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In Azure DevOps

Add and build .NET projects to your Dynamics 365 pipeline

5 Mins Read

I bet that most of us have had to develop some .NET class library to solve something in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. You create a C# project, build it, and add the DLL as a reference in your FnO project. Don’t do that anymore! You can add the .NET project to source control, build it in your pipeline, and the DLL gets added to the deployable package!

I’ve been trying this during the last days after a conversation on Yammer, and while I’ve managed to build .NET and X++ code in the same pipeline, I’ve found some issues or limitations.

If you want to know more about builds, releases, and the Dev ALM of Dynamics 365 you can read my full guide on MSDyn365 & Azure DevOps ALM.

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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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In Azure

Azure functions & Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

5 Mins Read

This is another post about solving Dynamics 365 problems using external tools. However I’m starting to think as everything Azure-related as not external at all. In this case I’ll show different scenarios using Azure functions with Dynamics 365.

I wrote this almost three weeks ago and it was intended as a two-part post but after seeing this wonderful blog post about Azure Functions from Fabio Filardi I don’t know what else could I add to it and will probably leave it here. Go check it!

In this post we’ll see what Azure Functions are and how to create one locally and deploy it to Azure.

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Azure hosted build pipeline
In Azure DevOps

Azure hosted build for Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM

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.

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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 Azure

Secure your Azure Pipelines with Azure Key Vault

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!

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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 Azure DevOps

DevOps ALM automation in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations

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.

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