To perform Analyze activities before you purchase Finance and Operations, you need to sign up for a Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS) trial or partner project. This lets you deploy your own Finance and Operations environments. It also gives you access to the tools in LCS that are used to evaluate your AX 2012 environment and your existing custom code.

If you have an existing LCS project for AX 2012, you must still sign up for an additional LCS project for Finance and Operations.

For information about how to get an LCS trial project for customers, go to https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=2017742&clcid=0x409.

For information about how to get an LCS partner project, go to https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/global/news-events/news/Microsoft_Dynamics_AX_Public_Preview.

Be aware that this differs from a 30-day trial. Thirty-day trials provide a deployed instance of Finance and Operations that you can use to explore and evaluate the application. However, the Analyze activities require the full LCS experience and tools.

In your new LCS project, set the project methodology to Upgrade AX 2012 to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. This methodology is made specially for AX 2012 customers who are upgrading. It describes the three phases in detail and provides links to all the supporting documentation about the process.

The upgrade analyzer tool runs against your AX 2012 environment and identifies tasks that you should do to prepare the AX 2012 environment, to help make the upgrade experience smoother and less expensive:

• Data cleanup – This process helps you identify data that you can remove without causing loss of functionality. The tool identifies various types of data that you can reduce by running a cleanup process. For each type of data, an explanation is given about the impact of the cleanup. You then decide whether to run the cleanup process. Part of the cost of your subscription is based on database size. Therefore, by reducing the size, you reduce that component of the subscription cost and also help reduce the time that is required for the upgrade go-live process. A smaller database helps guarantee a faster upgrade.
• SQL configuration – This process reviews the SQL configuration and recommends optimizations. By making sure that SQL performs optimally, this process helps reduce the time that is required for the upgrade go-live process.
• Deprecated features – This process identifies features that you’re currently using, but that aren’t available in Finance and Operations. Therefore, the process helps you discover gaps in functionality early. It also provides suggestions for alternatives.

Additionally, as part of this step, you must install a pre-upgrade checklist in your AX 2012 environment. You can use this checklist to enter data that will be required for the upgrade procedure. For example, in one pre-upgrade checklist task, you provide the Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) sign-in information for each current AX 2012 user, so that each user will be able to sign in to Finance and Operations.

• If upgrading from AX 2012 R3, install KB 4035163
• if upgrading from AX 2012 R2, install KB 4048614

The output of the upgrade analyzer tool becomes the workstream in the upgrade project plan for your AX 2012 system administrators. For more information, see Upgrade from AX 2012 – Plan by using the Upgrade analyzer tool.

This step takes your code from AX 2012, converts it to the new format, and provides feedback about conflicts that a developer must resolve later. This step forms the basis for the estimate of the cost of your code upgrade.

To complete this step, you must export your code from AX 2012 as a model store export and upload it to the LCS Code upgrade tool. The Code upgrade tool will produce an upgraded version of your code and a report about the remaining conflicts that must be resolved. Your developer can then review both the upgraded code and the report to determine the effort that will be required in order to upgrade your code base.

The output of this step represents the workstream in the upgrade project plan for your Microsoft Dynamics AX developers.

For more information, see Upgrade from AX 2012 – Estimate effort by using the Code upgrade service.

Demo environments are default environments that contain demonstration data (not your own data) and standard code (no customizations). We recommend that you deploy a demo environment to evaluate new features, and to perform a basic fit gap analysis of standard processes that are used in AX 2012 but that might have changed in Finance and Operations. You can either deploy these demo environments in Azure or downloaded them as a virtual machine (VM) that you run on your own hardware. If you deploy them in Azure, you must provide your Azure subscription, because you’re still using a public preview project and haven’t yet purchased a subscription.

The output of this step represents the workstream in the upgrade project plan for your functional users or business users.

For more information, see Upgrade from AX 2012 – Deploy a demo environment for analysis

A template for a project plan is provided in the upgrade methodology. In this step, the output from the previous steps of the Analyze phase is used to fill the project plan for the upgrade project. The project plan will also contain all testing details: data upgrade testing, cutover testing (mock cutover), the functional test pass iterations, and details about the various resource assignments for those tasks.

At this stage, the project plan provides a data point that can help you understand the time and cost of an upgrade.