Unified Interface Migration - Part 2

Introduction

Migration of Dynamics 365 legacy web client interfaces to Unified interface is not an easy process, especially for complex and highly customized implementation. Once Unified Interface has been enabled from the admin center, it would require an extensive verification and validation end to end before handover to the business users.

This article is intended to explain how you can enable the Unified interface of Dynamics 365 implementation in multiple phases to overcome the load of verifying the entire application simultaneously and give the flexibility to onboard the user to the application in stages.

Benefits:

This approach will give the flexibility to enable Unified Interface in multiple phases.
Privilege to migrate a selected set of functionality/interfaces over the unified interface.
A cost-effective approach can be starting migration with fewer resources.
Less effort in planning as this migration will be commenced in multiple phases.
This also gives privilege to the customer to see the look & feel of the new interface without waiting for complete migration.
Safety benefits to avoid any uncertainty that may not be supported over new interface will not be the showstopper for the entire application use.
The modular approach recommended for higher quality output.

Let’s dive deep in the customize unified interface migration approach

In this demo, I have divided the migration into three phases, but You can divide into multiple phases based on the independent set of working areas.

Modules to be migrate

Public Affairs
Sales
Customer Service

It's recommended that customization/change over in dynamics must be managed by solution. The solution is a container for all the customized components of a specific implementation. Solutions are also used to migrating changes from one environment to another.

Step 2- Create a new solution named “Unified Interface Migration” to store the migration component.

Note: An initial solution version can be named version 1.0.0.0 (major.minor.build.revision), but you can also use a date format 2018.04.10.01 (yyyy.mm.dd.revision).

Major is incremented every time you introduce some significant functionality or upgraded to a new version of CRM.

Minor is incremented every time you release an update to the solution that introduces minor features that are building on existing functionality.

Build & revision is incremented with every single release - e.g. bug fixes

Step 3- Create a Model Driver App named “Unified Interface Migration” from the dynamics 365 home interface.

Step 4- Use the newly created solution as the source for this app.

Step 5- Add a site map in the solution.

Step 6- add the app also in the solution area.

All the above steps are pre-requisite to creating a package, to contain the component for unified interface enablement, testing, and this will use to migrate the change to other instances.

Let’s start the first phase of migration

In the first phase, some common entities are included that used across the application like account, contact task, etc. All these entities are required to add in the sitemap as menu options.