Changed trial environment for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations

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Welcome to my next blog. I this post, I have some good news related to the new trial environment options. Some changes were done by Microsoft which will now give you broader options to try out the Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications Finance, Supply Chain Management and Commerce.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Trial environment

For prospects, but also starting partners, there is an option to try out several Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications. Visit the Microsoft Dynamics 365 trials page to get started.

Trial environment

For Finance and Operations, first select the box with this option. Then you can provide your organizational account, business phone number and click Get started. You will then be guided where Microsoft will setup an environment for you. This can take 15-20 minutes. There after you will receive an email and get access to the demo.

Useful tip: If you are not able to remember the environment URL or if you want to directly spin off a trial for Finance and Operations, you can use the URL https://aka.ms/axtry.

What’s new in the trial environment?

In the past, when a demo was deployed for you, you had only access to one company containing a dataset equal to “Contoso Entertainment System USA”. The company ID was a number. I do think multiple trial users did work on the same machine, each having another legal entity. For this reason, it was not possible to have access to global features like user and security management. Many other global features were read only.

When I recently did create a new trial environment for myself, I noticed a difference in the URL and also several forms like All customers appeared empty. It turned out that I had my user in a ‘DAT’ company which contains all global data. In the new trial, you can now find all legal entities which are also available in a demo or development deployment. To be able to try out features, you first have to switch to another legal entity. To do so, you can click on the word ‘DAT’ in the top bar at the right. Then you can select another legal entity.

Trial environment

There are some different localizations and industry focusses setup in the different companies. Apart from some exceptions, you can use the next logic to see which legal entities might have some experimental data for you.

The first two characters of the legal entity indicates the country. It contains some localized setup. The last two characters define a type of company:

  • MF: Manufacturing company; also setup for logistics and warehouse management
  • SI: Service industries. The setup is mainly focused on project based scenarios
  • RT: Retail. The setup contains examples for retail and commerce.

There is more…

As it looks now, you have a complete environment for your own trial without having to share it with other trial users. For this reason, the next features are opened. The list is a summary of my findings. It might not include all features which are opened now.

  • You can access the Security Framework; add users and configure security roles
  • All features for Data Management are enabled. You can import and export data using data entities. Even more, you can try to setup entity export to BYOD.
  • Odata. You can use the environment to read from and write to entities from other applications. (exception: see below)
  • Open in Excel is also possible; however I’m not sure if this was already an option in the past.
  • Maintain records in the global address book and global products.

Limitations

There are also some limitations on the current trial environment. Below a list of features which can’t be used

  • Activate new financial dimension (needs to have the environment in maintenance mode)
  • Change license configuration keys (needs to have the environment in maintenance mode)
  • Customizations in Visual Studio or apply deployable packages
  • Use the environment in the Power Platform

I had tried to create a Flow using Microsoft Power Automate or a canvas app in Power Apps, but the connector is not recognizing this trial environment. Providing a manual value for environment in the connector did not work while testing the flow. Probably, this will be enabled in the future, but I don’t know the plans. At least, you can also try the Power Platform for free, but at this moment not integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.

Conclusion

It is good to have a trial environment which now is suitable to try out more type of companies, more localizations and more options enabled. On the Microsoft Dynamics Community forum, we recently got questions about options to try out more. Mainly on the connectivity part which is key for cloud based applications, in my opinion. For this reason, I do hope that Microsoft will also open this option.

When you need to try, demo or use all features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, you have to deploy a machine in the cloud or download a VM for local development from Lifecycle Services (LCS). If your organization does not have access, as a partner or customer you can sign up for a preview subscription.

One last tip at the end of this blog: As the company ‘DAT’ is not containing any examples to try out your business scenarios, I would recommend to change the default company on the user options. This will save you from changing the legal entity every time you open the trial environment. If you start a trial for Human Resources, the standard company is already ‘USMF’.



I do hope you liked this post and will add value for you in your daily work as a professional. If you have related questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the Comment feature below.


That’s all for now. Till next time!

23 replies
  1. Cem
    Cem says:

    Thanks a lot for this overview, it has been really helpful. I am in need of a trial in order to test the Revenue Recognition feature, which can only be activated in the license key by putting the machine into maintenance mode. But as you have mentioned, the trial environment cannot be put into maintenance mode. At least, I have tried to access it from LCS and LCS does not show the environment. I have tried creating a LCS project but it only allows NAV as the product. So I am stuck right now. Am I overlooking something? I cannot enroll for a preview unless I have a customer source or partner source account. Which, as a freelancer, I don’t have right now.

    Reply
  2. Tunde Ogunlesi
    Tunde Ogunlesi says:

    Great blog Andre, I recently got access to the trial environment and its loaded with good features, its changed a lot as i used it last year.
    I have been playing around with data management and found it very useful, i also tried to copy data between Legal entities using LCS but it looks as if this is not possible or am i missing something?

    Asset library and Configuration manager are not included in my version of LCS..

    Is my trial environment connected to LCS? how do I check?

    thanks

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Tunde,

      The trials are managed from a Microsoft internal subscription and are not linked to your LCS. For that reason, you can’t use it in this way. It is possible to use the data management features to download the files or packages and manually upload it to your LCS asset library.

      Reply
  3. Tunde
    Tunde says:

    Thank you for your response – do you know how many concurrent users you can have on the trial version?

    I cant find that info anywhere

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Tunde,

      You can login with multiple users. In fact, there is no limitation, but the environment is not scaled for top performance and high number of transactions. I do hope, you will only setup a few users and not invite hundreds of users…

      Reply
  4. Tunde
    Tunde says:

    only a couple of people plus myself – thanks again Andre

    I liked your session on hierarchies on Sunday it was great

    Reply
  5. Vaibhav
    Vaibhav says:

    Hi André,

    Thanks for your blog here.
    I have a question and please if you could help here.

    There is a customer who wish to use a trial version of D365 for Finance.
    The screenshot or the link you have shared, it shows the trial version for Finance and Operations. I understand F&O has now been split into D365 Finance and D365 Supply Chain Mgmt.

    However is there any way, customer can get a trial for D365 Finance specifically?

    Thank You,
    Vaibhav

    Reply
  6. Andreas Raithel
    Andreas Raithel says:

    Hy Andre,
    I’ve deployed a trial environment this way last week and logged in successful and importeed users. As now this week the environment is not avialable any more. Any experience of this? Do you Know how to get any support for issues?
    Thanks in advance, Andreas

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Andreas,

      I do hope yo used the correct URL for this trial. You can always use the next URL: https://aka.ms/axtry. This will link you to your current trial or when it has been expired, you can create a new one.
      I’m also having issues at this moment with running the trial. It seems to be not responding. There might be some maintenance or an outage. I will check it again tomorrow. Otherwise, I will try to reach out to the Microsoft team.

      Reply
  7. Kristiyan G
    Kristiyan G says:

    Hello World!

    Was there a change recently to the Trial Environments that has removed all the other legal entities except from DAT?

    I have tried creating a Trial Environment multiple times, choosing different options. However, every single time I end up with an environment which has only DAT as a Legal Entity.

    Any information on this topic will be much appreciated.

    Reply
  8. Nirmala
    Nirmala says:

    Hi, looks like D365 trail pages are changes. Is there a way to get D365 SCM trail without work accounts?

    Reply
  9. David Griffith
    David Griffith says:

    Hi Andre. What is the current way to get a trial environment of D365FO Finance? It’s been a while and, as far as I can discover so far, this method is no longer possible.

    Reply

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