Cloud implementation - analysis
This unit is a summary of the steps in the analysis step of a cloud implementation of finance and operations apps.
Complete Lifecycle Services project configuration
Before you begin, you need to complete the required configuration for Lifecycle Services to ensure the best experience.
This includes configuring two key areas: SharePoint and Azure DevOps (formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), and Team Foundation Studio (TFS)). You will get the most out of Lifecycle Services if you have your project configured with Azure DevOps.
Lifecycle Services uses Azure DevOps for iteration management, work item tracking, upgrade, developer experience, and many other features. You need to select the Setup Visual Studio Team Services button to configure Azure DevOps to your Lifecycle Services project.
Invite your project team
After your project is configured, you need to invite your colleagues and other project team members to join the project. This may include partners or Microsoft team members. You must use Project user management in Lifecycle Services to invite both internal and external project teams.
Deploy demo environment
Deploying a demo environment for users helps everyone to get familiar with finance and operations apps and use for documenting standard business processes. By using a cloud-hosted environment, you can deploy a demo environment, assuming that you have proper security rights both for Lifecycle Services and your Azure portal to be able to enable Azure Resource Manager for deployment.
Finance and operations apps standard cloud offering
The standard cloud offer includes two environments:
Tier-2 environment: Standard Acceptance Testing – One Standard Acceptance Testing (UAT) instance is provided for the duration of the subscription. This instance is a non-production multi-box instance that customers can use for UAT, integration testing, and training. Additional sandbox/staging instances can be purchased separately as an optional add-on.
Production environment– One production instance is provided per tenant. The production multi-box instance includes disaster recovery and high availability. It will be provisioned when the implementation approaches the operate phase, after the required activities in the Lifecycle Services methodology and a successful go-live assessment are completed. Additionally, the following file storage and database storage are included:
- File storage - Every customer receives 100 GB of file/Azure blob cloud storage for files and binary data. Additional file/blob storage can be purchased.
- Database storage - Every finance and operations apps subscription includes 10 GB of Azure SQL Database storage per customer at no additional charge. Additional storage capacity is provided at no charge as an organization increases the number of user and device service licenses. For more information about the various environments and types of storage, download the latest “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide” from Dynamics 365 pricing.
Additional environments can be purchased as add-ons, or they can be deployed as cloud-hosted environments. For more information about environments, see Environment planning.
Publish plan and milestone dates
After analysis and fit/gap exercises, you should refine your project plan and have more qualified milestone dates. It’s best to update Lifecycle Services to ensure that all parties are working off the same timeline. You can set the milestones by selecting on the milestone icon (diamond) in methodology and then selecting on editing icon (pen) for the methodology milestone dates.
Capture business processes and requirements
Detailed business process analysis workshops define the business processes to be implemented in the future and identify where specific functionality of the new system will be used. At the same time, the workshops will identify gaps in functionality that may need to be resolved by a workaround, change in business practice, or modification of the system.
Typically, there would be a workshop run for each business area (for example, Accounts payable, Purchasing, Sales, and Production). Each workshop would involve key users from the customer’s business. It would be facilitated by a functional consultant and ideally supported by someone taking notes. The selection of the key users would depend on the complexity of the business processes.
The key users are responsible for presenting the results of the workshop to their own company. Depending on the size of the company, this might involve a presentation to the other teams involved on the project, or it could involve the key users going back to their own business units and presenting the details to their key people.
Remember to use Task recorder to capture out-of-the-box features, and by comparing it with gathered business requirement from your customer, identify the gaps. For more information about the Task recorder, see Create documentation or training by using task recordings page.
Perform fit/gap analysis
After you have captured the business processes and requirements, a thorough analysis of each requirement is required to assess if it can be met by the standard product.
Complete subscription estimator
Complete the subscription estimate in Lifecycle Services and mark one of the subscriptions estimates as active. Note that your active subscription estimate must match the subscription that your organization purchased.
Download templates
Download the available templates for your data configuration. This will help start the process of completing setup required for your base set up and configuration. You will use the Asset library to download the templates.
Sign off requirements and business processes
After you have captured the business process, requirements, fits, and gaps, review them with the customer.
When the customer signs off on the business process, requirements, fits and gaps you can mark this task as complete. Use the Business process modeler to record and manage gaps and firm the future business processes.