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Good practice for environments when working with Microsoft Partner ?

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Posted on by Fares 34
Hello,
 
 
We went live with BC a few months ago and are currently struggling with the sandbox environnements.
 
Our go-live only covered the essentials and we have several more phases planned to added more features through customization with our partner.
 
The 3 sandbox environnements are not enough to dedicate one for custom development, one for development QC before shipping, another for client testing and acceptance of new developement, and another for general support. We tried to see which usecases can be done in the same environnement but all scenario require some serious compromise and great discipline in making sure people are not pushing different developements at the same time.
 
We understand we can't just buy one extra sandbox environnement and need to buy the whole Production + 3 sandbox for any extra environnement but I'm wondering if the development and development testing should really happen on our environnements or if they should happen on the partner's Sandbox environnements (I read about the feature and I'm not sure if that's the purpose of it).
 
I'm looking for insight to better help steer the conversation with our vendor and decide how we move forward.
 
Thank you.
 
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  • Verified answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    YUN ZHU 68,142 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Good practice for environments when working with Microsoft Partner ?
    Generally, the development of large projects is done locally (Docker environment), not in the cloud Sandbox environment. Of course, if there are fewer developers, such as 1 to 2 people, Cloud Sandbox is not impossible. However, anyone who has developed knows that multiple developers cannot publish extensions to the same environment at the same time. If the environments are not independent, this will cause many problems. 
    I'm not sure why your partners insist on using cloud sandbox. If they are Microsoft partners, they should be able to develop locally or in partner sandbox.
     
    Hope this can give you some hints.
    Thanks.
    ZHU
  • Suggested answer
    Valentin Castravet Profile Picture
    Valentin Castravet 21,633 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Good practice for environments when working with Microsoft Partner ?
    From your explanation, I understand that the partner's environnements can't be made a copy of any our own environnements so they have some representative data and configurations ?
     
    That's correct. 
     
    They claim that the developers and analysts cannot fully test in the same environnement they develop in and need a second one dedicated to testing.
    Maybe there's a reason for this as its hard to tell without knowing the full scope of the customizations, but usually this is not something I see. Typically, 1 environment is enough for development and for testing the development. 
     
    They also claim that general support cannot use any of those environnements for figuring out issues in the published customizations as the different teams would be messing with each other work.
    I agree with this but for another reason, typically you want to troubleshoot any issues in an environment that has the same customizations as the production environment. 
     
  • Fares Profile Picture
    Fares 34 on at
    Good practice for environments when working with Microsoft Partner ?
    Hi Valentin,
     
    Thank you for the answer.
     
    From your explanation, I understand that the partner's environnements can't be made a copy of any our own environnements so they have some representative data and configurations ?
     
    I don't think there are that many developers working on cutomizations, the names I've seen in project reviews suggest only two developpers are assigned the different requests. We have a couple dozen such requests and we expect them to develop and test them thorougly before offering them to us for testing in a controlled environnement representative of production and then finally deploy to production if everything is up to spec.
     
    They claim that the developers and analysts cannot fully test in the same environnement they develop in and need a second one dedicated to testing. They also claim that general support cannot use any of those environnements for figuring out issues in the published customizations as the different teams would be messing with each other work.
     
    The customization we're working with is pretty severe, it tackles how we manage the maintenance of our assets (using Dynaway add-on) and connects the backend to a web portal where technicians actually interact with the work orders.
     
    Thanks again.
    Fares
     
  • Suggested answer
    Valentin Castravet Profile Picture
    Valentin Castravet 21,633 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at
    Good practice for environnements when working with Microsoft Partner ?
    That seems like more sandbox environments than I've typically seen. Usually one or two sandboxes are enough. As in your case one sandbox for general support and one for custom development/development QC/client testing. Is your partner making that many customizations with that many developers that one development environment is not enough for them? I would say this is something they have to figure out rather than make you pay for a 4th sandbox environment. In this case it sounds like perhaps its better for them to use their internal environment. 
     
    It really depends on whose environment the development happens (client or partner) - I've seen partners do both. Some partners always start in their own internal environment. Especially if its a customization that will require a few iterations/testing before it works, it will happen in the partner's environment as to not keep publishing it in the client's sandbox. If its a customization that is heavily reliant on the client's data it makes sense to do it in the client's sandbox where the data is without having to recreate it. 
     
    Perhaps other users will have additional viewpoints. 
     

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