How a Prescriptive Assessment Improved Business Central Update Readiness
A distributor serving the drilling industry relies on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to support critical business processes across its organization. With extensions, integrations, and established workflows supporting day-to-day operations, understanding how platform updates could affect the business was an important consideration.
As the client prepared for an upcoming Business Central release, they wanted more visibility into how the update might impact their specific environment. That interest was shaped by lessons from previous updates, which highlighted the value of clearer planning, coordination, and preparation across teams and technology providers.
Recognizing an opportunity for a more proactive approach, Stoneridge Software developed a Business Central Update Impact Assessment designed to help identify potential update impacts, prioritize testing activities, and provide greater insight into how future releases could affect the organization’s environment.
Business Challenges: Moving Beyond Release Notes
A previous Business Central update revealed how limited visibility can complicate planning, testing, and coordination when platform changes affect extensions, integrations, and business processes. The experience underscored the value of identifying dependencies early, aligning internal teams and technology providers, and establishing clear testing priorities — especially in complex ERP environments.
While Microsoft provides release notes and documentation for every update, understanding how those changes may affect a specific organization’s extensions, integrations, business processes, and daily operations can be much more challenging. With numerous moving parts involved, determining what should be tested and where attention should be focused isn’t always straightforward.
As the organization prepared for another Business Central update, they wanted greater visibility into potential impacts before the release and a more organized way to plan testing activities across the business.
Key challenges included:
- Understanding which release changes were most relevant to their environment
- Evaluating how installed extensions could be affected by the update
- Identifying business processes that should be prioritized for testing
- Organizing testing responsibilities across teams and departments
- Creating a consistent approach for tracking testing progress and validation activities
- Reducing the risk of discovering issues after the update had been completed
Stoneridge is continually exploring how Microsoft Copilot and AI can help clients address complex business challenges. The distributor’s update-planning needs offered a practical opportunity to apply these capabilities to a process that has traditionally been difficult to scale across unique Business Central environments.
Solution: Creating a Structured Approach to Update Planning
“We could always tell clients what Microsoft was releasing, but there was a need for a more proactive approach to update planning. The Impact Assessment was created to provide clients with a better understanding of what those changes might mean for their specific environment before the update took place.” -Lin Jimison, Consultant Lead, Stoneridge Software
Looking for a more efficient and scalable way to support the client’s update planning, Stoneridge recognized an opportunity to leverage Microsoft Cowork’s capabilities. By organizing and analyzing large amounts of information, Cowork was the perfect tool to help translate Microsoft’s release content into a structured, actionable testing approach tailored to the client’s unique environment.
By bringing together information about their Business Central platform and Microsoft’s release documentation, the resulting Update Impact Assessment helped identify potential areas of impact and provided a clearer framework for planning and validation activities.
The materials included:
- A review of release changes most relevant to the client’s environment
- An inventory of installed extensions and recommended testing priorities
- Guidance on business areas requiring additional review
- Testing recommendations organized by functional area
- Suggested tests and user acceptance testing scenarios
- Documentation to support testing, validation, and sign-off activities
Rather than asking business users to review release documentation and determine testing priorities on their own, the assessment translated technical update information into practical recommendations that were easier to understand and act upon.
Testing activities were organized by Business Central functional area, making it easier for process owners to identify their responsibilities and participate in validation efforts. The Update Impact Assessment also provided a centralized way to track testing progress, document results, and identify issues that required follow-up before the update moved forward.
Results: Better Visibility and a More Organized Wave Release Update Process
By taking a more structured approach to update preparation, the drilling distributor gained a clearer understanding of how upcoming Business Central changes could affect its environment before moving forward with the upgrade.
Key outcomes included:
- A tailored assessment of release impacts specific to the client’s environment
- Clear testing priorities based on installed extensions and business processes
- Organized testing activities grouped by functional area
- Centralized tracking of testing progress and validation efforts
- Supporting documentation for update review, testing, and sign-off
The client has used the approach to support two Business Central updates, with no update-related issues reported following those efforts. What makes the outcome especially notable is that this level of customized release analysis would not have been possible to deliver consistently in the past.
The combination of Microsoft Cowork, Stoneridge’s Business Central expertise, and the client’s willingness to pilot a new approach made it possible to deliver more meaningful, environment-specific guidance ahead of future releases. The result is a more structured plan that helps stakeholders communicate priorities, coordinate testing activities, and focus on the areas that require the most attention before an upgrade begins.
