Updated · Originally published
The next time you do a Microsoft Dynamics CRM upgrade, you will likely transition to Microsoft Dynamics 365. But you will still be doing an upgrade.
So it is good to be clear on the steps involved to make sure it is a successful upgrade.
An upgrade is a finite project. There are milestones to complete, and testing is very important. Based on our experience of doing hundreds of Microsoft Dynamics CRM upgrades over the years, this is the process we feel works the best.
1. Development
First we make sure that we understand the customer’s current environment and the version you will be upgrading to. We take a copy of the customer's database and set it up in our development environment. We go through the upgrade and then focus on any scripting or functionality that has been deprecated in the previous versions. We will rewrite those and then go through another round of quality assurance and testing.
2. Our Staging
Once we feel pretty good about that we will set up another server called “staging” and bring the completed development upgrade over to the staging environment. We provide our customers with access to our staging server, do a walkthrough of the upgraded CRM system, and solicit feedback.
We will ask:
- As far as you can see, are there any bugs?
- Is the functionality working as expected?
- Different versions of CRM have different form layouts, so how do the forms look?
- Sometimes we need to retrofit the fields into a logical format within the new version. Do you feel comfortable with the user interface?
3. Your Staging
Once we get to a point where the customer is comfortable that everything is working as expected, we strongly suggest that the customer also have a staging environment. By taking this extra step to stage in your environment, you will see exactly what it will be like in production.
We may be able to identify pieces of the upgrade that worked in OUR environment, but do not work the same in YOUR environment. For example, third-party integrations such as integration with your ERP system. We would want to recreate that integration within your staging environment and test it. Or at the very least, test a limited amount of information going back and forth. Without this step, you would just be crossing your fingers and hoping that the integration works after the upgrade. It is better for everyone if it has been proven to work in advance.
Therefore, our best practice recommendation is to deploy the database to your staging environment and proceed with the upgrade process.
4. User Acceptance Testing
The next step is for the customer to go through UAT, or user acceptance testing. This is where you involve more people in the design and functionality review process within your environment. Then we go through the same process of collecting feedback.
Using these steps, we maintain a consistent process, and we advise customers not to make changes in their staging environment. You document what changes need to be made so we can continue our more regimented process of deploying those changes.
5. Repeat
At this point, we will work through a process to define any changes and then implement them in our development environment. Then we go through the steps again. We will deploy it to our staging environment, where the customer will review, approve, or provide additional feedback. Once approved, we will then deploy it to your staging environment.
6. Go Live
When we have confirmation and are in agreement that everything looks good within your staging environment, we schedule a “Go Live” date with a corresponding blackout period. For example, we like to do our upgrades over a weekend. Therefore, we can say that the blackout period for entering new information will start on Friday at 6:00 p.m. At that point, no one should enter any information, although they can still view it.
Over the weekend, we will perform an in-place upgrade within your existing production environment and deploy all the customizations and changes that we made. The customer will go live Monday morning.
7. Training
At this point, we have already scheduled a training session with end users and the CRM administrator at the customer's site. As part of that, we would deploy the Outlook for CRM client if you are using it. Additionally, we typically provide instructions for IT personnel to follow that process or provide the instructions directly to end users.
It is essential to complete this user training as soon as the upgrade is finished. It is also important to make sure that there is buy-in from the users and that they feel their feedback is important.
8. Feedback & Completion
We know that within the first couple of weeks after the Go Live, there will always be end-user feedback. We identify someone at the client’s site as the point person who will capture the feedback, and we go through the same process. This way we can gather all the information and quickly identify which issues we want to work on first and show the users that we are taking their feedback seriously and rectifying any bugs. We will go back and forth with the customer until things are running smoothly and we both consider the upgrade complete.
Performing upgrades is a skill. You will be more successful if you work with a company that has a specific methodology and proven success.
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By Ryan Plourde, ForgeXRM,
