Dynamics 365 FO - Developer Environment and Development Process

Nghia Song - Microsoft Dynamics 365 Technical Consultant

Nghia Song
Tel - WhatsApp: +84967324794
Email: songnghia.uit@gmail.com

Developer environment

As a developer working with Finance and Operations apps, it's important to have a firm grasp of the main architecture components of the Dynamics 365 ecosystem and Finance and Operations apps. Knowledge of core developer concepts, including technical capabilities, source code, testing frameworks, and reporting tools, will support your further efforts in building development skills that you can apply to Finance and Operations apps.

The finance and operations apps enable the entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) application suite as a cloud-based solution, for both public and private clouds, as well as on-premises. The apps leverage the speed, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness of working in the cloud while building on the latest technology from Microsoft. The development experience includes:

Development tools that are decoupled from any running environment. You develop against local, XML-based files, not the online database.
Microsoft Visual Studio is the development environment. The Visual Studio environment is customized to provide you with a smooth and familiar experience.
The X++ compiler generates Common Intermediate Language (CIL) for all features. CIL is the same intermediate language used by other . NET-based (managed) languages, such as the C# programming language.
You can leverage the browser-based client and the design patterns for forms to provide an improved end-user experience.
The Application Lifecycle Model (ALM) supports build automation, test automation, and deployment of models to the cloud.

The architecture of the development environment resembles the architecture of the cloud instance. It also includes the software development kit (SDK), which consists of the Visual Studio development tools and other components. Source control through Team Foundation Server or Visual Studio Online enables multiple-developer scenarios, where each developer uses a separate development environment. Deployment packages can be compiled and generated on a development environment and deployed to cloud instances by using LCS. The following diagram shows how the key components interact in a development environment.

Development process

Before you begin developing for Finance and Operations apps, make sure that you understand the developer and deployment process, which will help make these processes run smoothly.

All developers for the application work in an individual environment that includes the Visual Studio application. As a reminder, Visual Studio is the integrative development environment (IDE) that is used to develop for Dynamics 365. Deployable packages are created in Visual Studio and then deployed to sandbox, test, and production environments by using Lifecycle Services (LCS).

When finishing your code and customizations in Visual Studio, you must make a few considerations. If several developers are on one project, you should perform a Get Latest process to merge all new code that has been checked in by the other developers, and then perform a local build to ensure that your code will not disturb what is in the Azure DevOps repository.

When both processes have been performed, you can check in your code by using Team Explorer, which is connected to Azure DevOps. The code that is checked in will be built in Azure DevOps by using a build pipeline, and this will create a deployable package. Generally, you will not deploy your own code. By using LCS, you can apply a deployable package by using the Apply updates tool.

Phase Environment Tool Develop Dev VM 1 Build Build VM Dev VM 2 DevOps UAT Deploy mdid.te LCS shared assets The three phases of application lifecycle management and the tools that are involved.