Ensure relieble Releases on Dynamics 365 FinOps

As Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operation Release 10.0.29 is General available all Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations customer can apply self-update for their environments from last week on and auto-updates will be scheduled to start from end of September.

I often see that customer don’t care about all the enhancements that are included in each release, and then I will be asked what I would recommend to enable in feature management workspace, and I tell them: “It’s up to you” and we start to discuss about the release process. Before we go to a generic task list it would make sense to have an alignment with process owner and key users what is a realistic period for the Team to apply Release updates. Typically it needs to be less than three month because of end of service is three month after GA date, customer often decide to use a two- or three-month cycle to keep the effort reasonable.

For every update we should do some validation steps to impove existing process, establish a Facilitation for the user and avoid unexpected process behavior and user experience.

As many features are added, defaulted and often set to mandatory we should be aware of opportunities and risks of every feature enhancement. And because of features often become mandatory it is more important to know how the business process and even the user experience will be affected.

So my recommendation for Product- and Process-Owner, key Users, SysAdmins and Project Manager is to follow this guideline (as a sample for Release 10.0.29):

• Always watch the release schedule for updates and deadlines Service update availability – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn
• Review Release details for improvements and Bug fixes (LCS) which are requested to be fixed, or affected to the configured business processes in your environments, e.g. for 10.0.29 functional What’s new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance 10.0.29 (October 2022) – Finance as well as Platform changes Platform updates for version 10.0.29 of finance and operations apps (October 2022) – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn. Evaluate for yourself – or even for better understanding together with your Dynamics Partner – which features are usefull and could improve or concern your business pcocesses and user experience
• Take that list for further evaluation and if improvements are achievable take it to your change mangement board and your and Release Test Plan
• Run through the Section of functional Features that status has changed What’s new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance 10.0.29 (October 2022) – Finance | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn. In particular take care on “mandatory” and “on by default” features because thess can affect your environment as they could have been disabled before the release update.
• Run also through the Section of Platform Features that status has changed to be turned on What’s new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance 10.0.29 (October 2022) – Finance | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn
• Also review the list of depreciated and removed features from application What’s new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance 10.0.29 (October 2022) – Finance | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn and also from the application platform Removed or deprecated platform features – Finance & Operations | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Learn
• Take all changes that could affect your business process and users experience to your Test plan to verify your processes works well and also prepare user for upcoming changes on the UI – or even prepare some appliable configurations regarding User Interface or User workspaces

Keep your eyes open is not enough, take all release documentation under observation which can be seen much earlier for all releases to prepare your Team and processes for upcoming changes. For better and sustainable business processes without undisered surprises.