Lifecycle Services – May 2019 (Release 1) release notes

The Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the release notes for LCS May 2019 (Release 1) release.

LCS Support severity description update

Microsoft Customer Support has updated the severity description for incident submission. This change is reflected in Lifecycle Services (LCS). Please reference the updated severity description when submitting new incidents via LCS.

 

PITR Retirement

BPM to Azure DevOps synchronization error message

We revised the error message when the Business process modeler (BPM) to Azure DevOps synchronization failed. You will now be able to see the name of the failed process, the work item type, and the error message, including possible causes and suggested actions to resolve the error.

Here are some common causes and suggested actions to help resolving the error:

 

Possible cause Error message Suggested solution
Required field added Failed to create work item. A required field has been added to this work item type which is not supported. Remove this requirement or provide a default value in the process template to unblock the operation. Remove the required field or provide a default value.
Work item type disabled Failed to create work item. The work item type has been disabled in the process template. Enable the work item type to unblock the operation. Enable the work item type in the process template.
Couldn’t find work item to update Failed to update work item. The work item does not exist, or you do not have permissions to read it. Check the PAT configuration in the project settings or restore the work item if it has been deleted directly from the DevOps project. Restore the work item from the recycle bin if it was deleted, or create a new Personal Access Token (PAT) and make sure that it has full permissions.
PAT is expired Failed to sync with Visual Studio Team Services. The request response is: Unauthorized. Please check that the PAT is setup correctly and still valid, try again and contact support if the error persists. Create a new PAT from Azure DevOps and update the PAT value in your LCS Project settings.
Generic error Failed to sync with Visual Studio Team Services. The request response is: {0}. Please check that the PAT is setup correctly and still valid, try again and contact support if the error persists. Contact customer support with the request response that caused the syncing error.

 

 Updates to the sign off process on maintenance operations triggered through LCS

Today, on completion of any maintenance operation (servicing, database movement, upgrade, and putting system in maintenance mode) you have the option to sign off or sign off with issues. This is the last step to indicate completion of the operation. Only after you indicate sign off, is your environment ready for the next operation. With this release of LCS, the following changes we will be made to streamline the sign off process:

  • Going forward, the environment will be ready for the next operation after the current operation has been successfully completed. This means that sign off is no longer the terminal state but rather it is the completion of the operation. Operation completion states are now Successful, Rollback Successful, or Aborted.
  • The Sign off button will be moved to the Environment history page. After the operation is complete, you can go to the Environment history page to indicate sign off if you want to validate and capture this information.
  • The release candidate check for moving packages from Sandbox to Production will continue to verify if the package was successfully applied in a Sandbox before you can move it to Production. It does not depend on you signing off on the update.
  • The sign off will only apply to the servicing operation because that is the main operation where you validate the environment state to verify if there are any issues. For other operations, such as database movement, upgrade and maintenance mode, sign off does not apply and will not be visible.
  • For service updates pushed by Microsoft, if the environment is not in a terminal state (environment has a pending sign off), then we do not apply the update. We encounter many instances where customers forget to sign off on a previous operation and because that is the terminal state we skip the environment and don’t apply the update. As a result, many customers ask us why we didn’t update their environments. With this change, sign off is managed separately, so if your environment is in a Deployed state we will apply the update.

Production Point-in-time restore to Sandbox

We are enabling a new database movement operation under the category of Point-in-time restore. Prior to this release, point-in-time restore has been used only for Sandbox UAT environments to go back to a previous restore point. Based on customer feedback we have added the option to take a restore point of the Production environment and restore that into a Sandbox UAT environment.

This will help customers and partners triage Production data-related issues that were previously working as required at an earlier date.

To use the functionality, select Maintain > Move databases > Point-in-time restore Prod to Sandbox from your Sandbox UAT environment details page.