Testing Business Central after Release Waves: A Checklist
Every April and October, Microsoft updates its applications via Release Waves, which include new features, updates to the current functionalities, and sometimes navigation updates. Release Wave plans are announced a few months in advance, so you can start to get ready for the changes.
Here’s an overview of the latest release wave plans for Business Central.
Testing Business Central to prepare for your update: 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 do this 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.
So, we’ve put together a checklist of recommended tests to perform after Business Central is updated to the latest version, with those release wave changes. Please note that, because we don’t know your specific extensions/customizations, we can’t compile a checklist for you for these. However, you can catalogue them in the Extension Management page, and then list the transactions to test that interact with each of them. Add this to the checklist we provide below, and keep it up to date!
Important Considerations for Testing
While you test, please keep these things in mind:
Skip what you don’t use, add what we missed. This is a general checklist, so some of these tests may not be required for your regular business practices. Likewise, you may have some company specific functionality or customizations you will want to include in your update testing. So take this list and customize it to meet your own needs.
Test your add-ins! Like we mentioned before, it’s crucial to test your customizations and extensions. It’s the most important reason to test. A general checklist will not account each company’s customizations and extensions, so it’s best to check the Extension Manager to make sure you don’t miss any. You can add them to the checklist, and we’ll add a placeholder to make sure you have a reminder.
Be thorough. The more testing you take the time to complete, the easier your transition to the new version will be and the fewer issues you will have.
Have two people check. We suggest having two people test for updates. Having two sets of eyes on everything can help spot anything that falls through the cracks.
Communicate with your Partner as soon as you can if you are encountering issues that are being triggered by the update. This way, they can work to resolve the issue well before the update is pushed to all environments. Here’s another good moment to note that if Syvantis is your partner and you want help with testing, we’re happy to schedule a support session to walk through testing with you.
Take snips/screenshots of the errors. Use the Snipping Tool to take pictures of each error and save them so they can be tested and resolved by developers and/or your partner later.
The Testing Checklist
So, without further delay, here’s our checklist, organized by module.
Financial
Create an Edit GL Accounts
Enter & Post GL Journal Entry
Enter & Post Recurring Journal Entry
Enter a Correcting or Reversing GL transaction
Enter GL Transactions using Edit in Excel
Run a GL Trial Balance
Run a GL Account Transaction History
Import GL Transactions using Configuration Packages
Banking
Enter and post Banking Transactions
Create Bank Deposits based on Payments Received/Receipts
Reconcile bank accounts
Test bank statement import
Check for Outstanding and Cleared Checks
Test Checkbook Register & Balance Inquiry
Confirm check/ACH formatting when printed
Generate EFT File
Print checks
Void checks
Purchasing
Create Vendor, test Vendor Classes/Distributions
Create PO: Std, Drop Ship, and Blanket, if used
Enter comments/notes
Attach Items
Link Purchase Orders to Sales Orders.
Enter/receive Invoices w/o PO's (if used)
Enter/receive Invoices w/ PO's
Enter Payables transactions
Enter & apply Credit Memo
Create and post a standard Purchase Credit Memo
Create and post a standard Purchase Invoice
Apply Transactions
Void Transactions
Review Vendor Account status and activity
Put Vendor Invoice on Hold status
Create a Single Vendor Check
Create a Multiple Vendor Check Run
Run AP Aging Report
Run Vendor Transaction History
Test "Remove Completed PO's"
Test Navigation pane links
Test all Month-end procedures
Sales
Create a Customer, Test Customer Classes/Distributions
Create and Print a Quote
Create a Sales Order
Test Order process, including:
Back-order items
Fulfill items
Enter taxes
Enter freight
Enter comments/notes
Attach items
Enter prepayments
Link sales orders to purchase orders
Generate and print Pick Tickets and Packing Slips
Email applicable transactions
Transfer an Order to Invoice
Print an Invoice
Create and post a standard Sales Credit Memo
Create and post a standard Sales Invoice
Return a Sales Invoice using the Create Return function
Enter and post Receivables transactions
Create and apply a Credit Memo
Enter and apply Customer Payments to Customer Account/Invoices
Run Customer Transaction History
Issue Finance Charges
Generate Customer Statements
Review Customer Account status and activity
Test Navigation pane links
Run AR Aging Report
Run Paid Transaction Removal
Test all Month-end procedures
Inventory
Create a new Item
Create Item using Item Copy
Create Inventory Bill of Materials
Create and process an Assembly transaction
Create and assign Lots and Bins
Create and edit Landed Costs
Enter an Increase Inventory Adjustment
Enter a Decrease Inventory Adjustment less than the quantity available
Enter a Decrease Inventory Adjustment more than the quantity available
Enter an Inventory Transfer to multiple sites
Create Stock Counts
Run Inventory reports
Test Navigation pane links
Test other reports: Generate and print all applicable reports
Test all Month-end procedures
Fixed Assets
Enter/create Fixed Assets
Run Depreciation
Post Depreciation to the GL
Retire an Asset
Other
Test print any financial reports
Test exporting financial reports to Excel (or other file types, if used)
Test Navigation pane links and often-used searches
Run Month-end reports
Test all Month-end procedures
Create/import Budgets
Extensions/Customizations
Check Extension Management and record your extensions and customizations, then document the specific tests to perform for each!