D365 Export to Data Lake Deprecation: What’s Happened & What to Do About It

Note: You can learn more about Azure Synapse Link and the deprecation of Export to Data Lake for D365 Finance and Operations by signing up to our free webinar on Thursday, 1st February 2024, at 14.00 GMT.

D365 Export to Data Lake Deprecation: What’s Happened and What to Do About It

Microsoft has deprecated Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations’ Export to Data Lake feature as of the 15th of October 2023. If your organisation uses this functionality to run BI reporting, you have 12 months to migrate to the platform’s new service and avoid disruption. But it’s not all bad news. Microsoft’s new alternative solution — Azure Synapse Link — is a significant upgrade with plenty of benefits.

In this article, we discuss what’s happened, why Microsoft has made this update and what you need to do to avoid problems caused by the deprecation.

What’s happened with Export to Data Lake?

Microsoft’s Export to Data Lake functionality gave customers the ability to export data from D365 Finance and Operations to a customer-owned Azure Data Lake Store. It was a pretty seamless way for organisations to export large amounts of data to a customer data lake, after which they could analyse and model data as they wished.

But now it’s out of date.

On the 25th of October, Microsoft deprecated the Export to Data Lake functionality for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, replacing it with Azure Synapse Link — a new service that was previewed six months ago.

Microsoft has committed to maintaining Export to Data Lake until Nov 2024, but no new D365FO environments will have the ability to deploy it.

This is a fundamental change to the mechanism for extracting data from D365FO — and it’s one that any company using Export to Data Lake to build BI reports needs to know about. These customers have less than 12 months to make the shift to Azure Synapse Link or risk losing any and all reports.

What is Azure Synapse Link?

Azure Synapse link was released in preview in May 2023. The new service is designed for enterprise data analytics and includes a range of highly anticipated features.

Chief among them is Delta Table functionality, which brings a whole host of improvements, including data management and performance.

Azure Synapse Link stores data in the Common Data Model format, providing semantic consistency across all deployments. It lets you choose which data you export from Finance and Operations applications or continuously export data into Azure Data Lake Storage.

The goal is to give customers a single end-to-end way to work with data in Microsoft Dataverse, whether they are integrating it with external data sets or running machine learning algorithms.

Azure Synapse Link can reduce operational complexity, decrease latency and reduce costs. But if you want to take advantage of this (and keep your D365FO reports), then you need to act fast.

What do you need to do?

The simple answer is to migrate to Azure Synapse Link as soon as possible.

Any company that wants to take advantage of the benefits of Synapse Link and avoid interruption to their BI reporting capabilities needs to make the transition before November 2024. You still have time, but you need to start planning now.

You can migrate your system’s data extraction methods yourself (Microsoft has a detailed guide on how to do just that), or you can work with your existing consultant.

But why not use this moment as an opportunity to rethink your approach to creating BI reporting tools and data analytics in general?

Rather than throwing good money after bad to hire consultants who will provide an expensive (and perhaps short-term) solution, consider moving to a subscription model that shields your business against future disruptive updates.

These happen more than you might think. Just last year, Microsoft made the same update to its Dynamics 365 CRM program.

Futureproof your BI reporting with 5Y Technology

While non-5Y customers are left scrambling to migrate systems and ensure the continuity of BI reporting capabilities, our customers don’t have to worry about a thing. The upgrade to Azure Synapse Link is included as part of the subscription to our Unified Data Platform.

We are 100% committed to supporting the latest Microsoft-recommended best practices for any system and provide upgrades as part of our ongoing service.

In fact, this is the ninth recommended mechanism since our team has been using Dynamics, and we expect Microsoft to continue adding new functions and capabilities to its services — it’s what makes the company a market leader.

For more information on how our team can resolve any issues relating to the deprecation of Export to Data or about the benefits of 5Y’s Unified Data Platform, get in touch with a friendly member of our team today.