As you learned in the preceding sections and chapters, managing data and its configuration is highly important and Microsoft has provided a lot of tools that we can leverage to do so. However, selecting the right tools for the right purpose must be done carefully. Let's look at an end-to-end visual of all the tools and elements that can be used to manage the data and configuration in your implementation and beyond.
The following diagram shows the information flow and the tools that are leveraged within Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, as well as LCS:
The sequence of activities within Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations that are used to manage the data and its configuration starts with the identification and creation of data entities. Once the data entity and related entities have been identified, they can be grouped together in a data package, where the dependencies can also be assigned. These data packages are built using a data project.
For an implementation initiative, when you need to start from ground zero, the identification of these entities could be time-consuming. This activity can be avoided using the default data templates provided by Microsoft or by creating your own data templates. These templates are meant to be reused to create data projects, whether you need to load the information in the same environment or another environment.
While the full suite of data and configuration activities can be done entirely in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Microsoft has provided more tools in LCS. These tools in LCS primarily start with data packages. These are the same data packages that are created in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations that could be added to the LCS asset library and used to import the data and configuration in an environment.
You can directly execute these data packages in LCS or combine them and sequence them in a PDP and apply them to an environment using the configuration and data manager. You can also leverage the predefined templates from Microsoft, available as configuration data packages, which can be downloaded and updated with customer-specific information/data and uploaded back into LCS so that they can be applied to an environment. These configuration data templates can also be directly processed in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations using the data management framework.