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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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Update your VMs using pipelines and d365fo.tools
In Azure DevOps

Update VMs using pipelines and d365fo.tools

6 Mins Read

Now that Microsoft will also update additional Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Sandbox environments, partners and customers will only need to take care of updating cloud-hosted environments, as we’ve always done.

I’m sure each team manages this differently, maybe leaving it to each developer to update their VM, or there’s someone in the customer or partner side that will do it. That’s in the best cases, maybe nobody is updating the developer machines…

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.

Today, I’m bringing you a PowerShell script that you can run in a pipeline that will automatically update all your developer virtual machines!

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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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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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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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