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In Azure DevOps

Azure hosted build for Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM

1 May, 2020 10 Mins Read

Behold #XppGroupies! The day we’ve been waiting for has come! The Azure-hosted builds are in public preview with PU35!! We can now stop asking Joris when will this be available because it already is! Check the docs!

I’ve been able to write this because I’ve been testing it for a few months with access to the private preview. And of course thanks to Joris for inviting us to the preview!

What does this mean? We no longer need a VM to run the build pipelines! Nah, we still need it! If you’re running tests or synchronizing the DB as a part of your build pipeline you still need the VM. But we can move CI builds to the Azure-hosted agent!

You can also read my full guide on MSDyn365FO & Azure DevOps ALM.

Remember this is a public preview. If you want to join the preview you first need to be part of the Dynamics 365 Insider Program where you can join the “Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Insider Community“. Once invited you should see a new LCS project called PEAP Assets, and inside its Asset Library, you’ll find the nugets in the Nuget package section.

In Azure DevOps

LCS DB API: automating Prod to Dev DB copies

21 April, 2020 6 Mins Read

The new LCS DB API endpoint to create a database export has been published! With it we now have a way of automating and scheduling a database refresh from your Dynamics 365 FnO production environment to a developer or Tier 1 VM.

You can learn more about the LCS DB REST API by reading these posts I wrote some time ago. You might want to read them because I’m skipping some steps which are already explained there:

You can also read the full guide on MSDyn365FO & Azure DevOps ALM.

And remember: this is currently in private preview. If you want to join the preview you first need to be part of the Dynamics 365 Insider Program where you can join the “Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Insider Community“. Once invited to the Yammer organization you can ask to join the “Self-Service Database Movement / DataALM” group where you’ll get the information to add yourself to the preview and enable it on LCS.

In Azure

Secure your Azure Pipelines with Azure Key Vault

11 February, 2020 4 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps.

After the update of my last post about calling the LCS API from Azure DevOps Pipelines I thought that creating a pipeline with a password in plain sight was not very secure. How could we add extra security to a pipeline? Once again we can turn to an Azure tool to help us, the Azure Key Vault.

Azure Key Vault

A Key Vault is a service that allows us to safely store certificates or secrets and later use them in our applications and services. And like many other Azure services it has a cost but it’s really low and, for a normal use, you will be billed like a cent or none a month. Don’t be stingy with security!

In Azure

Calling the LCS Database Movement API in your Azure DevOps pipeline

28 January, 2020 5 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps.

I talked about the LCS Database Movement API in a post not long ago, and in this one I’ll show how to call the API using PowerShell from your Azure DevOps Pipelines.

What for?

Basically, automation. Right now the API only allows the refresh from one Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations environment to another, so the idea is having fresh data from production in our UAT environments daily. I don’t know which new operations the API will support in the future but another idea could be adding the DB export operation (creating a bacpac) to the pipeline and having a copy of prod ready to be restored in a Dev environment.

In Azure DevOps

DevOps ALM automation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

29 October, 2019 5 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps.

I’ve already written some posts about development Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in the past:

The possibility of doing real CI/CD is one of my favorite MSDyn365FO things, going from “What’s source control?” to “Mandatory source control or die” has been a blessing. I’ll never get tired of saying this.

In Azure

Set up the new Azure DevOps tasks for Packaging and Model Versioning

5 September, 2019 3 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps.

During this past night (at least it was night for me :P) the new tasks for Azure DevOps to deploy the packages and update model versions have been published:

The official @AzureDevOps task to deploy @MSFTDynamics365 F&O customizations is now added to our marketplace extension! Hot off the press! https://t.co/ExXJ3CKbUW https://t.co/q4qOScg6vv #FinOpsDevOps

— Joris de Gruyter (@jorisdg) May 1, 2019

There’s an announcement in the Community blogs too with extended details on setting it up. Let´s see the new tasks and how to set them up.

In Azure DevOps

Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps (part II)

23 February, 2019 7 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps. In the first part of this post I wrote about Azure DevOps value and how to set it up in MSDyn365FO. I want to start this second part with a little rant. As I said in the first part, those who have been working with AX for several years were used to not using version-control systems. MSDyn365FO has…

In Azure DevOps

Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps (part I)

17 February, 2019 3 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps. One of the major changes we got with Dynamics 365 has been the mandatory use of a source control system. In older versions, we had MorphX VCS for AX 2009 and the option to use TFS in AX 2009 and AX 2012, but it wasn’t mandatory. Actually, always from my experience, I think most of the projects used no…

In Azure DevOps

Unresponsive builds in Azure DevOps

15 February, 2019 2 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps. It is possible that after queuing a new build, the job won’t start. It won’t be possible to cancel it either, and nothing will change after rebooting the build server VM. This can be an unusual case but it’s not something impossible. The build server Even though the build machine is exactly as a developer box it really…

In Azure DevOps

Setting up Release Pipeline in Azure DevOps for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

13 February, 2019 4 Mins Read

You can read my complete guide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations and Azure DevOps. Let’s go… Some weeks ago, the release pipeline extension for #MSDyn365FO was published in Azure DevOps Marketplace, taking us closer to the continuous integration scenario. While we wait for the official documentation we can check the notes on the announcement, and I’ve written a step by step guide to set it up on our projects. To configure the…