Exploring Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services, LCS, is the heart of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations implementation. It is the starting point of the implementation and it is the platform you use to manage, maintain, monitor, upgrade, and search for known reported issues in the knowledge base. Microsoft has announced LCS tools to help partners and customers be more engaged in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations implementation project. LCS is a cloud-based solution that provides the required tools to let a customer collaborate with a partner and Microsoft in planning, managing, and operating the implementation project. It is mandatory for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations implementation. Microsoft Dynamics LCS helps customers and partners have predictable, repeatable, and manageable implementations. LCS is built on Microsoft Azure technologies, and this gives the opportunity to utilize Azure capabilities in data insights used in environment telemetry for monitoring. Through LCS, the customer can smoothly migrate data/customization between environments. In addition to that, the knowledge base which directly feed by Microsoft in issue search.

Each implementation project should have at least three environments: production, user acceptance test (UAT), and development. The customer/partner does not have direct access to the production environment machine and soon the UAT; the only team eligible for accessing the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations production environment is the Microsoft Dynamics Service Engineers (DSE) team.

The Microsoft Dynamics LCS offers an assortment of services as follows:

• Business process modeler: This is the tool to design, store, and retrieve business process flowcharts, and it gives the ability to identify gaps in the application during the analysis phase, where a business process could be moved from one project to another, and can be used as a training assistance for end users.
• Subscription estimator: This is the tool to evaluate customer subscription requirements for the current version of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
• System diagnosis: This helps system administrators monitor and understand the health of one or more Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations environments.
• Issue search: This is used to search for product issues, and determine whether an issue has been resolved, is open, or has a workaround; otherwise the user needs to report it to Microsoft for further investigation.