In ninth of November 2022, I delivered a presentation on DynUG autumn conference at Microsoft Norway. This session was oriented to indicate data management and tools that can be used in D365FO implementation.

Mainly, data management can be involved in testing, deployment, and support phases of an ERP solution (i.e., D365FO).

In this direction, you need to provide a migration design document to define:

• Migration plan
• Migration process
• Migration Strategy
• Migration Requirement

This will provide an acceptable overview for planning for resources and trial migration round to which tool can be used for each migration activities. You can track tasks, areas, and responsible across corporations using a data validation checklist workspace to keep track of migration activities.

Following migration tool can be applied in this process:

According to the effectiveness of each tool and the skills of the resources (FC: Functional Consultant, TC: Technical Consultant, DV: Developer), you can evaluate to apply them (100: Beginner .. 400: Expert).

• Cross-company data sharing: Share tables (references and groups) across companies. This function can be used both to replicate data among companies and decrease maintenance time once a user update a reference in one company since data will be populated with medication of the company group.

• Excel add-inn: This can used to view and update data entity with Excel. Prerequisite for this add-inn is Microsoft Excel 2016 or later versions. This tool can be used to export and import data in/to D365FO across companies.

• Query/Code: On can create a customization to import data in D365FO. For example, create custom template to import customer, vendors and project in D365FO.
• SSIS: SQL Server Integration Services can be applied to build integration and data transformation. For example, you can evaluate to establish a configuration environment and fill out the data base with configuration and transactions. Then you can copy the database to production environment.
• DMF: Data Management Framework can be used to import, export and copy data into legal entities. This is useful tool that can be applied in both implementation and supporting phases.

Data management framework is a tool used for data migrations practices by managing data entities and data packages in D365FO. This framework can be used for data migration, manage configurations, integration, Power Apps, and  Power BI.

DMF consists of following concepts:

Data entities: A data entity can be one or multiple tables. DMF works with data entities to export, import, and copy into legal entities. Per today, there are 3 895 standard entities existing in DMF.

Data package: consists of logically grouped data entities. It is a zip file containing “Manifest” and “PackageHeader” that indicate entity name, map, and sequence of entities.

Data projects: contains configured data entities with mapping and processing options.

Taking these concepts into consideration, you can develop DMF templates consisting of data entities with logical sequence. Templates can provide a model that can be used for export, import, and copy data with defined filter or custom mapping. Once you need to copy data or export data across legal entities, this function will facilitate the process.

You can, for instance, create templates for exporting data to Azure SQL DB based on the frequency or priority of data exports. Alternately, you can develop a template that can be utilized to transfer configuration to newly created companies.

In general, there are several tools that can be used during the D365FO implementation and supporting phases. Deciding which tools are needed to evaluate migration activities in relation to the capabilities of the resources and the tools. DMF is particularly useful during these phases in this regard.

I do hope you liked this post and will help you to decide over correct tools in D365FO implementation and supporting phases. Please don’t hesitate to send related questions or feedback via using “Leave a Reply”.