Plan the release, change, and risk management processes
Microsoft releases regular updates to finance and operations apps. These releases come in Platform and Application releases. They can include updates to new functionality, bug fixes, or general system performance improvements.
Releases are classified as upgrades and updates. Upgrades include moving from one official release to the next release. For instance, an upgrade would be from 7.1 to 7.3. An upgrade involves a code and data upgrade. An update applies a binary package to an environment. This process has lower downtime and does not include a data upgrade.
Before deploying any of the releases in your environment, consider reading the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform Release Plans to discover what new updates are being added. This will give you an idea of what areas will be affected.
You will need to know which version that you want to select for upgrade. Because Microsoft removes the oldest version of the software when a new version is released, we recommend that you always move to the latest version available. This will give you two months to upgrade your environments before that release is no longer available. For example, if you start upgrading your environments to version x instead of the latest version x.2, and Microsoft releases x.3 before you can upgrade your production environment, version x will no longer be available for you to upgrade your production environment.
You might run into compatibility issues if the release extends an enumeration. The compiler will check if there are any custom enumerations that are unsafe because of the integer value of a non-extensible enumeration. This will need to be modified to compile. Your model should reference top-level modules and sub modules. A Microsoft change can add a new resource in an unreferenced sub module. This can cause errors during the compile. Some methods or objects might also be selected as obsolete, meaning that the object will be fully deprecated eventually. If any customized code is selected for deprecation, it should be investigated so that the expected code path can be fixed. Performing code reviews can help catch any issues with customized code early on.
Identify risk
Upgrades and updates to the system can bring a lot of change. It is important to identify risk groups to identify specific risks to a company. A business process owner should be selected to hold responsibility for a specific risk. Some risks might include downtime to upgrade the system, availability of resources to test, or additional development. Applying some risk management skills might help reduce these risks:
- Identify any potential threats.
- Assess what areas are vulnerable to those threats.
- Determine the likelihood, or risk, of areas that are being affected.
- Identify ways to reduce the risk.
- Prioritize the risk reduction plans.
Using the release plans that Microsoft provides can help determine what areas in finance and operations apps are changing and what changes are being made. To reduce the risk of a new release plan, you should have available resources to test the areas that are changing. Microsoft also has a Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT) to automate tests based on task recordings.