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Maintain AppSource apps and Per-Tenant extensions in Business Central online

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As a partner, keeping your apps and per-tenant extensions (PTEs) up to date is your responsibility. Business Central is regularly updated with major and minor releases. These updates provide customers with a business application that is always compliant, secure, and enriched with new platform and application functionality. Often customers choose Business Central because of the promise of having an always up-to-date business solution.

To not break this promise, developers that bring apps to Microsoft AppSource, and resellers that provide PTEs to respond to the unique needs of customers, have a responsibility to align their code to the Microsoft release rhythm. For more information, see major updates and minor updates. Microsoft's inability to update tenants due to publishers' incompatible code leads to significant service disruptions and must be prevented because it affects the service's trustworthiness and customer satisfaction.

Resources

To help app publishers keep up with their update responsibilities, Microsoft provides the following resources:

  • Release plans about what's new and planned

    For more information, see Dynamics 365 release plans.

  • Access to prerelease bits

    Business Central partners have access to the next major, next minor, and daily prerelease bits in Docker. The bits are available to all customers and partners through Business Central insider artifacts. Use the prerelease bits to test apps against upcoming updates.

    Learn about the update lifecycle for apps and extensions and automated extension validation. Use the AppSourceCop analyzer rules to keep your code compliant. Get agile with AL Go for GitHub and stay on top of changes that way.

  • Information about what will be deprecated

    With all Business Central releases, Microsoft controls and regulates breaking changes with major releases and communicates upcoming breaking changes at least one year in advance. If developers missed this above info, the compiler in Visual Studio Code also warns for potential controls that will become obsolete in future versions and how to deal with them. Use the analyzers actively to make sure your code is ready for the next update.

  • Policy definitions and terms

    The publisher agreement and the commercial marketplace certification policies describe the responsibilities of app providers for how to publish and maintain apps in the Microsoft monthly rhythm.

    When a PTE gets installed, the publisher also agrees to the terms to keep that code current and updatable.

  • Training and coaching

    Microsoft provides a set of tools, training, and documentation to help partners find the info they need to keep up with these responsibilities on continuous integration and continuous deployment. External providers, including ISV Development Centers, MasterVARs, and training centers, can provide in-person training and coaching.

  • Service notifications

    Business Central online supports app and PTE publishers with extra warnings about potential technical incompatibility. If publishers respond to these notifications in due timing and avoid incompatibilities repeatedly, Microsoft stands with these publishers to help where needed. If a publisher includes a telemetry key in their app, then Business Central also provides publishers with telemetry about upgrade failures that happen in production because of issues in the publisher's upgrade code.

If publishers lack to keep their code updatable, they risk that ultimately their apps or PTEs are removed from the customer's tenant. This condition most likely results in important data not being captured as it should. For apps, it also means removal from the marketplace.

Since resellers are the frontline contact point for customers, they carry responsibility to explain what it means to load code in a customer's environment. The best way is to explain this is with terms.

We advise these terms include articles like intellectual property rights, upgrade responsibilities, associated costs to keep code updatable, support options, data privacy, and so on.

When Microsoft can't update apps or PTEs

This section describes the processes that are initiated during major update cycles of Business Central with extensions installed provided by publishers of apps or PTEs. For information about handling a PTE that has conflicts with another extension, see Upgrading Per-Tenant Extensions that Conflicts with Other Extensions.

Preview period

A preview release is made available approximately one month before the announced release date for a major release. During this period, administrators can create sandbox environments on the preview version to test new functionality and app compatibility. Business Central automatically tests PTEs running in production on technical incompatibility with the upcoming release and notify notification recipients in case any incompatibilities are detected. For more information, see prepare for major updates with preview environments.

Important

Microsoft tests code based on technical compatibility. As the publisher, you are still responsible for all functional and logical validation. For more information, see The Lifecycle of Apps and Extensions for Business Central.

Note

If an app has been published through AppSource, it should not be tested, installed, or in other ways treated as a PTE since this will create conflicts.

Update period

[This section is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

Important

The update period starts when a new major version is generally available, typically the first workday of every April and October, and lasts for five months. Administrators can schedule the update to run on any day during this period. Should a scheduled update fail due to technical incompatibilities with installed apps, notification recipients will receive a notification with failure details and recommended actions.

Technical incompatibilities with AppSource apps installed on the environment might not be visible in the customer's Business Central administration center. AppSource Apps that are incompatible with the latest generally available version of Business Central might be removed from AppSource 30 days after the release of that version. If an incompatible AppSource app, PTE, or Dev Extension is preventing the deployment of a critical security update, it might be uninstalled within 14 days of the critical security update first becoming available.

Grace period

The grace period starts when the update period ends and lasts for one month, which is September for the update period that starts in April and March for the update period that starts in October. During the grace period, the update can't be rescheduled to a later date and is run. Should a scheduled update fail due to technical incompatibilities with installed apps, notification recipients receive a notification with failure details and recommended actions. Although the publisher's code continues to run on an outdated version of Business Central online, the customer must work with their reseller to resolve these issues immediately so that the environment can be updated. Next to messages in the Business Central administration center, all users in the customer's tenant might also get more active warnings about the incompatibilities when they use the product in the browser or their mobile device.

For AppSource apps, if no appropriate action or follow-up was taken by the publisher since the release, the app is removed from AppSource. This situation means no new customers are able to install the app in a new tenant. It ensures that new customers aren't affected by incompatibilities with the latest version of Business Central.

If the publisher wants to have their app available again, they must mitigate all existing incompatibility issues and go through the full validation process again. Once a compatible version of the app is published, the update to the app is automatically installed once environments are updated.

Enforced update period

The enforced update period starts when the grace period ends. During this period, any extensions that are causing the update to the next major version to fail might be uninstalled from the environment automatically in order for the update to succeed. For example, the update could fail because of compatibility issues. Data belonging to extensions that are uninstalled automatically during this period isn't deleted from the environment. The data can be recovered by installing a version of the extension that is compatible after the update succeeds. Once a compatible version of an app is made available, it won't be automatically installed on each environment from which it was uninstalled as part of the enforced update period.

During this period, the customer and their reselling partner are fully responsible for finding a solution on how to proceed in this situation. Microsoft might also choose to remove all existing apps by this publisher from AppSource and block the publisher from publishing new apps for Business Central.

Get notified about incompatibilities by Microsoft

It's crucial for you to keep contact details correctly up to date. We advise you to use global team aliases instead of individual mail addresses. Here are the mail addresses that we use in the process that is described in the When Microsoft can't update apps or PTEs section:

  • PTE publishers

    The mail addresses specified in the Business Central administration center, which could be both a customer user and a partner user.

  • App publishers

    The mail addresses specified during app publication in the partner center during app publication as support and engineering contact details.

  • Customers

    The mail addresses specified in the Business Central administration center, which could be both a customer and a partner user.

The Lifecycle of Apps and Extensions
Update Lifecycle for Customizations
Microsoft Responsibilities for Apps on Business Central online
Technical Support for Business Central online
Sending Extension Telemetry to Azure Application Insights
Major Updates and Minor Updates for Business Central Online