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August release notes

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the August release of Lifecycle Services (LCS).

Deploy different environment types

Customer implementation projects

In addition to the cloud environments that are included in a customer's Dynamics 365 subscription, LCS implementation projects are available. These projects enable customers to deploy demo environments in their own Microsoft Azure subscription. Deployments can be done from the Cloud-hosted environments (CHE) page in LCS.

With this release of LCS, CHE enables customers to also deploy build and development environments (using the July 2017 release) in their own Azure subscription for development, build, and test activities. Customers are responsible for managing, maintaining and covering the cost of these environments per the terms of their Azure subscription.

Partner and trial projects

In the August release of LCS, we have retired the combined multi-box developer and build topology for partner and trial projects and replaced them with separate single-box build and developer topologies. These changes apply to the deployments completed on the July 2017 release of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations release.
The build topology is called Build and Test and enables the deployment of a single build environment. The developer topology is called Develop and enables the deployment of a single development environment. Single environments provide more control over servicing and VM management.

Updates to environment deployment flow for Customer implementation projects

In the August release of LCS, we have made a few updates to the Environment Deployment flow for customer implementation projects.

Slipstream valid packages on Production environments

When an environment deployment request is submitted to the Dynamics Service Engineering team, the customer or partner has the option to slipstream packages during deployment to avoid applying them after deployment is complete. However, in many cases the environment deployment fails due when packages that are not valid are submitted to be slipstreamed. This results in customer pain and support incidents because the customer often has to wait for at least eight hours for the environment deployment to succeed. To address this, the following changes were made in this release:

  • Only packages that are marked as Release Candidate can be slipstreamed during the environment deployment for Production environments in an Implementation project. A package can be marked as Release Candidate only if it has been successfully applied on a Sandbox environment.
  • On Tier 1 and Tier 2+ Sandbox environments, the ability to slipstream application customization packages and combined retail packages is removed. The application customization packages and combined retail packages must be applied after the environment deployment using the Apply Updates experience on the Environment details page. This ensures that only valid packages are slipstreamed which will reduce the delay caused in getting Production environments due to incorrect packages being submitted during deployment

Show only a filtered list of data centers during deployment

Previously, when an environment deployment request was submitted to the Dynamics Service Engineering team, customers and partners were provided with a large list of data centers where the deployment could be stored. However, sometimes the data center that was selected was not ready for deployment and this would cause delays. With this release, only supported data centers will be shown in the list.

Improvements to the deployment flow for Dynamics 365 for Operations Enterprise edition on-premises

Frequent status updates during environment deployment

With this release of LCS, we have added a way for a customers and partners to request frequent status updates for the deployment of an on-premises environment. To request updates, click Refresh state. 

Access a Trials Dynamics 365 for Operations on-premises project in LCS without a preview key

With this release of LCS, partners will now be able to experience what it takes to implement, deploy, and operate the Dynamics 365 for Operations on-premises product by signing up for a Partner Trial offer. This is the same trial offer that gives access to a Migrate, create solutions and learn project for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Cloud version. Existing partners that have signed up for this trial offer will now be able to set up on-premises deployments. However, the learn version of the on-premises project restricts environment deployment to a single on-premises environment.

Latest set of deployment scripts have been uploaded

In this release, we have uploaded a latest version of the deployment scripts that customers can use to deploy an on-premises environment.

Updates to subscription estimator usage profile

In the August release of LCS updates have been made to the usage profile sheet. These updates include adding data validations on inputs and refreshing the color scheme for the Microsoft Excel sheet.

Export support incident list to Microsoft Excel

You can export support requests that have been submitted to Microsoft. The support requests can be exported to Microsoft Excel from either the Manage incidents page or the Support issues page from the Support tile in a project. 

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August release notes

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