Data migration in D365FO implementation is the process of transferring data from ERP solution A (e.g. legacy system) to D365FO. Once a company starts its digital transformation journey with Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations implementation, it is required to define a migration design document to identify plan, process, strategy. and requirement.

It is important to define migration activities and effective tools to migrate data in D365FO to minimize implementation challenges. In this regard, one company can apply one or combination of following tools and approaches based on effectiveness of each tool, expertise of the resources (FC: Functional Consultant, TC: Technical Consultant, DV: Developer; 100: Beginner .. 400: Expert), and scope of migration activities. You can evaluate to apply them following tools:

• 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 updates a reference in one company since data will be populated with medication of the company group. In order to minimize the risk of changing references across companies, you can evaluate to restrict affected tables to specific user security roles. It is possible to deactivate sharing data across companies after the data is populated. So, You can evaluate to use this tool to replicate data from one company to other and then stop the sharing process.

• 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. You can evaluate deactivate ‘Publish’ function or disable excel add-inn for specific forms for specific user security role to minimize risk of modification. You can better use this tool if you want to export and import data across companies once data quantity is *NOT* in high volume of data in D365FO.

• Query/Code: On can create a customization to import data in D365FO. For example, create custom template to import customer, vendors, project, journal lines in D365FO. A developer needs to prepare logics accurately to prevent importing fail data or by mistakenly overwriting existing records.
• 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. DMF is purposefully designed to assist data migration in D365FO. DMF Can be used to import, export, copy data (setup and configurations) across legal entities, and integration. This can be used for high volume of data since it is compatible to be run through batch job.

The mentioned criteria can be enabler of choosing each tool to facilitate and perform quality data migration through D365FO implementation. I do hope you liked this post and will help you to get overview of tools and approaches that can be applied in D365FO implementation and supporting phases. Please don’t hesitate to send related questions or feedback via using “Leave a Reply”.