Let's now learn the environmental factors in configuration planning, as for configurations, there are several environments that are typically involved. One of the biggest challenges that an implementation team faces is moving the configuration from one environment to another. If configurations keep changing in every environment, it becomes more difficult to manage them. Similar to code promotion and release management across environments, configuration changes need to be tracked through a change control process across environments to ensure that you are testing with a consistent set of configurations.

The following diagram shows the various environments typically needed in a CRP approach:

The objective is to keep track of all the configuration changes and make sure that they make it to the final cut in the production environment. While all environments are important and have a purpose, the golden environment is a special one and should always be pristine (without any transactions). As part of the configuration management process, once configurations are accepted/tested/approved in the test environment, they should be moved to a golden environment. This golden environment can also be turned into a production environment, or the data can be copied over to the production environment using the data management platform or one-time database restore. The golden environment is usually the starting point for various environments, for example, UAT, training, preproduction, and so on.

The advantages of golden environment are as follows:

• Single environment for controlling all configuration related information.
• Base environment to set up other tools for initial solution validation.
• Template environment to spun other environment thereby reducing chances of any configuration changes or data corruption which could directly impact testing or any other related activity.

The one factor that you should remember is to keep the code base of the golden configuration with the latest approved code base for production so as to keep this environment in sync with the latest updates.

Let's now summarize all the activities involved in configuration planning:

• It should leverage industry-best practices that are relevant to the customer organization for configuring your Dynamics 365 solution.
• It should define and document what all constitute configuration.
• One should identify the environments to manage the configuration and data.
• In the project plan, one should define the acceptance criteria for golden configuration that are user-accepted, tested, and ready to move to production.
• For repeatable and assured success, keep the project goals in context and use them as reference.
• Configurations evolve over time; hence, proper versioning should be maintained:
  • Your Dynamics 365 solution, based on the business objectives, may need to be baselined for an initial configuration
  • All intermediate versions should be well thought of, and key decisions should be captured and tested before marking them ready for production usage
• Identify and leverage the tools provided by Microsoft. We recommend that you leverage the tools offered by Microsoft to save the cost of your implementation initiative and to make a positive impact on the returns on investment (ROI).
• The data exchange with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition (AX) happens via data entities and it is important to map them with the business needs and migration requirements:
  • This will help us know whether the entities are all available out of the box or some need to be built.
  • Also, by knowing these entities, you can start planning your sequence of loading and leverage the same during the actual migration
• It is often difficult to perfect the configuration, data dependencies, and their sequencing in any implementation. Hence, one should build and leverage a reusable library of configuration and data templates. Reusability brings in predictability and accuracy, and you need not start from scratch all the time; rather, you could just use a template and build the delta (data) on top of it.
• Also, a strategy for the building blocks of configuration is needed. This helps in manageability and the controlled movement of configurations.

A lot of advisors and partners are creating their own industry-specific configuration templates and offerings for Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, which should be explored by customers and other partners in their implementation to maximize their returns on investment and get off to a great starting point.

With configuration explained in detail, let's now learn about planning related to data migration in the next section.