Azure and Dynamics 365

Chalfont have been a delivery partner with a large government client for the past 12 months helping lead the improvement of the Dynamics 365 system, in particular ensuring that the application is managed in accordance with Microsoft Best Practice. Best practice guidance and documentation regarding the system were also subsequently incorporated into Azure DevOPS Wikis.

The Dynamics 365 system was recently migrated from an on-premise installation to the Microsoft Power Platform cloud. The client engaged Chalfont to provide support services for the application as well as the development of new functionality.

These systems are internally developed and maintained by the client and primarily utilise Dynamics 365 as the central repository of information. Dynamics 365 is internally accessed by over 100 staff members to administer and report on the above schemes.

Our consultants developed a recommended approach for Dynamics 365 environment management, including automating the processes for automating environment creation. This also addressed aspects such as the management of production data including data cleansing and scrubbing. By reviewing the existing code repositories and structures led to providing recommendations on how to improve the management of code and increase automated unit testing.

Our approach is to work closely with a business unit to design and develop an automated process for performing complex year on year calculations and forecasting for facilities. Previously these calculations were manually input and calculated via a spreadsheet.

This task previously took approximately 30 minutes per facility report, with approximately 100 reports to be delivered yearly. This has been either eliminated as a manual task for most facilities or where required only required 4 data items to be manually input taking approximately 30 seconds to complete.