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