual-write entity maps.

o This lets users continue to do their work and upserts records while the app is being recovered from maintenance.

o When you Pause a table map that is in the Running state, all records created or updated are queued until you resume the

table map. You have ability to view such queued records.

o You should Resume the Dual-write entity maps after maintenance, Resume is manual action. Pause must be done for the

minimum possible period. You should Resume Dual-write entity maps as soon as system is back online to reduce number of

Queued records for processing.

Learn More• Error management and alert notifications

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• Cadence of updates varies between microservices based on the stage of

the microservice (private/public preview, GA, etc.) and the amount of active

feature work or bug-fixing.

• Typically, microservices will release on a weekly cadence, but that

cadence can be expedited or extended based on numerous situations.

• Microservice update information is not currently surfaced in LCS or via

release notes. Notable changes that impact the customer experience will be

communicated via release notes and broader communications.

• When microservices are released to production, they are available on both

Sandbox and Production environments at the same time.

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DO Read the communication from LCS

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Service Availability 99.9%

Backup Retention 28 Days *

Service Request Execution <8 Hours

Environment Deployment <48 Hours

FnO Service Update Downtime 3 Hours

FnO Service Update Frequency Monthly **

Learn More• One Version service updates FAQ• Service description

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DO

Learn More

• Regression Suite Automation Tool

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Agenda Servicing

Supporting

Maintaining

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Partner

First Line of Support

Functional

Technical

Implementation

Methodology

Support Content

LearnTask Guides DocsLCS TechTalks CommunityTeam Blogs

Microsoft Support Plans

Subscription

Professional

Direct

Unified Support

Learn More• Get support for finance and operations apps or Lifecycle Services (LCS)

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Support plans

Learn More• Choose the right support plan for your needs

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Important issue with minimum impact on productivity

Sensitive issue and important for productivity. No immediate interruption of work

System interruption, network, server, application.

Production stopped and significant impact on productivity

Production down scenarios

Make sure to inform your Customer Success Account Manager for awareness (in case of Unified Support Plan)

DO Select the right severity

for your support requests

Learn More• Report a production outage - Finance & Operations• Submit an issue to Microsoft support

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Release

Main

Dev C

Dev B

Build 1*

Build 2*

Sandbox 1(Initial Test)

Sandbox 4(Acceptance Test)

Dev A

Release 1 cutoff Hotfix / Binary

Regular task

Check LCS

Release 2 Build

Hotfix Build

Tier 2+

Production

Sandbox 2(Acceptance Test)

Sandbox 3(Initial Test)

Structure of test

requirements should

correspond to testing

process

Learn More• TechTalk: Development ALM • Setting up Development Branches • Branching, Builds, and Environments

* optional

• Build automation that uses Microsoft-hosted agents and Azure Pipelines

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Cold path

Incident

declared

Incident mitigated

Actors Processes Tools

Hot path

Risk mitigated

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Incident

declared

Pre-investigation

Incident declared / Triage

Solution finding

Incident

mitigated

Caption:

Day 0 Day 1 Day 1 Day 1 Day 2 Day 2 Day 3 Day 3

Incident mitigated

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Incident

declared

Incident

mitigated

Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Day 2 Day 3 Day 5 Day 7

Day 7Day 9Day 11Day 12

Pre-investigation

Incident declared / Triage

Solution finding

Caption:

Incident mitigated

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Quality input – quality investigation:

If high-severity:

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DO

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Agenda Servicing

Supporting

Maintaining

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Learn More

• Performance troubleshooting using tools in LCS• Monitoring and diagnostics tools in Lifecycle Services (LCS)

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Learn More

Dataverse analytics• Part of PPAC

• Monitor adoption and

use

• Manage storage and

performance

• Troubleshoot effectively

• …

• Microsoft Dataverse analytics

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Learn More

Dataverse• When a client application makes extraordinarily demanding requests, the Dataverse

follows the common pattern for online services. We return an error indicating that too

many requests have been made.

• Default service protection API limits enforced per web server are published on Docs

Finance and Operations apps• Priority-based throttling for OData and custom service requests, introduces service

protection settings that prevent the over-utilization of resources to preserve the system's

responsiveness and ensure consistent availability and performance for environments

running Finance and Operations apps.

• Dataverse Service protection API limits • Priority-based throttling FAQ• Priority-based throttling

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DO Regularly execute Cleanup routines

Learn More• Cleanup routines in Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

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Learn More• Cleanup routines in Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

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Learn More

Microsoft Dataverse data archival• Customers will be able to define criteria by selecting a root table and schedule archival of

the same. The system will automatically pick the related child tables. At the scheduled

time, the process will then copy data to a new storage and delete the copied data from

the primary Microsoft Dataverse storage.

• The first release will support BYOL - bring your own Azure Data Lake. A dashboard will

provide the capability to manage the lifecycle of the archival operations.

• Plan is to expand the scope with more scenarios gradually.

Finance and Operations apps• Archive inventory transactions

• Archive credit card transaction data

• Finance and Supply Chain scenarios area planned

• Microsoft Dataverse data archival • Archive credit card transaction data• Archive inventory transactions

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Learn More• Optimization advisor overview - Finance & Operations

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Go

-Liv

e

DO Consider performance also after Go-Live

Go

-Liv

e

Learn More• TechTalk: Performance Testing Approach • Performance SDK • Multi-user testing by using Perf SDK

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Learn More• Planned maintenance window FAQ

Cloud Infrastructure Update Frequency

Critical Security Update Notification 5 Business Days

Critical Security Update Downtime 3 Hours

Critical Security Update Frequency As Needed

Cloud Infrastructure Update Notification 5 Business Days

Cloud Infrastructure Update Downtime 3 Hours

Monthly

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Learn More• Near-zero-downtime maintenance window • Priority-based batch scheduling

Interactive usage

• Users connected to the environment may experience

a brief (up to 60 seconds) disconnect

• On recovery, users may experience one of the

following

• Session recovers gracefully and the user either lands on the

form they were working on or is redirected to the

root/workspace/home page with the info log message

"Something went wrong. But we were able to recover your

session."

• Session recovery fails and user working on a details page is

redirected to the root/workspace/home page with the info

log message

"Something went wrong, and we were unable to recover your

session. You've been redirected."

Batch service

• Batch service can be unavailable for up to 25 minutes.

The following activities will occur:

• Any executing batch jobs will be terminated

• Jobs that were terminated will be automatically restarted

when the batch service recovers. Set the maximum number

of retries to zero for any jobs that should not be restarted

automatically

• Important: We are working to reduce the downtime

for batch service to be few minutes. This will require

customers to adopt priority-based scheduling of

batch jobs.

• Enable automatic retries on batch jobs

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DO Read the communication from LCS

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DO

Learn More

• Monitoring and diagnostics tools in Lifecycle Services (LCS)

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Q&A

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