LCS are one of the most important components of the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations architecture. LCS are a Microsoft Azure-based collaboration portal that provides a unifying, collaborative environment, along with a set of regularly updated services that help you manage the application life cycle of your Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations implementations.

The following diagram shows the various services supported by LCS during the implementation, update, and support phases of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations:

As is clearly evident, LCS are used throughout the life cycle of the project. You will learn about the different tools available in detail throughout this book.

The ALM for on-premises deployments is also orchestrated through LCS. Customers can use LCS to help manage their on-premises deployments. The following diagram shows the on-premises ALM process through LCS:

As shown in the diagram, similar to cloud deployment, LCS can be used to synchronize the LCS project artifacts to Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). The developer can use the one-box cloud machine or already downloaded machines to get the latest code in their development environment. Once done, the code is checked in the VSTS. The cloud build environment can pull the latest code and generate the deployable artifacts that can be uploaded to the LCS asset library. The on-premises, production, or sandbox environment can be serviced directly through LCS with the help of the environment orchestrator within the Service Fabric standalone cluster node.

As mentioned earlier, LCS is one of the most important components of the overall Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations architecture as it is used throughout the life cycle of the implementation project and beyond. We have dedicated Chapter 3, Lifecycle Services (LCS) and Tools, to covering various other features of LCS.