Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementation Guide for on-premises and online. This guide contains comprehensive information about how to plan, install, configure, customize, and maintain Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) and how to administer and customize Microsoft Dynamics 365 (online). The Microsoft Download Manager solves these potential problems. It gives you the ability to download multiple files at one time and download large files quickly and reliably. It also allows you to suspend active downloads and resume downloads that have failed. Microsoft Download Manager is free and available for download now.
I recently passed ‘Exam MB5-705 Managing Microsoft Dynamics Implementations’ so I thought I would draft a blog post or two to provide an overview of the Microsoft Sure Step Methodology. For this post, I will provide a high level overview of the phases within Sure Step.
Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step is a full customer lifecycle methodology for all Microsoft Dynamics solutions. This includes Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but also all of Microsoft’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions including:
Step 1: Create a Word template. Click Download Template on the Select Entity page to create a Word file on your local computer with the exported entity included as XML data. You use the XML Mapping Pane to add entity fields to your Word template. Be sure to only add fields as Plain Text or Picture. Click on the Microsoft Dynamics customers and partners link. Click on the Deployment link and then downloads. Scroll down and find Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step on the left-hand column, click on it and then click on the Download and install Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step 2012.
The methodology provides guidance, tools, templates and best practices to help increase the consistency, quality and success of Microsoft Dynamics engagements.
Sure Step has 6 phases, and while the approach, activities and specific deliverables depend on which ‘project type’ (e.g. ‘Standard’, ‘Enterprise’, ‘Rapid’, ‘Agile’ or ‘Upgrade’ – more on these in a future post) you’re implementing, the next section will cover the Sure Step phases in broad strokes.
Diagnostic Phase
The Diagnostics phase is the only phase within ‘Solution Envisioning’. Its objective is to understand the high level solution requirements in order to help the customer determine the right solution to meet their needs. The Diagnostic/Solution Envisioning phase begins with the ‘Solution Overview’; an overview of the various MS Dynamics products and their capabilities. This is followed by the (optional, though highly recommended) ‘Decision Accelerator Offerings’, designed to assist the customer through their due diligence and decision making process and greatly reduce the risk when for selecting a new CRM or ERP solution.
The decision accelerators are typically low-cost, one-to-four week engagements that help the customer understand the ‘degree-of-fit’ between their needs the available solutions, before making a major investment. The decision accelerator offerings include:
- Accelerated Proof-of-Concept (POC) with CRM Online
- Requirements and Process Review
- Fit Gap and Solution Blueprint
- Architecture Assessment
- Scoping Assessment
- Proof of Concept (POC)
- Business Case
- Upgrade Assessment
The Diagnostic phase typically concludes with customer acceptance of a high level project charter and project plan as well as a clear understanding of the business drivers and key metrics for the project to unite the team behind a common vision for proceeding to the implementation phases.
Analysis Phase
The Analysis phase represents the official beginning of the project implementation. Using the outputs from the earlier Diagnostics phase (e.g. reports from the decision accelerator offerings, high level project charter), this phase defines the activities required to initiate and effectively plan the rest of the project. A few of the milestones and deliverables typical in the analysis phase are:
- Project kickoff meeting
- Project plan and charter
- Risk and Issues register
- Fit/Gap Spreadsheet
- Functional Requirements Document (FRD)
- Business Process maps/workflows
- Data migration requirements
- User Training Requirements
- Environment specification
This phase culminates with the customer’s approval on the documented requirements, as the basis of the scope for the implementation. Sure Step advocates for formal ‘toll-gate’ reviews at the end of each phase – including the Analysis phase – to ensure that the milestones and deliverables have been provided as per the earlier agreed quality standards and that any risks and issues are proactively addressed before proceeding into the next phase.
Design Phase
The focus of the Design phase is to define how the business requirements will be implemented. Using the outputs and deliverables from the previous Analysis phase as inputs, the design phase is where the various design documents are created for use by the implementation team to build the solution. These design document deliverables include:
- ‘Fit’ Design Document – to document the configuration and settings required to fulfil requirements deemed as ‘fits’ during the Fit-Gap analysis performed during the earlier phases.
- ‘Gap’ Design Document – to document the design of the custom code required to meet customer requirements deemed as ‘gaps’ during the Fit-Gap analysis.
- ‘Technical’ Design Document – the purpose for this 3rd design document is to design and document the technical details of each system modification or enhancement. This document includes items such as user interface design, security as well as business and data layer components.
- ‘Solution’ Design Document – this document provides the overall solution description in business language and includes the capabilities being abled by the solution
These documents provide the roadmap for development and reflect the approved customer requirements for implementation.
The design phase is also when the non production environments (e.g. development and test) are set up to support the configuration and customization work. Core team training is also completed in the design phase, beginning the knowledge transfer process to the customer.
Project Management continues to play an important role in the design phase through activities including updating of project plans as required based on the approved designs and associated timelines, as well as change control management, communication, status reporting and financial management.
DevelopmentPhase
The development phase is where the implementation team will build the system components defined and approved in the design phase, including configurations, customizations, integrations and interfaces and data migration processes. The development phase is also where the solution is fully tested by the project team before the customer performs their user acceptance testing (UAT) in the Deployment phase. Solution testing includes process testing, integration testing as well as data acceptance testing.
The development phase is also where the infrastructure team completes the production environment specification and provides to the customer so that they can start the procurement process for necessary hardware and software components.
Training documentation is completed in the development phase as is the creation of UAT scripts that the customer will use in the subsequent phase for their testing and acceptance activities.
Project risk management is an important facet of the project management activities at this (or any) stage of the project, to ensure that risks and issues are being monitored and analyzed, with mitigation and contingency plans being created accordingly.
