Are you looking to migrate from your on-premise CRM to Dynamics 365 online? If yes, then you have landed at the right place.
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FastTrack for Dynamics 365
In this blog post, we’ll go through all the details involved in FastTrack process for Dynamics 365. Back in 2013 and 2014, Microsoft started FastTrack process for Office 365 onboarding, guidance and remote assistance. Microsoft built on the success of FastTrack process during 2015 to 2016 and finally launched it for Dynamics 365 in 2017.
FastTrack for Dynamics 365 is available for CRM 2011 to CRM 2015 on-premise organizations (with SQL server 2012 databases). It is a 3-way partnership between Microsoft, Customer and the Microsoft Partner to successfully implement and complete the FastTrack process.
Let’s take a quick look at the onboarding process:
FastTrack provides implementation guidance, including tools and processes, that help with planning, onboarding, adoption and migration to Dynamics 365. FastTrack from Microsoft also provides architectural reviews and technical guidance to make sure that the future implementations are supported by Dynamics 365 platform.
Overall project management resides with the implementation partner and the customer. This includes design sessions, development and testing of customizations and integrations. Another area that requires a lot of preplanning and testing is the security. Lastly, the partner is also responsible for managing training sessions and user adoption sessions.
FastTrack for Dynamics 365 is provided through Lifecycle Services process. It is a guided process to migrate from on-prem to Dynamics 365 online. Through a series of steps, the framework allows customers to keep all existing information and leverage investments in their current implementation. The process also provides a validation service that helps in identifying unsupported customizations.
The FastTrack for Dynamics 365 Lifecycle Services (LCS) process migrates organizations from CRM 2011 to CRM 2015 that are on SQL Server 2012. As part of the migration, all the data, solutions and audit log information will be migrated as it transfers the whole on-premise database to online.
The process can’t solve any potential CRM upgrade issues. Selective data migration is also not possible; however, this is where the implementation partner can work and plan a pre-step to FastTrack process and provide a cleaned-up version of the database.
The partner and vendor would also deal with any third-party integrations or reconfigurations if needed.
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Following are key stages of FastTrack for Dynamics 365 process:
Pre-Req Setup:
During this stage, all the pre-requisites should be completed to ensure a successful delivery of on-premise to online experience. This includes:
- Dynamics 365 Online tenant/organization setup
- Setup Azure subscription
- Setup O365 users
- Setup user licenses
- Get solution files ready
- Get plug-in code ready
- Get activity workflows ready
- Get custom application code ready
- Get user mapping of all users in CRM on-premise with users in Office 365
CRM on-premise to Dynamics 365 online migration:
- Take database backup and upload to Azure.
- Setup staging CRM environment in Azure.
- Run upgrade analysis.
- Fix customizations issues.
- Upgrade CRM through the CRM versions.
- Migrate CRM organization to Dynamics 365 online.
Conclusion
We can say that if implemented properly, Microsoft FastTrack allows smooth migration to Dynamics 365. There are a few common mistakes that you should avoid while taking this route to on-cloud migration. For your convenience, I have discussed in detail a few lessons I learnt while implementing Microsoft FastTrack.
If you have any question or queries, do not hesitate to reach out to us!
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