Dynamics 365 Upgrades
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Upgrades brings together Microsoft’s well-established Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions into a single product offering. It also offers an extremely flexible licensing structure that will allow businesses to deliver just the functionality required for different teams and individuals across the business.
Why Upgrade?
You are on an older version
You may need to upgrade as your current version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM may be ending mainstream support. We will still support your and your Business Applications, but Microsoft or your 3rd party add-ons may be ending their support.
New application designs
The methodologies and tools from earlier versions of Dynamics CRM are now obsolete and were updated and replaced in 2019 with Microsoft Power Apps to support a unified experience for your users on any devices.
Improve Your Bottom Line
When On Premise, you need to pay for expensive IT support and to possibly re-train your staff. The Cloud makes it simple.
Automatic Upgrades
Once you’re in the Cloud, all further updates will be automatically completed. The applications upgrades every six months. So, you don’t have to worry about missing out on Dynamics 365’s advancements!
You want a Cloud-hosted CRM
You may want a new cloud productivity functions available in the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics 365. The new Dynamics 365 cloud platform and its STRONG integration with Outlook and Office 365 will be of interest to you.
New AI, features and functions
Microsoft Power Automate and Power App are used to create smother workflow automation replacing daily and weekly manual tasks with smart CRM based apps, add-ons and 'bots' to support increased end-user productivity.
Data Security
Microsoft’s collective knowledge and resources protect you and your data. No one can match the level of security the Microsoft Cloud will offer.
Microsoft’s Approach to Upgrades
Microsoft will deliver two major updates each year – in April (wave 1) and October (wave 2), as well as ongoing, regular minor updates for bug fixes and performance improvements in the background. To help online customers prepare for the two major upgrades each year, Microsoft have announced new milestones and early visibility resources, which will be available to customers before the general availability of each major release. Before a major release, customers will be able to:
- Download the detailed release plan (previously known as ‘release notes’ about 2-3 months prior to release)
- Enable a Preview for the update to test new features in a non-production environment (also 2-3 months prior to release)
- Schedule the date and time of the upgrades when ready (allowing you to schedule out of hours or at the most suitable time for your organisation), or Automatically be updated to the latest version (Microsoft will auto-schedule this).
Some changes will be automatically applied for all users, while others will be on a ‘opt-in’ basis where administrators need to enable the new functionality.
Upgrade Process
The five-stage upgrade path is a structured upgrade path to support our clients. These form a continuous solution framework, based on common principles that we follow from the start of any client engagement, Microsoft D365 implementation and throughout the Life Cycle of the support services agreement. Our team keeps any possible business disruption to a minimum and supports the cultural transformation needed to make any upgrades a success. From analysis to project implementation to support services, we follow a mature, well thought-out life-cycle that doesn’t end once the solution is implemented.
Discovery
Assessing the scope of existing solutions to determine if upgrading is right for the business.
Analysis
A deep dive into technical elements to determine the cost of upgrading.
Construction
Building foundations to enable seamless upgrade.
Transition
Seamless upgrade to Dynamics 365 using the depth of our expertise and Microsoft tools.
Operations
Providing ongoing support and maximizing Return On Investment.
Best practices and advice
Check you have the right environments set up: Best practices for Dynamics 365 (and development in general) are to have four environments: production, UAT, Test and Development. This keeps development far away from your live environment so that no work breaks you live system.
Download the release plan when they become available: This will be about 2-3 months prior to each release. Reading these will give you a good idea of what the next release includes and can give you a sense of scale and the changes being made, which you can evaluate against your system.
Give yourself enough time to test: The most time-consuming task is testing the updates, so the earlier that you set up the preview the longer you have to test. If anything is causing an issue, then you will have time to diagnose and fix this.
Review customisations, integration and third-party solutions: Now could also be a good time to review what customisations, integrations and third-party solutions you have in place to make sure that they are supported; anything unsupported is likely to break during an upgrade.
Evaluate new features against your requirements regularly: The updates are done to bring new functionality, improvements and benefits to Dynamics 365. An update might introduce a new functionality that removes the need for a third-party tool or might simplify an internal process.