Now that we understand the production environment and the roles and responsibilities involved, let's focus on the go-live activities, that is, what needs to be done as part of go-live. Depending on the size of the project and the scope of go-live, there can be hundreds of activities that need to be performed during go-live.
At a high level, the following list represents the various key activities performed during go-live:
- Final code deployment: You need to deploy the final signed-off application, including all your customizations, ISV solutions, and so on. For cloud deployment, you have to submit a service request to deploy the final build on the production environment before go-live.
- Dependent application changes: As part of your implementation project, you may have some new or existing application changes that integrate with or support Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition; for example, changes to your front office applications, application code for integration, and so on.
- Golden configuration and master data: As part of the project, you must be maintaining a golden configuration and master data environment that has already been tested. You need to bring this golden configuration to your production environment. This golden configuration can also include your initial data migration if you have built-in incremental data migration.
For cloud deployments, you can bring the database backup of your golden configuration environment, apply it to the production environment before go-live, and then update any additional final configurations and settings on top of it. - Additional setup and integrations: After the golden configuration and master data has been loaded, you may need to set up some additional configurations, such as integration settings, batch jobs, and so on. An ideal scenario would be to have most of the configurations as part of the golden configuration, but there could still be some configurations that need to be updated or created for the production environment.
- Final data migration and cut-over: Once you have your golden configuration and the initial data migration in the production environment, you may have to run the final data migration to catch up on any new transactions that were generated in your legacy system for the final cut-over. You will probably be doing this with a system downtime so that no new transactions are generated in the legacy system.
- Validation and sign-off: Once the final data migration is done, it is time for business users to run validation and create some staged end-to-end transactions to make sure that the system is ready for production use.
Running multiple rounds of simulation or mock releases before the final go-live will help you identify any gaps or issues in the release steps. It is recommended to execute two or three mock go-lives to prepare for go-live.
Understanding the go-live activities and following them will ensure you have a smooth go-live. The core team needs to keep track of these activities and keep all the stakeholders informed of their progress. In the next section, we will talk about go-live readiness.