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LCS

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Azure hosted build
In Azure DevOps

New Azure DevOps release tasks: MSAL authentication and ADAL deprecation

3 Mins Read

There’s a new version and a new task for our release pipelines that use the Azure-hosted agents. These changes have been introduced recently to support the new MSAL authentication libraries for the LCS service connection used to upload and deploy the deployable packages.

The current service connections use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Authentication Library (ADAL), and support for ADAL will end in June 2022.

This means that if we don’t update the Asset Upload and Asset Deployment to their new versions (1.* and 2.* respectively) the release pipelines could stop working after 30th June 2022.

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Tier 1 VM Gone
In Azure

Tier 1 Microsoft managed VMs will be removed

4 Mins Read

If you receive the LCS email notifications for your projects you already know this: all Tier 1 virtual machines from Microsoft’s subscription will be gone as early as 1 December! This is what the emails say: As communicated previously, Microsoft is removing the use of Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to access environments managed by Microsoft. As RDP access is required for development, going forward customers will be required to develop using a Cloud Hosted Environment or…

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In Azure DevOps

Apply a DP using release pipelines in self-service environments

2 Mins Read

After waiting for it for a long time it’s here! If any of your customers has self-service sandbox environments you’ve been doing this by hand. We’ve been on self-service for over a year and a half with a customer, since the private preview, and we’ve REALLY missed this feature in Azure DevOps.

All the documentation is available in the marketplace page for the tools.

You can read my complete guide on Dynamics 365 and Azure DevOps here.

If you want to learn more about self-service environments you can read these posts:

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auto
In Azure DevOps

LCS DB API: automating Prod to Dev DB copies

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.

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In LCS

A warning about Self-service environments: update carefully

3 Mins Read

It looks like the time has finally come and all new LCS projects will have self-service Tier 2+ environments. If you want to know a bit more about them, I wrote this post about service fabric/self-service environments in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

The last two projects I’ve started are on self-service and we’ve had a customer migrated to it. So it’s about time I warn you about one scary thing…

Self-service !

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In Azure

Calling the LCS Database Movement API in your Azure DevOps pipeline

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.

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In LCS

LCS Database movement REST API

5 Mins Read

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

Since last October we’ve been able to try the preview of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Database Movement API which allows us to list and download DB backups and start DB refreshes using a REST API.

If you want to join the preview you first need to be part of the MSDyn365FO 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.

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In Azure

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

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:

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.

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In LCS

Self-service deployments: the future is here

4 Mins Read

Right now Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations has an old style monolithic architecture, even it’s now in Azure’s cloud, what we really have is a single (or multiple for Tier 2+ environments) VM that runs everything: the AOS/IIS, Azure SQL Server, the Batch service, MR, etc. Exactly the same as AX 2009/2012. This is going to change in the coming months with the self-service deployments. We’ll move from the monolithic architecture to microservices…

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