Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Flexible Service Updates: What You Need to Know

Microsoft is revolutionizing the way it delivers service updates, introducing more flexibility and control for its customers starting in April 2024.  Microsoft is rolling out significant changes that will benefit organizations by allowing them to better plan and execute their update processes. Here’s everything you need to know about these updates.

Scheduled and Flexible Autoupdates

Previously, Microsoft service updates were automatically applied, with limited options for organizations to manage the timing. However, with the new update model, starting with the 10.0.39 release, Microsoft is offering two auto-update windows for each service update, spaced four weeks apart. This change gives customers the ability to select the update window that best fits their validation processes and operational schedules.

Service Update Frequency and Requirements

Organizations can now take up to four service updates per year, with a minimum requirement of two updates annually. Importantly, customers have the option to pause one update at a time. This provides further flexibility. This pause can apply to either the user acceptance testing (UAT) sandbox environment, the production environment, or both. After the pause window ends, if a supported service update hasn’t been applied by the customer, Microsoft will automatically apply the latest update based on configurations in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services.

Key Changes in 2024

• Service Update Schedule: Updates are now provided four times a year: February, April, July, and October.
• Update Flexibility: Starting April 2024, customers can choose their auto-update windows.
• Update Pause Limitation: As of February 19, 2024, the maximum number of consecutive updates that can be paused is reduced to one, maintaining the minimum requirement of two updates per year due to extended-release durations.

Understanding Release Schedules and Options

The release schedule has been updated to clearly convey important details, with labels indicating the calendar year and quarter of the auto-update production start date, followed by the product version. Major releases are denoted with an asterisk (*). For example, “CY24Q2: 10.0.39” refers to a major update in the second quarter of 2024.

Microsoft ensures customers have early access to upcoming service updates through previews, allowing for validation of customizations and early learning of new features. Customers can manually apply updates to any of their environments via self-update or adhere to the default release schedule and receive autoupdates as scheduled through Lifecycle Services. This approach maintains backward compatibility, simplifying the update process and eliminating the need for expensive upgrades every few years.