March release notes

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the March release of Lifecycle Services. 

View upcoming environment updates   

In the March release of LCS, you can view upcoming updates for your environment. You can view the scheduled updates by clicking Maintain > Upcoming updates . Any maintenance to the environment that you initiate (package deployment on a specific day, sandbox refresh, point-in time restore, etc.), will be shown in the update list.  

Increased notifications for upcoming updates 

Going forward, if you submitted a service request, you will be notified about upcoming maintenance that is scheduled for your environment. With the March release, a notification bar will appear on the Environment details page, 24-hours before the operation is scheduled to begin. This will provide awareness of the operation being performed. Click Learn more, to view the details of the operation. 

Update experience 

View updates to the servicing operation  

In the March release of LCS, we have added a Refresh button so that you can more easily view the status on a servicing operation. 

Updates to version checks  

We have made some changes to the version checks during package application to enable customers and partners stay current on the latest platform as far as possible.   

For example, AOT packages that are created (built) on a platform update 3 development/build environment can be deployed on Dynamics 365 for Operations environment that are running on platform update 3 or any newer (compatible) release of the platform. 

Automated validation after package application 

Currently, after a package is applied, all validation responsibility, including verifying that the package is correctly applied, is with the customer. However, we will now be running checks to validate that a customer’s environment is left in a healthy state with all core components working after package application successfully completes. We have added a post servicing step called Run DVTs or Deployment verification tests to the runbook. The verification tests check the health of the AOS. This does not mean that the customer should not complete a functional validation,  but rather provides the knowledge that the package application did not have unintended effects on other components within the system.  

Process data packages 

You can now delete a process data package from your project’s Asset Library. This enables removing a process data package and (optionally) the associated data packages from the LCS project. 

Known Issues in LCS 

We now have a permanent page in the LCS Blog that will be kept up to date with the known issues in Lifecycle Services that Microsoft is tracking and is currently investigating. This can be accessed from the  Announcements section on the LCS dashboard.