Standard migration assessment

Article
04/20/2022

Start your journey to the cloud. A migration assessment is the first step to help you understand the value of cloud migration and how to get there. This assessment is delivered virtually, typically requiring 4 to 8 hours of a customer’s time.

The migration assessment is available worldwide for qualified users of Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM.

📄 Download handouts for the Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM standard migration assessment.

Objectives

A migration assessment is the first step on your cloud journey. It will help you to:

Understand the benefits of moving from an older, on-premises solution to the cloud.
Identify business objectives and tie those into the functionality of Dynamics 365.
Learn how to optimize the migration process with a focus on reducing effort and costs.
Determine your next steps toward cloud transformation.

Content and deliverables

Your upgrade assessment report will include:

A review of the state of the current solution.
A preliminary run of code through an upgrade tool or migration approach.
Assessment and joint review of upgrade tool results.
High-level estimation ranges for a migration project.
Q&A time for your questions around Dynamics 365 upgrade methodology.

Assessment workshop main components

1. Functional and business assessment

Customer estimated time commitment: two to three hours.

This component examines your current business processes and assesses how you might be able to benefit from new capabilities and enhancements by moving to the cloud. This assessment includes:

High-level business process and functional review: Understand your current business processes that are being managed in your on-premises version and map that to the capabilities of Dynamics 365.
Customization, ISV, and interface assessment: High-level assessment of customizations and ISV-implemented solutions in your current environment. The primary goal of this step is to assess the expected effort and identify the business dependencies involved when migrating to Dynamics 365.
Dynamics 365 system review: Get a summary and high-level roadmap of new Dynamics 365 functionality.

2. Technical assessment and tools

Customer estimated time commitment: about one hour.

To initiate the technical assessment, you simply permit our migration assessor on-premises system access to help them identify your current technical architecture. This information will then be used to develop an analysis of your current code and determine how it can best be leveraged in Dynamics 365. Microsoft will not access—nor should you provide access to—personally identifiable information (PII) that is housed within your current on-premises solution.

Examples from Dynamics AX 2012 technical assessment reports

Technical assessment reports.

Migration summary and task list report

Contains code analysis summary, including customization information and a task list report. The task represents rough estimates of the development effort.

Migration summary report.

3. High-level migration summary

Customer estimated time commitment: one to two hours.

The standard migration assessment will reveal options based on time, effort, and resources needed to migrate from on-premises to Dynamics 365. The assessment and migration report includes:

Review of both the functional and technical assessment review.
How to best handle existing customizations.
Recommended upgrade approach.
Next steps in the migration journey.

Timeline and expected resource engagement

While the assessment will be performed over the course of two days, your total time commitment should fall between four and eight hours. See below for further details of what is expected from start to finish.

Timeline for assessment.

Migration assessment components

Standard migration assessment.