We’re excited to announce the availability of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations version 8.1 with Platform update 20 through Lifecycle Services (LCS). This release is packed with some great features. To see what's new, check out the Release Notes.

Customers and partners can get version 8.1 using one of the options listed below:

• Deploy a new environment of 8.1 with Platform update 20 through LCS.
• Upgrade version 7.x to version 8.1 using upgrade flows in LCS. For details, see Process for moving to the latest update.
• Update an existing 8.0 environment to 8.1. This will be available after October 15, 2018. For more info, see Update 8.0 to 8.1.

After you are on version 8.1, all Microsoft updates will be cumulative for platform and application via a single update tile. There will be no granular X++ updates. To view the applicable fixes for your Environment, navigate to the environment details page in LCS and check the Monitoring section. You will now see a single tile, as shown below, that contains both the application and platform fixes as a single update package.