Formula-Driven Excel Workbook - Release Wave Testing for Business Central

UPDATE TESTING: WHY?

It’s important to test your system to ensure the update will not interfere with your processes and, most importantly, system customizations and extensions. It is crucial to test the transactions that use any of your customizations or extensions early in a sandbox environment, lest they break in production and halt your business processes.

The best way to validate your version update is to run through critical business processes in your sandbox environment, including extensions, customizations, printing reports, posting journal entries, creating orders, and so forth.  After you validate the update in the sandbox, your production environment can be safely updated, as well.

It’s also best to perform update testing earlier rather than later because if you do run into any hiccups that need to be fixed, you need time to correct the issues before Microsoft automatically updates environments, which could occur within 60 days or less after the release wave has become generally available.

We know that prepping for an update can feel a bit overwhelming, so to support thorough testing, we’ve created a few different resources—all of which can help an organization prepare for these semi-annual release waves. Read the descriptions below to see which resource may be best for you, and then use whichever you want!

Formula-Driven Excel Workbook

Designed for:

• Larger companies, especially those who have several team members conducting tests
• Companies who need advanced tracking and reporting for their update testing
• Teams comfortable with formula-driven Excel workbooks and who will either use the workbook as designed or have staff in-house who can adjust the workbook as required to avoid breaking

 
What is it?

This workbook is similar to the first Excel Workbook, but this one has built-in formulas that update other fields. We recommend you store this file in a central cloud location so anyone working on the document can see the progress of the testing in real-time.
 
What’s in this workbook?

• Instructions Tab: Detailed instructions on how to use the workbook. This page also includes a configuration component for the test tab where you can select areas within Business Central that your company uses and, therefore, need to test (and those you don’t use and will be hidden).
• Key Definitions Tab: In any complex, formula-driven workbook, you need to understand each columns’ purpose and dependencies, and you should also know the formulas included across the workbook. The definitions tab explains all that. If you choose to customize this workbook, be sure that you review the Key Definitions and use caution when updating so the workbook doesn’t break.
• BC Update Test Tab: Here’s your actual test items. This tab includes fields for assigning each test to various team members, results of the test, notes, and more. It’s sortable, filterable, and satisfyingly color-coded. You can adjust the test actions, add your own, and hide the ones that don’t apply to your business.
• Summary Tab: This tab includes advanced tracking and reporting for your update tests. See the status of your testing at-a-glance and slice your data in useful ways to understand what is left of testing (and test results). This tab leverages pivot tables, so remember to refresh the tables to see updates to your data.

Looking for more release wave resources or information?

Looking for more info about Release Waves? Check out our Microsoft Release Wave blogs:  Microsoft Dynamics Release Update | Syvantis Blog – Syvantis Technologies, Inc.

Is this resource not quite right for your needs? We have other testing resources! See the other resources, plus additional considerations for your testing: Release Wave Testing Resources for Business Central – Syvantis Technologies, Inc.