[Lori Holmes]

Hello everyone…

Does anyone have any knowledge or documentation on D365 Sys Admin features?  We are upgrading from AX 2012 RTM to D365.  There are a lot of features to review and we are wondering if there is a best practice or general rule-of-thumb when it comes to deciding which ones to enable.

Thank you in advance,
Lori Holmes
LHOLMES@HAMAMATSU.COM

[Dave Phillips]

Hi Lori – 

From the SCM perspective, not a bad idea to start having a look at Planning Optimization (the new MRP engine) and Engineering Change Management.

Might be a good idea to revisit your future state documentation and see if any of those are found as a Feature.

D365FO looks daunting at first, and there is a lot of new functionality, but if you have AX2012 experience you’ll ramp up pretty fast.

Thanks…..Dave

——————————
Dave Phillips
Sr Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft
Fargo ND
——————————
——————————————-

[Karl Arensdorf]

Lori,

I am curious to see what others say here. I was not an AX2012 user so my first experience was D365. I have found that while it is quite cumbersome to go through the new features to enable them one by one, it is also a great way to force me to understand what new features are coming with each new release. I generally enable all but the features which are specific to other countries where we do not transact business. This was the guidance my support partner provided. With every upgrade, going through and enabling new features helps me understand where I might need to spend additional time understanding what improvements we might be able to make to our processes and also it helps me keep an eye out for potential problems in our UAT testing.

Good luck!

——————————
Karl Arensdorf
Corporate Controller
Mansfield Oil Company
Gainesville GA
——————————
——————————————-

[Kamar Wilks]

Hi Lori

We are currently using D365 and what we have done is to look at the description of the features and have the business area decide if the feature is something they would like to use. Once they request enabling we go ahead and enable the new feature, then have rigorous testing done in a sandbox. After sign-off, we enable in PROD. 

——————————
Kamar Wilks
BlueCrest Inc
Danbury
——————————
——————————————-

[Jennifer Codding]

Following this as well as we begin this exact same version upgrade in about 6 weeks.   We have asked our partner to train the IT staff on the Sys Admin features including LCS because we need to be prepared to support the system.  However, will take all advice offered by others who have went through this experience as well to understand what has worked for others to assist in preparing us.

——————————
Jennifer Codding
Senior IT Business Analyst
CMC Group
Bowling Green OH
——————————
——————————————-

[Ian Gorman]

Hi Lori!

AX 2012 RTM to D365 is a BIG jump. I highly recommend reviewing the Microsoft Learn documents here to obtain some general insight into the new functionality available:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/browse/?expanded=dynamics-365%2Cm365&products=dynamics-finance-operations%2Cdynamics-scm

Please keep in mind that the Feature Management workspace also provides a detailed list of all of the new functionality published in each update. It is worth stating that each feature you enable should be done in a lower environment first, as you’ll often introduce a chance in business processes upon turning on the new features. For example, the inventory value report changes locations once you enable the storage variant, it also introduces additional security role needs.. 

Also, it is valuable to check the release note pages. I have a Power Automate job setup to notify me of any changes published to these pages to keep track of it all.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/fin-ops/get-started/whats-new-changed

——————————
Ian Gorman, PMP, MCSE
MCA Connect
Solution Architect
——————————
——————————————-

[Kirk Anger]

Hi Lori, 

My advice is to proceed with a healthy degree of caution when enabling them. We have attempted enabling some new features before our UAT of version upgrades in the past and ran into some surprising side effects that ultimately complicated getting the new release to production.

The documentation and functional knowledge on new features can be sparse, leading to a lot of experimentation and questions until you get them working the way you want. This is especially true if you’re taking new releases very shortly after they hit general availability.

We focus of our UAT of new releases on the mandatory hotfixes first, to ensure that our existing business processes and integrations are not negatively impacted. Once the release is in PROD, we then review available features and selectively test / roll those out separately from our main UAT.

Another piece of advice is to check feature management after you upgrade your test environment, as some features get enabled automatically during the upgrade. Generally these are benign, but we have had one that caused us a problem and had to be disabled afterwards.

Hope that helps,

——————————
Kirk Anger
StarTech.com
London ON
——————————
——————————————-

[Esther Paradoski]

Hi Lori,

I am with Kirk on not enabling features until you test them in UAT. When Feature Management first came out we were enabling them all, until we discovered more than one was not quite functioning as it should and messed up some things. After submitting tickets to Microsoft, we were advised to turn the features off. We now review each new feature, decide if it is a needed improvement and then test it thoroughly, before turning it on in Production.

——————————
Esther Paradoski
Ducks Unlimited Canada
Stonewall MB
——————————
——————————————-

[Lori Holmes]

Thank you, everyone.  It is obvious this is a topic of interest to many people.  I wonder if anyone MS, partner or member) would like to present it at a chapter meeting….?

——————————
Lori Holmes
Hamamatsu Corporation
Bridgewater, NJ
——————————
——————————————-

[Zvika Rimalt]

I would add in support of Kirk & Esther, that at least in some cases, new features can significantly modify existing functionality and setup.
For example – recent new features related to the Project Management and Accounting module.
I think it can easily break some things you are already using.

Since you are currently implementing, I think the approach is a bit different with customers that I currently live with D365.

What I have done in recent implementation is taking an approach similar to what I used to do with “configuration keys” in the past.
Once I know the initial scope of the project, I go into the list, and enable just the things I think might have added value, based on the customer’s planned use.

Then during design phase there is a chance to validate the value of these features and see if they work well for your users (and you still have a chance to turn them off).

As a general guideline – and based on past experience – once you’re “live”, I would not hurry to enable new features immediately, and wait few months, even if a feature looks like it could be of value.
Let other poor users go through the tribulations related dealing with new code, that probably needs some more debugging..

——————————
Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC
——————————
——————————————-