Dynamics AX 2012 upgrade to Dynamics 365FO
Dynamics AX is primarily a desktop-based application whereas Dynamics 365is a web and cloud-based solution from Microsoft. Dynamics AX 2012is no longer available fornew customers. Upgrading AX 2012to Dynamics 365is not very complicated. Microsoft currently provide an upgrade path to Dynamics AX 2012 R2and Dynamics AX 2012 R3.
The upgrade process is comprised of three phases which are analyse, execute and validate.
The activities involved in Analyse phase helps you create a detailed project plan, estimate the effort required for code upgrade. To perform analysis before purchasing finance and operations we need to sign up for a lifecycle services trial (LCS). In LCS project set the project methodology to Upgrade AX 2012 to Dynamics 365. After that we run the upgrade analyser and then we run the code upgrade estimation tools. After this step we deploy a demo environment either in Azure or download them as a virtual machine which you run on your own hardware. Now the output obtained from the previous step is used to fill the project plan for the upgrade. At this stage we get a data point that helps us better understand the time and cost of an upgrade
It is important to purchase finance and operation app before we move to execute phase. Only the project plan that we created in the last step of analyse phase is required for the further steps. Now we perform two activities- code upgrade and data upgrade. While performing data upgrade we upgrade business logic or code in technical parlance. And during data upgrade process business data is upgraded to the new data model.
At this phase we validate and test to see whether the upgraded environment works as desired or not. This phase also includes the pre-go-live checklist process that help reduce the chance of errors before the final cutover to go live.
When you are done with upgrade testing in SAT environment and a successful completion of test cut-over, you are all set to upgrade your production environment and go live.
