Hey, bloggers! Are you ready for some big news? 🎉

I’m telling you: Microsoft has decided it was time to simplify our lives (thanks, Microsoft!) and has unified the management experiences of Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications within Power Platform. And what does that mean? Well, now we can manage everything from the same place, without having to go back and forth. Goodbye to the old Lifecycle Services (LCS)! 👋

And not only that, but we can also take advantage of all the benefits of Power Platform, such as integration with Dataverse or the ability to create solutions that span the entire range of platform capabilities. Come on, they’ve made it easy for us! 🍽️

Of course, this functionality is in preview, so it may still have some limitations. But if you’re one of those who likes to try things before anyone else, I’ll tell you how you can do it.

We have two options to deploy finance and operations applications within the Power Platform admin center:

  1. Create a new environment using templates: Imagine you’re assembling an IKEA piece of furniture, but instead of screws and wood, you have applications and data. In this case, the template would be like assembly instructions. It tells you which applications you should install and how they should interact with each other. This way, you can create a Power Platform environment with a Dataverse database and enable the Dynamics 365 applications you need. For example, you can choose the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations template, which includes Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, and Project Operations applications.
  2. Install the provisioning application in an existing environment: In this case, you already have a piece of furniture (the Power Platform environment with a Dataverse database), but you want to add an extra module (finance and operations applications) to it. To do this, you select your environment, navigate to Resources > Dynamics 365 Applications, and select the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Provisioning Application. This application will allow you to choose which finance and operations applications you want to install in your environment.

In any case, we will have to take into account some important aspects, such as storage capacity, computational performance, solution development, or environment lifecycle operations. But don’t worry, I’ll leave you a link at the end with all the information.

I hope you enjoyed this article and that you feel encouraged to try this new functionality. See you in the next post!

Goodbye LCS - Unification of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform