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Category: CI / CD

Azure DevOps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Application Lifecycle Management for PowerApps: Environments

Application Lifecycle Management for PowerApps: Environments

My journey with Dataverse started as citizen developer. I discovered this funny new environment and used canvas apps for cool & portable demos. After a while, my demos, prototypes, and tiny apps became a productive status and started to grow. I think each of us knows these problems and the resulting questions. I faced new challenges: How can I maintain my apps and how can I continue adding new features? Furthermore, how can I stop breaking existing features? Well, the…

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Monitoring Build Pipelines with Application Insights

Monitoring Build Pipelines with Application Insights

Any kind of automation will lead into losing information about the magic in the background. You see only the results like “Build Succeeded” or “Build Failed”. That’s fine if you manage one or two Azure DevOps build pipelines, but this is terrible if you maintain hundreds or thousands! What happens is predictable. If you don’t know what is going on in the background and what causes problems – you are in trouble. You have to investigate issues direct in each…

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More Badges please, I need Project Insights! – CI / CD 9

More Badges please, I need Project Insights! – CI / CD 9

My main requirements for a modern Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central project are automation, transparency and traceability! Therefore I include status badges in my documentation to give all team members an overview of the project status. In detail, you can use status badges in Azure DevOps to visualize all information that is useful for your team. Do you know badges from Azure DevOps and their possibilities? If not, let me explain. 🙂 Badges At the beginning I told you that…

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Release Management with Artifacts & Stages – CI / CD 8

Release Management with Artifacts & Stages – CI / CD 8

In my last article of the CI/CD series I explained which package types I use to upload my Artifacts. As you can imagine, this is just one piece of the puzzle in my release management workflow for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. More important for me is the correct traceability of my artifacts. In other words, this is the key to keep control over my projects. As a result, I track each of my Artifacts respective to each deployment stage….

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Package Types for Business Central Artifacts – CI / CD 7

Package Types for Business Central Artifacts – CI / CD 7

In my last CI / CD post I promised to describe: “… why I use Universal Packages for my artifacts”. To explain this, I must answer the following question: What kind of artifacts do I have in my Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central projects? Well, my answer is simple: I usually have to manage files in my CD process… 😮 Simple Files My CI build pipelines compile and create my Apps-Files. In case of Hybrid-Development, my Artifacts are also FOB-Files….

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Branching Workflow – CI / CD Part 6

Branching Workflow – CI / CD Part 6

“How to start?” … Well, I avoided answering this question a long time, until now. I found an approach which fits perfect into Azure DevOps and satisfy my CI / CD workflow. You know, Real-Life of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is development, deployment, support, and maintenance together. Therefore all of these processes need access to the right source code. Source Code Management (SCM) Some basics: Most of us know “OMA” (Object Manager Advanced). Microsoft Navision developers uses OMA since…

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Application Versions – CI / CD Part 5

Application Versions – CI / CD Part 5

Classic NAV development processes, customizations with C/Side became obsolete in the Business Central age was replaced by Apps. Apps have version numbers to identify which app version is newer, handle updates and finally synchronize data changes in the right order. New App Versions are produced by fully automated CI processes in a very short time and the generated Artifacts replace the installed version in target environments during automated CD processes. The application version helps to keep the necessary overview and…

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Another way to Setup Continuous Delivery​

Another way to Setup Continuous Delivery​

The Azure Portal offers a new option to set up Continuous Delivery for Virtual Machines and it’s currently marked as a preview feature. The setup wizard allows to select existing Azure DevOps organizations and projects, when the Azure DevOps tenant is connected to your AAD. Azure starts to configure the continuous delivery for this virtual machine after completing the information and install the deployment agent. After completion the Virtual Machine is present in the deployment group D365BC in the selected…

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Deployment Tasks – CI / CD Part 4

Deployment Tasks – CI / CD Part 4

All we need are Tasks to deploy our Artifacts at Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS or On-Prem. In this article I’ll share with you a deeper look into my deployment stages. CI/CD Pipeline Tasks for MSDyn365BC Azure DevOps provide lots of build-in tasks to execute almost everything in the context of a Build or Deployment Agent. Unfortunately, pre-configured Pipelines or Tasks for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are not part of this list. However, there are other good options…

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Agents, Agent- and Deployment Pools – CI / CD Part 3

Agents, Agent- and Deployment Pools – CI / CD Part 3

Artifacts and Deployment Stages and Controlling the Artifact Flow should be clear. It’s time to see what Azure DevOps provide to deploy Artifact(s) into target environment(s). Two scenarios must be covered: SaaS and OnPrem. Both uses the same install base of Dynamics 365 Business Central, but are different in your access rights. Dynamics 365 Business Central – SaaS Here Release Artifact(s) (e.g. per-tenant App) must be deployed into your SaaS environment, your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central tenant – hosted by Microsoft: BC Sandbox (Microsoft SaaS…

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