New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2: Manage Environment Updates More Flexibly

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 1st of the new functionality in the Governance and administration section is manage environment updates more flexibly.

With extended periods for major releases and optional minor updates, administrators have more flexibility to update environments in a way that suits their needs. Businesses have more time to prepare for updates and plan them for less busy periods.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Mar 2025

Feature Details

Previously, relatively rigid update policies were in place for major and minor updates. This release introduces the following changes for much more flexibility:

• Five month update periods for major updates: This change gives more time for thorough testing and preparation before implementing the update. Resellers can spread the workload of updating all customer environments over the entire calendar year to avoid peak periods for major updates. Developers have more time to ensure all apps are compatible with the update, and customers with specific testing and preparation requirements have more time to comply with those requirements.
• Optional minor updates: This change allows administrators to choose when and whether to implement minor updates based on their needs and schedule. The default behavior of environments receiving updates every month doesn’t change. Instead, a new environment-level setting makes it possible to opt-out of monthly minor updates.

As part of these changes, the grace period after the update period for the next major update shortened to one month. As before, the update will run and can’t be postponed to a later date during this grace period. The update will be forced by uninstalling incompatible extensions once the grace period ends.

My Opinion

This change sounds like a strong positive for VARs (Value Added Resellers) as it will allow client updates to be spread out more, allowing for more time for any development updates to be made and tested, and also allow the client to prepare for the upgrade as well, with any changes to process they want to test and prepare if they’re going to start using some of the new functionality.