Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations – What information and data to provide when logging a performance case with Support
There are several ways to approach troubleshooting performance, and the aim of this blog post is to give Customers and Partners some guidance on what information and data to provide when you need help trying to establish why something is “slow”.
QUESTIONS
The sorts of questions we would typically ask include the following:
1) What kind of environment is the performance issue occurring on?
This is relevant because the tools and processes vary depending on whether the issue is occurring on PROD, UAT, or DEV. For the purposes of this blog post, I will assume that we are talking about PROD environments.
2) Is the problem happening now or is it a problem that you experienced in the past?
This is obviously important to know from a severity and business impact perspective. For historical issues, we may need to perform a Root Cause Analysis (where applicable) and that process is different to troubleshooting a live performance issue.
3) What information and data to you have already?
One of the main tools available to both Customers and Partners is LCS. If you are a Customer then you may find that your Partner is able to provide you with useful insights into a performance issue based on their own analysis of the problem using LCS. If you are a Partner, providing LCS data will help the Microsoft Support Engineer to progress the case quicker.
You may also be able to provide either SESSION INFORMATION for an affected user or an AX TRACE that was captured when the problem was occurring. This kind of data can be used to establish the scenario more quickly, and can lead to faster problem resolution.
4) Can you describe what the issue is and can you provide detailed repro steps?
Finally, one of the most important things to establish is of course what the actual problem is and how it might be reproduced. You can speed up time to resolution by clearly documenting what the issue is and providing detailed information about what the affected users are doing (include screenshots!). I realize that it can sometimes be difficult to get a clear picture from the users of what the actual issue is, but even if the only input they can provide is “everything is slow”, it is useful if you can provide a tangible scenario that illustrates such a wide problem definiton.
e.g.
“It takes 30 seconds to open the All Customers form – CustTableListPage – under ‘Accounts receivable > Customers > All customers’ in company USMF”.
You can add other details that may be relevant,
e.g.
Is the issue always happening or is it intermittent?
Are all users seeing this issue or just some users?
Are you seeing an increase in SQL utilization in LCS when the issue is occurring?
Are you seeing long running queries in LCS when the issue is occurring?
Are you seeing blocking in LCS when the issue is occurring?
Does this issue appear to be related to the location of the user?
Does this issue appear to be related to the browser the user is running?
Does this issue appear to be related to the network the user is on?
DATA COLLECTION
As mentioned above, you can collect SESSION INFORMATION and/or AX TRACES from a system where you are experiencing or you have experienced performance issues.
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AX TRACING
1. Click on the SETTINGS COG WHEEL in the top right corner then click on Trace
NOTE: As usual, keep tracing as short as possible
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SESSION INFORMATION
1. Click on the FEEDBACK SMILEY in top right corner
NOTE: Do this immediately before you start to reproduce the issue so the timestamp is accurate
2. Copy and paste the SESSION INFORMATION as TEXT into an E-MAIL
e.g.
SESSION INFORMATION
71abe991-64b1-47b8-aef5-?????????????
2018-01-12T12: ?????????????
demo-1-dafb8907-0bde-4866-b803?????????????
{D73B29C0-C336-4DA3-88?????????????}
IIS:DEMO-1
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FURTHER READING
Please see this blog post for details on troubleshooting using LCS
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/axsa/2018/06/05/how-to-use-environment-monitoring-view-raw-logs/