DeploymentPhase
The deployment phase is where the solution ‘goes live’, but there is much more to it than that. As noted in the development phase, the deployment phase is where the user will perform their testing and acceptance activities to validate that all of the requirements for the project have been satisfied. Prior to this step, the customer has to be trained on the system – as adequate training is one of the most important steps in any successful implementation.
The user training aligns closely with Organizational Change Management activities that would have been executed all throughout the project phases [more in a future post] in order to ensure that the users are not only trained on the new system but are also fully aware of all of the business drivers and benefits being brought about as a result of the implementation.
Sure Step recommends short, directed training sessions that begin with a broad overview and then narrow to a role-based approach specific to business processes and job tasks for the various role types. Sure Step also recommends conducting the training as close to go-live as possible in order to mitigate against knowledge erosion.
When all training has been completed and all deliverables have been completed and signed off, the solution is deployed to the production environment and transitioned to the operations team.
OperationPhase
The operation phase is where any final activities to officially close out the project are performed and where the solution is officially transitioned to the customer including providing any remaining knowledge transfer. Additional activities and deliverables include a final project closure report, provided to the customer for sign off and a project closure meeting to discuss and document project lessons learned.
This has been a high level overview of the phases within the Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology. I will focus on other aspects of the methodology in future posts.
-->This topic explains how to install the modern report design templates in the application suite. You can use these samples to create graphically rich business documents that have flexible branding in the header and footer.
Microsoft Dynamics Free Version
Introduction
A new set of developer tools is available that takes the form of report designs for several core business documents in the application suite. These report designs have been re-imagined so that flexible branding appears in the header and footer of public-facing documents when transactions are generated in the application. The following illustration shows how an earlier design for a sales invoice differs from a modern sales invoice design.
After you complete the installation, you can use the built-in brand management tools to define brand settings that should be applied to the modern designs for application business documents. The brand management tools are available at Organization administration > Setup > Document branding > Branding details.
Why aren't these designs the default designs for the application suite reports?
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We are maintaining the legacy solutions for two primary reasons:
- Modern designs don't include code. Although the legacy solutions use embedded Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) code to recognize configuration keys and honor regulatory requirements that vary by region, the modern report designs offer much less flexibility. The benefit of a simple design that has minimal code behind it comes at the expense of reusability across regions.
- Modern designs aren't available for all business documents. There is a gap between the supported business documents and the availability of modern report designs. Although the legacy designs aren't as aesthetically pleasing, they provide a sense of consistency.
Important
The simple modern designs are not recommended for all types of deployments. They are intended for cases where the customer doesn't require runtime control over the layout of the document through existing application configuration settings.
Apply the modern designs
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The modern report designs have been bundled into a model file and posted to Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS). Therefore, you can easily access them from your existing subscription. Use the following procedure to obtain the modern report design solutions and install them in your local development environment. You must then apply some customizations to incorporate the modern report designs into the appropriate scenarios.
Follow these steps to install the modern report designs for the application suite.
Sign in to LCS to access the deployment dashboard. Then, on the Shared asset library page, select the Model asset type, and download the ApplicationSuiteModernDesigns model file. Save the model file to a location that is accessible from the development environment.
Note
Be sure to select the appropriate model file for the version of the application that you're using.
Import the model file into your local development environment. To install a model file in a development environment, use the ModelUtil.exe tool and the -import directive. Here is an example.
Navigate to the J:AOSServicePackagesLocalDirectorybin folder.
Run the following command.
For more information about how to import model files, see Export and import models. After you've imported the model file, start Microsoft Visual Studio. In Application Explorer, verify that the Application Suite - Modern Designs collection appears under the AOT node. For more information about how to use the Application Explorer, see Development tools tutorial
Now that you've successfully imported the Application Suite Modern Designs model, you must to rebuild the application suite to update the metadata elements.
Build the application suite
The Application Suite Modern Designs model is an extension of the Application Suite model. To help guarantee that all application references are updated so that they target the model extensions, you must build the Application Suite model by using Microsoft Visual Studio.
Start Visual Studio, or use the existing instance.
On the Dynamics 365 menu, select Build models.
In the list, select the check box for the ApplicationSuite package.
Note
You will see that the Application Suite Modern Designs model is included in the package definition.
Select Build to do a full build of the application suite.
This process may take up to 20 minutes, depending on the size of your machine.
Deploy the modern designs (one-box environments)
After you've compiled the application suite that includes the modern report design templates, you should verify the changes locally. To verify the changes, you must deploy the new modern report design solutions to the instance of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) that is running locally.
Follow these steps to incorporate the modern report design into an existing application suite report.
- Create a project that contains the application suite report. In Application Explorer, under the Application Suite Modern Designs model, expand the Reports node, and then expand the Reports subnode. Select all the items in the folder, right-click, and then select Add to new project.
- Complete the New Project wizard. Accept all default values.
- In Solution Explorer, select the project, right-click, and then select Deploy reports to deploy the build and deploy the reports locally.
When you add the modern report design to an existing report, you can reuse both the parameter handling and the data provider that the out-of-box solution uses.
Update Print management settings
At this point, you should be able to access the modern report designs from the application. Make sure that you do thorough test validations on the modern report design templates before you deploy them to production environments. To do test validations, you must activate the modern report designs for the application business process.
Follow these steps to update the Print management settings for customer sales orders by selecting the modern report design solution as the default report design.
Open the Form setup page for the module. For example, for Accounts receivable, select Accounts receivable > Setup > Forms > Form Setup.
Select Print management to open the Print management setup page.
Expand the tree, and find the settings for the Sales order confirmation document.
Select Original <Default> to begin to modify the default document routing.
In the Report format list, select SalesConfirmModern.Report to enable the modern report design solution.
Open another page. This step forces a save operation to occur.
Post a sales order to view the modern design in the application.