Administrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Online E-Book

Andrey Baludin

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 142

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

This book features all the information you need to get started with administrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Online. It contains detailed information about the admin portal and cloud migration process, all based on real usage experience.
The book starts by covering the data migration process for developers, which will show you how to organize the data without code. You’ll also learn how the admin portal can be useful if you want to export a database copy, restore a backup, and set up telemetry to get detailed information about the call stack and operation statuses. As you progress, you’ll learn how to check your Business Central SaaS environment details, create new and different types of environments, and notifications, and keep your cloud data within limits. Later, you’ll explore how to set up cloud migration from an on-premise environment to SaaS, run the migration, upgrade data, and fix problems if something goes wrong.
By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create new production and sandbox environments, restore them from backups, analyze environment telemetry, and confidently migrate your data to the cloud.

Leseprobe

Administrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Online

A practical guide to SaaS administration and migration from your on-premise Business Central environments to the cloud

Andrey Baludin

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Administrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Online

Copyright © 2022 Packt Publishing

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First published: July 2022

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Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-80323-480-9

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To the memory of my grandparents Ivan, Maria, and Lidia. To my wife, Anastasia, and daughter, Daria, for being the meaning of my life. To my parents, Svetlana and Igor, and to my grandpa Leonid for your faith in me.

– Andrey Baludin

Contributors

About the author

Andrey Baludin is a solution architect at Awara IT Solutions (a Microsoft Gold partner). His educational qualifications include a master's degree from St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. Andrey is a Microsoft MVP. He has been working with Microsoft Dynamics NAV since 2008, from 5.0 to the latest versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central. Andrey is a real fan of Business Central and Azure, and his specialization is integrating Business Central with everything.

I want to thank my employer, Awara IT, for projects, which made this book real, and the brilliant Packt team, who supported me throughout the process.

About the reviewers

Stefano Demiliani is a Microsoft MVP, MCT, and CTO, an Azure solution architect, and a long-time expert on different Microsoft technologies. He's a trainer for Microsoft IT and WE and a speaker at many international conferences. He has worked with Packt Publishing on many IT books, and he's the author of some of the most successful books in the Microsoft Dynamics world. You can reach him on Twitter (@demiliani), LinkedIn, or his site (www.demiliani.com).

Steven Renders is a trainer/consultant, with skills spanning business and technical domains, with more than 20 years of experience. He provides training and consultancy focused on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power BI. Steven is a partner at Plataan.tv, based in Belgium. Plataan is a leading offline and online learning company. It helps organizations and individuals excel through learning and training programs.

On January 1, 2016, Steven received the Microsoft MVP Award. This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high-quality, real-world expertise with others. Steven has authored two books, namely Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 – Professional Reporting and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 – Professional Reporting. He specializes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and business intelligence and reporting.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center

