D365 F&O One Platform (8.1) Upgrade - April 2019 Release

Are you Ready for D365 F&O’s Upcoming One Platform Upgrade?

Microsoft has recently released Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations version 8.1.1 on October 2018 and has a build number 8.1.170. This version includes Platform Update 21. To know more about what’s new or changed in this version, please refer to: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/fin-and-ops/get-started/whats-new-changed-8-1-1

This is the future of Microsoft strategy around Dynamics ERP. This makes Dynamics 365 truly differentiated Cloud ERP System compare to what is out there in the market today.

I got a chance to attend first 8.1 Upgrade official workshop hosted by Microsoft at their Bellevue, WA campus.  It was a great experience working with Microsoft Team working on the actual upgrade. The 5-day workshop allows us to identify any roadblocks for us to do this major upgrade. Here, we worked on the actual upgrade process following Microsoft’s best practice.

Are you ready? Does it impact us?

We have been hearing about the new 8.1 Upgrade since last few days or months. But really does it impact us? The short answer is, YES if you are already on D365 F&O or planning to upgrade from an earlier version of AX (AX 2012 R2/R3, 2009 etc.).

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       The official deadline is April 2019 to upgrade from earlier of D365 F&O. After that, these versions will be or going to be unsupported in near future.

“This is the last upgrade you would ever do with Microsoft Dynamics 365. No more ‘upgrade’...!”

This 8.1 Upgrade will be the last upgrade as there won’t be any more upgrade after 8.1 that end users or partners would have to do. All future ‘updates’ for Platform and application will be delivered thru cumulative updates on a scheduled basis (i.e. monthly) via a single tile. There will be no granular X++ updates.

Proposed Upgrade Process

Remember the old days doing Upgrade(s)? We had to do planning for days if not months to do even CU upgrade. But with this new upgrade, things are changing a lot.

The standard process is, Microsoft will update the Gold / UAT-Test environment (Microsoft hosted Tier 2) first with the new updates and as a client, we have 15 days to test before it gets applies to PROD environment. You can request to do conditional hold on the PROD update for certain days (decided by Microsoft policies).

·         For the scheduled upgrades for both in TEST & PROD environments, Microsoft would send an email notification. Also, the upgrades can be voluntarily applied earlier than scheduled date thru the LCS process.

·       If there is any critical update (hotfix) needed, then Microsoft may release the update sooner than scheduled one. For example, an update that is needed for a large group of customers.

·       System Downtime: Minimum to none (a few minutes to a couple of hours) decided by the client’s environment specifics. The standard email will be sent before the scheduled update time

The bottom line about Customization:

When the new Dynamics 365 F&O was launched, many clients jumped in and adopted the new version. For any typical ERP system, we usually have some sort of customizations. Prior to 8.1 version, the clients \ partners had options to develop the customized code thru Over layering or an Extensions though Microsoft had always insisted on Extensions as best practice. To know more about Extensions and Over layering, please refer to Link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/dev-itpro/extensibility/customization-overlayering-extensions 

In simple terms, ‘overlayering’ is Inline (customized) code referring to base models. This makes any System upgrade difficult. Hence, Microsoft decided to stop this feature completely and give customer & partner ability to do customization only thru Extensions. So, anyone with having D365 F&O with older versions need to run the Upgrade report to review development compatibility for the upgrade. If any of the code was developed thru over layering, we must convert it to Extension before proceeding thru 8.1 Upgrade.

There are some new features such as Chain of Command (aka CoC) which was introduced with Platform Update 9 and can help the clients with avoiding the over layering. To know more about CoC, please refer : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/dev-itpro/extensibility/method-wrapping-coc

Customizations / Extension is the most critical aspect of the 8.1 Upgrade. If you have a lot of customizations done as over layering plan this part of the process as a major effort of your overall upgrade process. Just like any enterprise level company, Microsoft has its own ways of performing rigorous testing before any new update releases. Since Microsoft will not do any changes to its base code, any future system updates shouldn’t affect the existing customizations.

To summarize my point about the customizations, no one can or would have any Overlayering code in the new One Platform environment.