How I implemented CI/CD for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Projects
Dynamics 365 development and deployment across environments in general is a time-consuming and totally developer-dependent activity.
In the recent company I joined, this was an ongoing problem. I always see problems as an opportunity for improvements, so I picked this as the first item to explore and I did a lot of research to understand how this can be improved.
With my prior experience in automating deployments in other technologies, I felt I could do similar deployment automation, but the dynamics app deployment is totally different compared to other technologies — not pretty straightforward — the built artifacts cannot be just packaged using default packaging tools and deployed to the target environment we used to do in other technologies
So in the quest to improve this, I found out an add-on tool for the Azure DevOps (ADO) environment — Power DevOps Tools
I configured and played around the tool and this was helping with our basic needs to package the built files and deploy the final zip file to the target environment. I did a few test runs with sample projects and they were deploying good.
Demoed the new process to senior leads and they were excited to use the tool and the CI/CD was implemented with great success for about a year now and I felt Mission Accomplished with that process.
Adding a few screenshots for the build and release pipeline in ADO.
