Skip to main content

Notifications

Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
Unanswered

In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.

Posted on by

With Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS, Microsoft is sending in-product notifications such as the one below when customers have environments on too old versions:

pastedimage1645020479335v1.png

There are two variations of the notification (NOTE: notification verbatim might change in future updates):

  • Level one: One or more of your Business Central environments will soon expire. Please contact your administrator to resolve the problem.
  • Level two: The new version of Business Central brings security updates and improvements. One or more of your environments cannot be updated. Contact your administrator immediately to resolve the problem and avoid potential disruption.

Microsoft sends the first notification relatively early, typically after an environment has missed the update deadline. The scope of this first message is to be a kind reminder to customers that an upgrade is needed.

Microsoft sends the second notification when environments get close to the 150 day mark, which is the point where operations may start to force-uninstall Per Tenant Extensions (PTEs) that could be preventing upgrades. The scope of this second message is to kindly understand that if an action is not taken soon then system functionality may be impacted.

WHY MICROSOFT SEND THESE NOTIFICATIONS?

Customers and partners are responsible for keeping their PTEs up to date. This is duly reported officially here

Maintain AppSource apps and per-tenant extensions - Business Central | Microsoft Docs

Now a bit of history.

In some cases, PTEs cannot be upgraded to newer versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central. When this happens, Microsoft is sending emails to the notification recipients that has been registered in Tenant Admin Center (TAC) and expects partners or customers to resolve the issue reported.

Within years, email notifications have proved to be not efficient as expected, therefore since fall 2021, Microsoft have been sending in-product notifications to end users in order to reach out a broader audience and resolve the issue reported in a timely manner.

 

WHICH USERS AND CUSTOMERS GET THESE IN-PRODUCT NOTIFICATIONS?

Microsoft send the notification to customers who have environments on too old versions.

The notification is sent to all users and not just admins.

The notification is sent when a user logs into any environment and not only when they log into the environment that has an old version.

Practical example:

  • Customer has two environments: Environment A and Environment B
  • Environment A is on version 18.5
  • Environment B is on version 19.2
  • Upgrade away from 18.5 to 19.0 was made available on 1st October 2021. Microsoft is giving customers 2 months to upgrade for major versions, and then an additional 2 weeks of buffer operational time.
  • Therefore, on 15th December, Microsoft starts to send the first in-product notification.
  • In-product notification reaches all users and also if they log into Environment B.

In general, the timeline is the following (for a major update):

  • 2.5 months of no notifications, but with emails sent to the registered notification recipients. If the update fail, Microsoft reschedule automatically and thus will end up sending multiple emails.
  • 1.5 months of first notifications
  • 1 month of second notifications
  • At this point Microsoft typically will start the process of force-uninstalling PTEs (obviously without deleting the data)

 

WHAT IS THE ACTION FROM PARTNER/CUSTOMER WHEN THEY RECEIVE IN-PRODUCT NOTIFICATIONS?

These notifications cannot be turned off, hence the action to be taken is to ensure all environments get updated in time.

Microsoft strongly suggests partner and customer to register multiple notification recipients in the Admin Center. It is very easy. See below how to do it:

Managing Tenant-Specific Notifications - Business Central | Microsoft Docs

because these recipients will get emails when environments fail to be updated and then they can take actions accordingly and in a timely manner.

 

WHY IN-PRODUCT NOTIFICATIONS REACH OUT ALL USERS AND NOT ONLY ADMINS?

Microsoft has already sent emails to those roles for a discrete period and now it is taking the next step and informing regular users. For mutual benefit, this will ensure to have environments always up to date and on time.

Categories:
  • In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.
    Is there any way to get it to remove faster Christian Heide Damm ? We had this due to an old sandbox - I have soft deleted the sandbox but we still get the error to all our end users, causing a lot of noise and disruption.
  • In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.
    How to get rid of level 2 notification, we dont want it and its difficult to make customer understand this, not all customer are techies and understanding, this is really creating confusions and panicking the end user.
  • grantb Profile Picture
    grantb 25 on at
    In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.
    all our customers started getting this aug 31, 2023. even though they are on 22.3 or 22.4. (plenty current).
     
    would be nice if the message wasn't generic and ambiguous. 1000s of hours are being wasted daily partners reassuring customers that there is nothing to worry about temporarily. Great alert when it works. Very annoying the false positives that are spamming everyone today.
  • RE: In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.

    Hi, expect about one day. Br., Christian

  • RE: In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.

    Hi.

    How long it takes to dessapear the level 2 notification when the enviroments are updated?

    I've a case where I had a stuck 18.5 version, but this night was updated.

    Now I have my production enviroment at 19.3 and Sandboxes at 19.4 and still getting the Level 2 notification.

    Thanks

  • Marco Mels Profile Picture
    Marco Mels on at
    RE: In-Product notifications in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS. FAQs.

    Thank you for sharing Duilio!

Under review

Thank you for your reply! To ensure a great experience for everyone, your content is awaiting approval by our Community Managers. Please check back later.

Helpful resources

Quick Links

November Spotlight Star - Khushbu Rajvi

Congratulations to a top community star!

Forum Structure Changes Complete!

🔔 Be sure to subscribe to the new forums you are interested in to stay up to date! 🔔

Dynamics 365 Community Platform update – Oct 28

Welcome to the next edition of the Community Platform Update. This is a status …

Leaderboard

#1
André Arnaud de Calavon Profile Picture

André Arnaud de Cal... 290,902 Super User 2024 Season 2

#2
Martin Dráb Profile Picture

Martin Dráb 229,316 Most Valuable Professional

#3
nmaenpaa Profile Picture

nmaenpaa 101,156

Leaderboard

Featured topics

Product updates

Dynamics 365 release plans