Chapter 1: Overview of the Dynamics 365 Business Central Administration Center

Technical requirements

The Admin Center main page

Accessing the Admin Center from the web client

Accessing the Admin Center through a direct URL

Accessing the Admin Center through the Partner Center

Required roles

Internal users

Delegated admins

Environment types and limits

Overview

Environments limitations

Capacity limitations

Summary

Chapter 2: Managing Business Central Environments

Understanding the Environments list

Creating a production or sandbox environment

Production

Sandbox

Creating a copy of the existing environment

Summary

Chapter 3: Environment Details and Notifications Setup

Detailed information about your environment

Action buttons

Details

Version management

The security group setup

Notification setup

Notification recipients

Upgrade scheduling

Possible upgrade issues

Apps and sessions

Database export

Backup restore

Summary

Chapter 4: Telemetry Setup and Analysis

Environment telemetry in the Admin portal

Environment telemetry in Application Insights

Azure Application Insights

Analyzing telemetry

Custom events

Summary

Chapter 5: Reported Outages and Operations

Reporting an outage

Production outage

Report issue

Submitting a ticket through the admin portal

Environment operations analysis

Summary

Chapter 6: Tenant Capacity Management

Storage capacity usage

Storage capacity by source

Environments quota usage

Storage usage by environment

Some practical advice on how to keep your data within limits

Cleaning up data

Date compression

Data retention policies

Big customers

Summary

Chapter 7: Admin Center APIs

Setting up API authentication

Calling APIs

PowerShell

Postman

Application APIs

Installed apps list

Installing an app

Uninstalling an app

Getting available app updates

Updating an app

Getting app operations

Environment operations APIs

Environment list

Getting an environment

Creating an environment

Deleting an environment

Copying an environment

Renaming an environment

Restoring an environment

Getting available restore periods

Getting used storage for all environments

Getting used storage for a selected environment

Getting quotas

Getting environment operations

Getting operations for all environments

Getting environment database export numbers

Getting environment database export history

Creating a database export

Environment settings APIs

Getting an environment update window

Changing an environment update window

Changing the environment Application Insights key

Getting an environment security group

Setting an environment security group

Deleting an environment security group

Other APIs

Notification settings list

Creating a notification recipient

Deleting a notification recipient

Getting scheduled update information

Rescheduling updates

Getting active sessions

Getting details about a selected session

Killing a session

Getting an environment support contact

Setting an environment support contact

Getting environment telemetry

Summary

Part 2: Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud Migration Tool

Chapter 8: Cloud Migration Schema and Limitations

Technical requirements

Cloud Migration and how to use it

Migration schema and the main nodes

Migration limitation

Summary

Chapter 9: Cloud Migration Setup

Prerequisite 1 – SQL Server setup

Prerequisite 2 – Connection string construction

Prerequisite 3 – Delegated admin consent

Migration setup and the SHIR

Running the cloud migration wizard

Installing the SHIR

Finalizing the cloud migration setup

Cloud migration APIs

Cloud migration setup API

On-premise companies list

Including the on-premise company in the cloud migration

Summary

Chapter 10: Migration Process

Data migration

Data upgrade

Typical failures and how to resolve them

Automating data migration

Summary

Chapter 11: The Real Migration Experience

Cloud Migration – early beginnings and evolution

Issues in the course of implementation

First issue

Second issue

Third issue

Extra issue

Summary

Other Books You May Enjoy

Part 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center

The Dynamics 365 Business Central admin center enables administrators to manage SaaS environments and everything related to them. In this part, you'll learn how to check your Business Central SaaS environment details, create new environments of different types, set up telemetry and notifications, automate tasks, and keep your cloud data within limits.

This part contains the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Overview of the Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin CenterChapter 2, Managing Business Central EnvironmentsChapter 3, Environment Details and Notification SetupChapter 4, Telemetry Setup and AnalysisChapter 5, Reported Outages and OperationsChapter 6, Tenant Capacity ManagementChapter 7, Admin Center API

Chapter 1: Overview of the Dynamics 365 Business Central Administration Center

Hey everyone! Many of you know how to manage on-premises Dynamics NAV and Business Central environments with Server Administration Tool, but how to do it when your environment is somewhere in the cloud? Do you need to ask your Microsoft Partner, or even Microsoft itself, to create a new sandbox, restore a backup, or restart the environment?

Meet the Admin Center, a tool to rule all of your Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS environments.

This chapter contains common information on how to start your work with the Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center. You will learn how to get access to the center in different ways and assign Business Central licenses. In addition, you will get details about environment types, limits, and the planning of your free space.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following main topics:

The Admin Center main pageRequired rolesEnvironment types and limits

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to set up the required permissions and get access to the Admin Center.

Technical requirements

To have access to the Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center, you must be one of the following user types:

An internal user with a Global administrator or Dynamics 365 administrator roleA delegated administrator from the assigned partner with an Administrator Agent or Helpdesk Agent role

We will learn how to assign these roles in the next sections.

The Admin Center main page

What is the Admin Center? It is not an application you need to install on your laptop. It lives directly in your internet browser as a website. You need to open it and sign in with a Microsoft account assigned with the required role.

You can open the Admin Center main page using either of these three ways:

From the Dynamics 365 Business Central web clientUsing a direct URLFrom the Microsoft Partner Center

Accessing the Admin Center from the web client

Open your Dynamics 365 Business Central environment and click on the Settings icon in the top-right corner. The Settings window will open and you will see the Admin Center link:

Figure 1.1 – Admin Center in Settings

Important Note

If you cannot see the Admin Center link from the web client, this means that you don't have the required permissions described previously.

Click on the link and you will get the center in a new window:

Figure 1.2 – Admin Center home page

Accessing the Admin Center through a direct URL

This is my most-used way of accessing the Admin Center, especially if you have several tenants. You can create and save the Admin Center's URL for each customer's tenant.

Let's look at the center's URL:

Figure 1.3 – Admin Center URL with the tenant ID

The URL consists of this construction: https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/<<Tenant ID>>/admin.

Here, <<Tenant ID>> is your tenant ID. So, if you know the ID, you can easily create the Admin Center URL and open it without entering the web client.