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Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

How To Migrate Configuration Data Between Environments?

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Posted on by 77

We are using an application life-cycle management (ALM) approach to D365CE development using solutionpackager.exe and git. This works acceptably for developing and moving solutions from dev -> integration -> UAT -> production.

What we are missing is a method to safely manage Entity data that we use for configuration. E.g. we have lists of custom entity types that should be set up to be processed in different ways. During development we manually set up these values and unit test that they are working. What's a best practice method for:

1) Capturing this configuration data out of a development instance and into git

2) Deploying this configuration data out of git and into the higher environments in turn?

If this was direct SQL development, we would write data manipulation scripts and store them in git. What's the D355CE equivalent of that?

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  • FrankyCRM Profile Picture
    10 on at

    you could develop a simple tool with SSIS to manage configuration data.  You could write your own or purchase extensions like this : www.kingswaysoft.com/.../ssis-integration-toolkit-for-microsoft-dynamics-365

    it would allow you to configure pre-defined steps to move data with same GUID between environments (either cloud or on-prmeise).

  • Dave Potts Brit Eng Profile Picture
    77 on at

    That's roughly what we do currently. The issue is that it relies on one golden CRM environment as the source of the Entities. That doesn't lend itself to repeatable builds.

  • Suggested answer
    Joseph McGregor Macdonald Profile Picture
    597 on at

    Not sure how it will fit with your process and approach for solution management but my I do this with a release package feature in a visual studio extension. It has been working well for me over a long period of time

    Basically I have a Visual Studio extension which includes a feature for release packages. It performs the following functions

    1. Stores connections to one or more Dynamics instances within a solution (DEV/TEST/UAT/PROD)

    2. Has a feature to create/generate a 'release package' within the visual studio solution. This creates a solution folder containing a solution .zip and any number of records serialised to XML. These can be any type of record e.g. reference data, configuration data, or portal configurations etc

    3. At any point during a release iteration the solution in the package can be updated or more records added to it

    4. The solution 'package' can be right clicked and deployed into a target instance. This is essentially one click deployment into TEST/UAT PRODUCTION

    5. Release folders are named by solution version so incrementing the solution version each release means a new release package is maintained within the solution

    The extension source code is open source in the github repository here github.com/.../XRM-Developer-Tool

    The Visual Studio extension is also available on the visual studio marketplace if you want to try it out. This article I wrote explains its features including how to install it in the IDE josephmcmac.wordpress.com/.../dynamics-365-visual-studio-extention-josephm-xrm-vsix

    Note the extension (and the app in the repository)  also has a feature for ad hoc migration of records between instances which also works well, but unlike the aforementioned release package feature, is not designed within a deployment process as per your question topic

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