Business Central updates should be managed to avoid all environments getting updated at the same time. Once live, unless you opt in the Update Protection plan, you will be self-managing your updates.

 

If you need assistance with updates or solution use, contact our helpdesk at support@opendoorerp.com. 

Our eagle-eyed reviewers missed a typo or there's a revision to make to our documentation? Send us a note at hi@opendoorerp.com. 

 

Knowing an update is available

While there are no official notifications (as of yet) that updates are available, Microsoft will publish information on their different sites and post about updates on social channels. We heard your feedback and are working on notifying designated contacts of Microsoft and ODT apps updates - these notifications are not available yet. 


When a new version becomes available, the notification contacts set on your environments will receive a notification that an update is scheduled. This notification is automated and comes from Microsoft scheduling the updates for you. IMPORTANT: If you do not take action, the updates will rollout automatically on sandboxes and production environments - at the same time. This is not recommended. 


Finding release notes

To know what will be new or changed in an update, review the release notes: 


Setting up the Business Central Admin Center

Review your Business Central Admin Center to: 

  • Set an Update Window for all environments. The update window should be off hours to avoid an update starting while users are working as it could be disruptive. Note that Microsoft will sometimes push critical urgent updates during hours when it’s unavoidable.
  • Set an Update Cadence for apps. The recommended is 'with minors and majors' so you're solutions always are on the latest version. 
  • Set Notification Contacts for your environments. These contacts receive update scheduling, success, failure, and warning notifications. You should set at least two people to make sure notifications are always received, and support@opendoorerp.com should also be listed so we're notified and can assist as needed. 

This needs to be done once and will be used for all future updates. 


Managing updates

When an update becomes available:

  1. If the sandbox environment is not recent, create a new one by copying the Production environment. Sandboxes cannot be “refreshed”, they’re deleted, then a new one created. You can have up to 3 sandboxes at the same time. We recommend using the date and country in the name (Sandbox_CA_01FEB2023) so you can easily how recently a sandbox was created. If you have more than one production environment, make sure to include identifiers like the localization/country and/or name in the sandbox name (Sandbox_CA_01FEB2023, Sandbox_US_01FEB2023 or Sandbox_Corp_CA_01FEB2023, Sandbox_Inc_US_01FEB2023). A clear name helps you manage your environments and helps us support you. 
  2. Schedule the update of Production as late as allowed. This is important - you want time to review and test in a sandbox and time to communicate with your users before the production environment is updated. 
  3. Schedule the update of Sandbox as early as possible – This update will send an email notification if there is a problem. You should make sure the Notification Contact information is correct in the Admin portal.
  4. Once an environment successfully updated to the latest Business Central version, update apps if additional updates are available – This step needs to be monitored as an app update failure will not send an email notification. You can only see it from the apps update page after an update attempt. An app update takes a couple minutes to run (under 15), you can watch for completion. 
  5. Review Sandbox by running quick tests on areas important to your processes. You want to get familiar with the changes, and make sure the application behaves as expected.
  6. If you want, reschedule the update of your production environment to an earlier date. Make sure your users know an update is coming and what to expect!


IMPORTANT! If you update a sandbox environment and customizations are missing after the update, it's because they were installed in a pre-release type of extension ('DEV' type when you look at Extension Management in Business Central). This is normal, simple to resolve, and can only happen in sandboxes - not in production - and only for extensions in development/testing. DEV extensions are usually only found in development environments (sandbox with DEV in the name) but could be installed on test sandboxes as needed. The solution is to log a ticket to request we re-release customizations on the affected environment. 


Compatibility notifications

When Microsoft releases new versions of Business Central, your customizations might require maintenance. 

 

What maintenance means in that context is that Microsoft are making changes to Business Central core and the apps or extensions are dependent/linked to these changes and need to be updated to fit the new structure. This maintenance requires development and testing time.


If you're not on the Update Protection plan and are self-managing updates, we review, make the required changes, and release them to your sandbox and will work under a ticket. We cannot provide an estimate for this type of change. We will let you know when the updated extension is released on your sandbox environment(s) so you can manage the Business Central update. If you prefer, we can manage the update cycle up to completion, and get your sandbox and production environments to the latest version. 


If you're on the Update Protection plan, we will manage these notifications and the update cycle for you. 

 

If you are a Business Central Admin Center notification contact for your organization, you will receive a notification in advance, warning you that maintenance is required. The subject of this notification is "Modify your extension so it's compatible with the version… of Business Central". These notifications are sent on a regular schedule by the systems and cannot be turned off, you can ignore repeated notifications. These are not errors, a system issue or an urgent action to take. The notification are advanced warnings sent by Microsoft so you can prepare for an update. 


You should make sure support@opendoorerp.com is set as a notification contact on your environments (this is done in the Business Central Admin Center) so we also get those notifications. This will make sure we support you effectively. If we're not a notification contact in your environments, we will not receive the notifications and you need to send them to us at support@opendoorerp.com to log a ticket and request assistance. 


The notifications look like this: