Sign in
Microsoft.com
 
Microsoft
 
 
 

locked
CRM Dynamics 2011 - Migrating Changes Up verses Migrating Data Down RRS feed

 > 

  • Question

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    Our organization's implementation of Dynamics has 3 environments - Dev, QA / Training, and Prod. Our current processes including the logical migration from Dev to QA to Prod when solution changes and releases are made. A present issue we have is regarding data inconcsistencies across environments.

    Is there an easy, logical, complete, or otherwise best solution to copy all data down through environments? In other words, take an exact copy of all data, tables, relationships, etc currently in Prod (the most accurate data and scenarios) and overwrite the Dev or QA environment?

    Similarly, how is the solution of migrating data down different from release migration up through the environments? Any help and advice would be appreciated.

    Thursday, June 2, 2011 3:31 PM

Answers

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    If you want to take all data and customisations from Prod to the other environments, then the easiest option is to take a SQL backup of the MSCRM database from Prod, restore the SQL backup to the other environments and import the database as an organisation. The import process will not overwrite an existing organisation of the same name, so to retain organisation names, delete the destination organisation prior to import (though I suggest you take a backup of the customisations prior to doing this)
    Microsoft CRM MVP - http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com  http://www.excitation.co.uk
    • Marked as answer by kspicer Tuesday, June 7, 2011 7:58 PM
    Monday, June 6, 2011 9:53 AM
    Moderator

All replies

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    Hi kspicer,

                      To migrate all data from one environment to another you have to first get all the customizations that are there in the production environment and import them into the two new environments. Later you can import records using CRM import wizard provided the new CRM 2011 import wizard is awesome it has got some features to import data. Please let me know if I am answering you correctly and let me know if you have any questions.

    Regards,

    Vishnu.

    http://osmosee.wordpress.com


    Regards, Vishnu. http://www.osmosys.asia http://osmosee.wordpress.com
    Thursday, June 2, 2011 7:36 PM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    Hello Vishnu,

    Thank you for your response. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're suggesting that all of the data migration be done after the environments' customizations are in sync. That makes sense and we do follow that process. Then I believe you indicated to use the Dynamics data import wizards. That too makes sense and I will look into that further, but won't that process have to occur for every dataset I want to import? My first reaction is that would be a tedious task to use the wizards to copy ALL of the data in Production and overwrite it to our Dev and QA environments.

    I'm looking moreso for a way to do it all at once and copy the entire environment's data from one to another. For the sake of further clarification, keep in mind that I am referring to actual data (records), and not the metadata or customizations at this point. Is this possible?

    If you or anyone has any feedback or further suggestions, I would appreciate it.

    Thanks.

    Friday, June 3, 2011 12:41 PM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    Hi KSpicer,

                      As far as my knowledge goes I don't have any other option to help you. Check this link if this helps you in better understanding of the CRM import.

     

    http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2010/10/01/crm-2011-data-import-wizard/

     

     

     

     

    Regards,

    Vishnu.
    http://osmosee.wordpress.com
    Regards, Vishnu. http://www.osmosys.asia http://osmosee.wordpress.com
    Sunday, June 5, 2011 4:55 PM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    If you want to take all data and customisations from Prod to the other environments, then the easiest option is to take a SQL backup of the MSCRM database from Prod, restore the SQL backup to the other environments and import the database as an organisation. The import process will not overwrite an existing organisation of the same name, so to retain organisation names, delete the destination organisation prior to import (though I suggest you take a backup of the customisations prior to doing this)
    Microsoft CRM MVP - http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com  http://www.excitation.co.uk
    • Marked as answer by kspicer Tuesday, June 7, 2011 7:58 PM
    Monday, June 6, 2011 9:53 AM
    Moderator