Deploy Demo environment for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

One of the questions my team often get asked is how to set up or access a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Demo environment. In this blog post, I am listing out the steps to deploy Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations(D365 F&O) environment in LifeCycle services (LCS).

Step 1: The first step in setting up a F&O demo environment is to sign up for trial - Sign up for preview subscription

1.  The Global administrator of O365 tenant MUST be the person signing up for trial. 
2. Open InPrivate or Incognito browser session to make sure you are signed in correctly with the O365 credentials

When you sign up for trial it opens the below page where you can enter your organization details and create an O365 account. 

3. Next, you need to have a Azure subscription with admin/co-admin privileges to Office 365 account.

Once signed up for trial, the next step is to sign into Lifecycle services with O365 administrator account and create a new project.

Step 2: Create Lifecycle services project

1. The first time you log into Lifecycle services you get an option to select the language and then click Accept button.
2.  Click on the + button under Recent projects to create a new project
3. This will open up the project selector page with different types of projects we can create. Select Migrate, create solutions and learn tile.
4.  Create project dialog box opens

Enter Project Name, Description. 

Select Product as 'Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations' or 'Dynamics 365 Commerce' based on the requirements. 

Next, provide Industry that matches your organization This will pre-configure some of the business process models.

Then select Methodology that will be used for project management. Here select Implementation Methodology option. If the product selected is Dynamics 365 Commerce, please select the methodology as Retail Implementation Methodology.

Click Create.

Once the project is created, Project details page is opened.

Step 3: Setup Visual Studio Team Services

1. Click on the button 'Setup Visual Studio Team Services' on the project details page to link your any existing Azure DevOps project or create a new one.

VSTS is now Azure DevOps. The new Azure DevOps URLs for your organization and all projects start with https://dev.azure.com/<myorg>. To connect LCS to your Azure DevOps project, use the legacy URL

https://<myorg>.visualstudio.com/

You can create new Azure DevOps project at

https://www.visualstudio.com

2. Creating new Visual Studio project

Select Azure DevOps Get Started for free

• You will be prompted to login. Enter your credentials to login.
• Create project page opens.

Enter Project name, Description for your project.

Select the type of Version Control and Work item process applicable to your project.

Click Create project.

3. Personal Access Token for Azure DevOps project

Click on your login initials and select Security.

On Personal Access Tokens page, click New token to generate new token.

Enter Name, Expiration on Create a new personal access token page. Select Scope as Full access and click Create.

Make sure to copy the token. Once you close you will not be able to see the token again.

4. Go back to LCS Setup Visual Studio Team Services page and enter Azure DevOps site URL as https://<your org>.visualstudio.com/ and personal access token copied from the step above.

Click Continue.

5. In the next step, select Visual Studio Team Services project created in the step above.

Click Continue.

6. On next step, Review your settings and Click Save. You will be navigated back to LCS project page.

Step 4: Link your Azure Subscription.

Before we deploy demo instance of D365 Finance and Operations, there is one last step to link your Azure subscription to the new project created in Lifecycle services and to authorize LCS Deployment Service to work on Azure subscription.

1. To do this scroll over to the right until you can see the Environments tile and click on Azure Settings.

2. This will open up the Project settings page and select the tab Azure connectors.

2a. To authorize LCS Deployment Service to work on the Azure subscription, the administrator of the tenant must complete the following steps.

• In the organization list, click on Authorize to start the ARM contributor workflow. This workflow sets up permissions for the LCS deployment service so that it can deploy to your subscription on your behalf.
• On the Grant admin consent page, Click Authorize. Then sign in by using the administrator account of the Azure subscription and Click Accept. The authorization is now shown as completed.

2b. Within the Azure Connections group, click on the + Add button.

This will open up the Microsoft Azure setup dialog box.

Give a name for Azure Connector.

Enter your Azure subscription ID from Azure Portal. The subscription domain is automatically filled based on your subscription.

Enable flag 'Configure to use Azure Resource Manager(ARM).

Click Next.

• On Microsoft Azure setup you need to provide permissions to Dynamics Deployment Services[wsfed-enabled] for your subscription.
• To give your Azure subscription access to Dynamics Deployment services, login to Azure portal.
• Select your subscription and go to Access Control(IAM), Click Add to add permissions.

• On Add permissions form, enter Contributor Role, select Dynamics Deployment Services [wsfed-enabled] and save.

• Once the permissions are given in Azure portal, you should see Valid checked on Microsoft Azure Setup page in LCS. Click Next.

3. Download and Install the Lifecycle Services certificate

• This will take you to a step where you need to validate and link the Azure subscription and make sure that the connection has a certificate attached to it for the project. To do this, just click on the Download button and save the certificate.

• Then connect to Azure management portal and upload your certificate against the subscription. 
• After you have done that just click on the Next button in LCS page.

Once the certificate is validated, you need to select a region you want to deploy the Azure image in. Select East US region and click Connect button.

Now you have your subscription configured to create your F&O environment.

Step 5: Deploying a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations environment

1. Go back to the LCS project page and click on the + button under the Environments label. This will open a dialog to select application and platform version. Click Next.

Note: You can select the application and platform version that you want to deploy and not the exact versions shown in the screenshot.

2. Next on Select Environment Topology, select the type of environment you want to create. For this example, select Demo

Note: If you have selected DevTest topology in the previous step, you will get additional dialog before Deploy environment dialog to select one of the two environment types - Dev and Build. You can select Dev environment type if you would like to have your development VM pre-installed with required software to develop and test your customizations. 

3. In the next dialog Deploy environment, give an Environment Name. Make sure that the name is sufficiently unique. For example, you can prefix the environment name with your org name so that it is easily identifiable. 

You can select the VM size. Select D13 v2 which is recommended minimum size.

Then click on the checkbox to accept Azure pricing and licensing terms. Click Next.

4. Click Deploy on the Confirmation dialog.

5. Go back to the LCS project page and under Environments you should see your environment in Queued status to deploy. It will be under Deploying status while the environment is getting deployed. It may take few hours to deploy the environment. Once the environment is ready, the status would be Deployed.

6. Once deployed, click on the environment to open Environment Details page.

7. To login into Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Click Login > Login on to Environment. You should see another browser window opens with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

8. To provide access to other users in your organization, add users under System Administration > Users and assign appropriate roles. 

Users can access Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations directly by pasting the URL - https://<your org env> .cloudax.dynamics.com/ in the browser.

Hope this helps!