Unified Developer experience for Finance & Operations – Install and configure local machine for Development

 

1.   Prerequisites

Below are the list of prerequisites for Unified developer experience.

    1.     Access to a provisioned developer-focused sandbox environment.   The user account you'll be using for development in the sandbox environment must be assigned the System Administrator role.

    2.     The development machine running Microsoft Windows must have Visual Studio 2019 installed along with the below list of Visual Studio components.

         3.  MS SQL Server Express 2019

         4.   7zip 

2.   Connect to your online environment.

     Follow the below step by step instructions to connect to online environment.

      1.      Install Power Platform extension for Visual Studio (What is Power Platform Tools for Visual Studio)

1.                      To install Power platform extension, go to Extensions menu>Manage extensions and choose               the Power Platform Tools and download. Close the Visual studio and install the Extension.

2. In the Tools menu, select Connect to Dataverse or Download FinOps assets. The former only downloads assets if not already downloaded once while the latter will download even if you had downloaded earlier.
3. Select the Show advanced option Login. Choose not to use the signed-in user if you need to use another account with a Visual Studio license. Enter the credentials as necessary to match your development user account.

      4. When presented with a dialog to select a solution, select “Default”, and then choose Done.

      5. You will be presented with a list of Dataverse organizations (databases deployed). Find the sandbox environment created for online development and connect to it.

3.   Download and install the finance and operations extension and metadata.

1.    After installing the Power Platform Tools extension and connecting to the online Dataverse sandbox environment, you'll be presented with a dialog to download the finance and operations Visual Studio extension and metadata.

        (Refer the below common issues section if the Popup didn’t appear)

2.    Configure settings using the Visual Studio setting Tools > Options > Power Platform Tools.

    

    3.     Install VSIX file from the below path.

4.   Extract system metadata.

         1.     Downloaded assets can be found in the following location:

    C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Dynamics365\<ApplicationVersion>

Three files are downloaded and described below.

a)     System metadata is downloaded as PackagesLocalDirectory.zip.

b)     Backup of the cross-reference database as DYNAMICSXREFDB.bak

 

Unblock any of the three files that needs unblocking.

  2.  Create a new folder “AOSService” in C:\ and unpack the PackagesLocalDirectory.zip file as   PackagesLocalDirectory by using the 7zip utility.

3.          3.     Create a new sub folder “Custom” under C:\AOSService

5.   Configure the finance and operations extension.

1.               1. Start Visual Studio, and then select Continue without code from the dialog.

2. Navigate to Extensions > Dynamics 365 > Configure Metadata for the first time.
   If you do not see the Configure Metadata option, open Extensions > Dynamics 365 > Infolog and retry.

3. On the configuration form, select New and then create a new configuration as below.

  Select the Current check box to make the configuration active.

1.           Connect to the VSTS and map the C:\AOSService\Custom folder to Dev Branch as below.

4. Select Save. Once the updates are saved the below message will be displayed.

5. Once the configuration completes, navigate to View > Application Explorer. You should see the Application Explorer window open. You may have to restart Visual Studio first.

6.   Install ISV licenses.

    1.     Create new folder “__License” in the model where the licenses to be installed and then deploy the          models to online environment.  

        Place the license files under the __License folder

        For this operation, use the Extension > Dynamics 365 > Deploy > Deploy Models to Online                Environment menu item. The dialog that appears allows you to select the packages to deploy. In            this case, you need to select "MyTestModel."

        2.   Once the deployment is done perform the full build from Extension > Dynamics         365 >Synchronize database

        Once the sync is successful then the ISV licenses will be enabled in cloud environment

7. Common issues 

    The below are the list of common issues in preview version.

1.      Label ids are being displayed instead of labels.

The label Id’s are being displayed instead of labels like  @XXX1234.

To fix this problem, build the models along with the “Deploy to cloud online environment” option as below.

2.  The download assets option not popping up after connecting to the online Dataverse sandbox environment.

To fix this problem, disable the below check box from Toos>Options and Connect to Dataverse sandbox again