Retail broadcast updates

Important

This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.

Note

These release notes describe functionality that may not have been released yet. To see when this functionality is planned to release, please review What’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 for Retail. Delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship (see Microsoft policy).

Seamless and automatic updates are a key element of any software as a service (SaaS) solution. In our evolution from a legacy on-premises solution to a modern cloud-operated SaaS solution, we’ve made considerable strides, including progressive lockdown (with regard to invasive customizations) of all key Retail components, including Commerce Runtime (CRT), Channel Database, Point of Sale, and at the same time invested considerably in developing specific extension points (based on direct feedback to unblock each of our customer implementations). We are now at a point where Microsoft updates to a customer environment can be applied with no need for code merge with a customer's customization. Customers, however, are still expected to explicitly initiate update deployment. This feature takes things to the next level and automatically applies the updates in customer environments.

Business value

Keeping retailers up to date has benefits for all stakeholders. Retailers benefit from the latest improvements from Microsoft, across the fundamentals (availability, reliability, performance, and security) as well as functional innovations in the product. They are much less likely to be affected by issues that have previously been discovered and fixed in other retailers' environments and thereby avoid preventable disruptions to their business.

Feature description

This feature will auto-update cloud-hosted Retail components. Updates will be rolled out in a staged fashion across various exposure rings and allow retailers to validate the changes in preproduction environments before these get rolled out to their production environments. Retailers will have 30 days for regression testing and the ability to delay updates in production by up to 90 days, in case of any regressions or other impacts discovered during testing in the preproduction environment.