Any application is released with certain standard features. In most cases, these standard features only fit 80% of the practical business scenarios, but there is the other 20% that are unique to each business/client and that do not fit the standard application offerings. The majority of customers have intentions to implement the ERP system without any customization. However, when a project team starts gathering the requirements and performing fit-gap analysis, the project team needs to decide if customization is needed or whether the gap can be covered with a business process change.
Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations provides a broad variety of technologies and toolsets for developers to use in order to build additional solutions and functionalities. These tools not only enable the customer and the partners to customize the end product in order to meet the business requirements in a specific project, but also help independent software vendors (ISVs) build industry-specific vertical solutions for a larger ecosystem. In this chapter, we will learn about the development process and tools in Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- Architecture and concepts
- Development environment
- Development planning
- Development process
- Build and continuous updates
- Guidelines and best practices
In this chapter, we will explore the things that you need to know about before starting development, for example, the development environment, tools, technical concepts, and build and versioning strategies. In development planning, you will learn about setting up the basic rules and guidelines before the development process starts. In the development process, we will walk you through the development process, frameworks, and best practices. In the Build and continuous updates section, we will explore the automated build and deployment processes. In the end, we will discuss some common best practices and guidelines that can be applied in the development phase.