10 Lessons Learned from an End-User: BC On-Prem to Online
UG Expert Chris Warren outlines ten lessons that he has learned throughout his time using Business Central.
Key Takeaways
- Learn the Business Central Admin Center: Having an understanding of what the Business Central Admin Center is able to provide for you can truly optimize your usage, as it provides helpful features.
- Sandboxes are easier to create: It’s easy for admins to quickly copy their production environment into a Sandbox, Chris notes. This element enables users to test without blocking out the entire environment, so users can switch back and forth between the test environment and the production environment. It wasn’t like this on-prem, but BC online makes this very easy.
- Be aware of your Sandbox settings: The settings often have it set to automatically update the version. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the Admin Center so that you’re aware of what version you’re testing and going live with.
- Have Sandboxes for your add-ons: This is critical to ensure that you know everything is working as intended when it’s time to go live.
- Check the release notes of add-ons: Jumping from an on-prem version of an add-on from an ISV to the online version can often add new features. Make sure that you talk to your partner or ISV about changes to the current version you’re on to the latest version.
- Check add-on login types: When switching to BC online, logins don’t always get transferred. So when users try to log in, they might get an error message. “Once we updated the user IDs here within this particular application, everything worked flawlessly,” Chris reports.
- Modify your test plan as you test: Your test plan might not be exactly what it was on-prem. Take notes about what’s different so when you go from different versions online, you have a living document to refer to when testing and validating your system.
- User personalization doesn’t transfer: Make sure your users are familiar with how to personalize a page the way they want it to look.
- Unposted Blank-Rec Lines don’t transfer: Keep in mind that you will need to ensure the pages between Bank-Recs and journals, for instance, are posted or cleared out in case they don’t transfer over.
- Be aware of the next update date: Take note of the next upgrade date before you go live. Scheduling is critical when you are planning your go-live date for your Business Central on-prem to online migration.
