Retrieve Latest Models for D365 Finance & Operations After Dev Environment Loss

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Posted on by Patelniraj8

Our development environment for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) was recently deleted and is not recoverable. Unfortunately, we did not have a recent backup of the models stored separately.

We need to get the latest models that are currently deployed in the Production environment. What is the best approach to retrieve those models or recreate them in a new development environment?

We are on the latest version of D365 FnO.
Production is live and stable.
We want to avoid losing any recent customizations .

Any guidance or best practices on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated!

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Dynamics 365 Finance

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Martin Dráb 237,967 Most Valuable Professional on at

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If you use a source control system, you have everything there and you're fine.

If not, you'll now learn how bad job you did when (not) setting up your processes.

You can't get models from production, because none exist there. Models are for development; what you deploy to production are binaries (such as DLL files with CIL) that were created by compiling source code in models.

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Patelniraj8 18 on at

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Is there a way MS can help in here???

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udaY-ch 5,133 on at

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Hi

Yes, reaching Microsoft is the only option.

Since this is a azure hosted VM. Check whether the back up is enabled on the Azure. May be that would help to recover the deleted VM, I haven't tried that but there is a possiblity to duplicate the vm with a backup.

Thanks

Uday

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Martin Dráb 237,967 Most Valuable Professional on at

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There is no way how to get source code from production, because it simply doesn't exist there. Not even Microsoft can give you what doesn't exist.

Without source control, your only chance (that I can think of) is backups and deployable packages (that may optionally include source code).

You could get some information from binaries by decompiling CIL, but it's nothing close to the original source code and metadata.

If you don't use source control, or backups at least, you're saying that you're fine with losing it at any moment. Then you shouldn't be surprised when it actually happens. Next time, make sure you set up source control before writing any code, and create deployable packages by pipelines from source control, ensuring that all code getting into production comes from source control.

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André Arnaud de Cal... 301,130 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi Patelniraj8,

As mentioned below by Martin, if you didn't save anything using a source control system or created other backups, there is no way to retrieve the source code as it was on your development environment. I do concur with Martin that you should learn from this disaster and ensure you will have a proper source control and build pipeline in place for the future.

I feel sorry for you, but we can't help you. As you mentioned, you don't have a recent backup, but this can indicate you have a bit older backup of the models. You can try to start again from these.

Then when you create a copy of the current production environment, you can check the data model for any table and field added as part of your customizations. Ensure that at least you recreate these before moving again new deployments to your production to prevent any data loss.

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Navneeth Nagrajan 2,438 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi PatelNiraj8,

Microsoft can give you a copy of the production database, however source code ownership is with the developers on the partner side or customer side. Both source code and version controlling the source code.

As Martin mentioned, you can get a latest copy of the deployable package from Dynamics 365 Lifecycle Services (LCS) -> <LCSProjectName> -> Asset Library.

First step is to host your source code on Azure DevOps version controlling using team Foundation servics (TFS) or Git in Azure Devops. In addition to this, consider a branching strategy i.e. segregate your source code into Dev, Release and Prod/Main branches (If you are using TFS) or Dev, Release and master (if you are using Git).

Before you sync source code from Azure Devops version controlling system ensure you backup all the new local development machine source code (X++ scripts or source code components like tables, forms, menu items etc.).

References:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/dev-tools/version-control-metadata-navigation

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/dev-itpro/dev-tools/branching

Hope this helps. Happy to answer questions, if any.

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