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Preparing test environments of Dynamics 365 Business Central

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Azure Active Directory is now Microsoft Entra ID. Learn more

As a Business Central reselling partner, you might want to have an environment that you can use for testing or pre-sales demonstrations. You can create such environments based on free 30 day trials, or you can set up a dedicated environment if you have a Business Central subscription yourself.

Test environments based on a 30 day trial

This type of environment can be useful if you want to run benchmark tests, for example. The following procedure requires CSP access in Partner Center. If you do not have CSP access, you can work with your CSP distributor to do this for you. For more information, see the Partner Center documentation.

To create a test environment based on a 30 day trial

  1. In Partner Center, create a new test customer with any test domain, such as contoso.onmicrosoft.com. For more information, see Add a new customer in the Partner Center docs.

    1. Fill in the fields as described in the following list:

      Field Value
      Country <Your country>
      Subscription Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium Trial

      This will give you 25 Premium licenses for 30 days for free

    2. Make a note of the Admin credentials that are shown on the last page of the customer creation wizard. You will need these credentials later.

  2. In Partner Center, once the test customer has been created, create a new test user. For more information, see Create user accounts for a customer in the Partner Center documentation.

  3. Assign that user 1 Premium license.

    Note

    It may take up to 10 minutes for the available licenses to show up on the Users page.

    Also, make a note of the user credentials shown on the last page of the user creation wizard. You will use this information in step 55

  4. In the Service Management section, choose the Dynamics 365 Business Central link.

    This opens the Business Central administration center at the equivalent of the following URL: https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/contoso.onmicrosoft.com/admin

    In the Business Central administration center, you can create new production and sandbox environments for the test customer.

    Tip

    Always include the domain or the Microsoft Entra ID of the customer in the URL when you login as a delegated admin. This way, you always know exactly which customer you are trying to access.

  5. Access Business Central as the local user that you created in step 2.

    1. Open another browser window in InPrivate or Incognito mode. This way, you can make sure that you are not logging in with your own credentials.

      Tip

      We recommend that you use profiles in the Microsoft Edge browser instead. For more information, see Microsoft Edge documentation.

    2. Go to https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/, and then, when you are asked to sign in, use the credentials of the user you created in step 2.

The Business Central environment is created automatically when you use the environment URL to login the first time.

Prepare for major updates with preview environments

About two months before a major update, you can try out new functionality in preview environments. For more information, see Prepare for major updates with preview environments.

See also

The Business Central Administration Center
Managing Environments
Preparing Demonstration Environments
Prepare for major updates with preview environments
Administration of Business Central Online
Deployment of Dynamics 365 Business Central
Get Started as a Reseller of Business Central online
Offer your customers trials of Microsoft products
Performance in Business Central Online