Our friends at Microsoft’s Dynamics Community have a head start on us, so here is a summary of their 3/24 post about upgrading…
New Release new series!! ALWAYS, always, always … they really do stress this… run a test upgrade. Microsoft sees more upgrades than most, and they run into customers over and over who don’t run a test. DO IT! It will save your data, and a lot of stress.
Common issues they see are related to add on products. Either the additional products are not updated to match the current version, or the client is not going to bring that other product forward in the upgrade (we not longer use that tool, or that report, or that feature… but it’s still integrated in the database).
“You can check on the versions of all your products by running a select statement in SQL against your db_upgrade table.
SELECT * FROM DYNAMICS..db_upgrade
This will list out all your databases and the products installed to them.”
Other issues are related to multi-version upgrades and converting OLE attachments, workflow on sharepoint, and of course the ever present hardware changes (upgrading a server then upgrading the software etc…).
Bottom line, as always, the 6 p’s can save you… (Prior, planning, prevents, “potty”, poor, performance). Before an upgrade is attempted, take the time to outline what will be upgraded, what is attached to it, what does it run on, what changes are going to be made. Then set up a test, do the upgrade in a safe environment on the same hardware, TEST the upgrade. Run reports and check trial balances, be sure that the workflows are still right. Once everything is verified then duplicate in production. You will take a little longer, but you’ll be much happier with the results. Take a look at Dan Peltier’s excellent article here… https://goo.gl/7AAFop
Contact me if you have more questions or need help with your upgrade! justin@caidynamics.com