Common ALM concepts and terms
The following concepts are important for understanding ALM when using Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics 365 apps that use Microsoft Dataverse, such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service.
Environments - Containers to separate work that’s being developed, tested, and used by end users. Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform application components are deployed to environments. Projects commonly have multiple environments, such as development (or dev), test, and production.
Solutions - Mechanisms for implementing ALM. You’ll use solutions to distribute components across environments through export and import. A component represents an artifact that’s used in your application and something that you can potentially customize. Anything that can be included in a solution is a component, such as tables, columns, canvas apps and model-driven apps from Microsoft Power Apps, and Microsoft Power Automate flows, chatbots, charts, and plug-ins.
Dataverse - Stores the artifacts, including solutions.
Source control - Use for storing and collaborating on your components. Source control can keep a history of changes that you make over the lifetime of the project and will allow for rollbacks in case of problems.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform – This platform (such as Microsoft Azure DevOps) allows you to automate your build, test, and deployment pipeline.
The following concepts are important for understanding ALM that uses finance and operations apps and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Finance and operations apps – Use to create models where you add all customizations and metadata. You can package these models and turn them into a deployable package that you can use to transfer and deploy customizations to different environments. You’ll create the models in Microsoft Visual Studio from a create model wizard under the Dynamics 365 menu option. For more information, see Implement application lifecycle management in finance and operations apps.
Dynamics 365 Business Central – Use to create AL source files. This process is handled in a tool like Azure DevOps. You’ll use AL as the programming language for manipulating data (such as retrieving, inserting, and modifying records) in a Dynamics 365 Business Central database. Additionally, you can use AL to control the implementation of various application objects, such as pages, reports, or codeunits.
Azure DevOps – Use to automate your pipelines. This concept is discussed later in this module in the section on continuous integration and continuous deployment.
Work items and source control are common ALM terms:
Work items – Also referred to as tasks or issues. Work items are where requirements have become actionable. A work item might be to complete the custom form as defined in the requirements or to complete the steps for integration to an external system. You can assign a work item to a project team member for completion. Additionally, you can associate a work item with a change that’s committed to source control to track why changes were made to the solution.
Source control - Also known as version control, this system maintains assets, stores project assets more securely, and tracks changes to those assets. Change tracking is especially important when multiple app makers and developers are working on the same set of files. A source control system also gives you the ability to roll back changes or restore deleted files. A source control system helps organizations achieve healthy ALM practices because the assets that are maintained in the source control system are the single source of truth, or in other words, the single point of access and modification for your solutions.