Chapter 23 · Frequently Asked Questions

Technical reference · Chapter 23

Frequently Asked Questions

ConfigCompare Fundamentals

What is ConfigCompare?

ConfigCompare is a Configuration Governance Platform for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management. It captures Snapshots and compares them deterministically to support governance, audit, testing, support, and upgrade analysis.

Is ConfigCompare just a comparison tool?

No. Comparison is the mechanism; Configuration Governance is the purpose. ConfigCompare includes Snapshots, Deterministic Comparison, Rulesets, alerts, AI Insights, Upgrade Analysis, change governance (ConfigTrack), audit tracking (ConfigAudit), and centralised orchestration capabilities.

What are the four pillars of ConfigCompare?

The four pillars are:

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): Managing configuration through the deployment pipeline (DEV → TEST → UAT → PROD)
Governance & Audit: Continuous visibility and control of configuration in live environments
Testing & Support: Accelerating issue investigation and root cause analysis
Upgrades: Supporting Microsoft One Version updates and metadata analysis

Comparison & Snapshots

Does ConfigCompare compare environments?

Yes. ConfigCompare can compare configuration between environments such as DEV, TEST, UAT, GOLD, PROD, and SANDBOX.

Does ConfigCompare compare companies?

Yes. ConfigCompare can compare company to company, supporting rollout consistency and global template governance.

Does ConfigCompare support N:1 company comparison?

Yes. ConfigCompare can compare many companies against one approved template company. For example, all US regional companies can be compared against a single US template, or all manufacturing companies against a manufacturing template.

Does ConfigCompare support historical comparison?

Yes. ConfigCompare can compare Snapshots across time, such as PROD today compared with PROD yesterday, or PROD before a release compared to PROD after a release.

Does ConfigCompare support same-environment-over-time comparison?

Yes. ConfigCompare can compare an environment to itself at different points in time, supporting scenarios such as:

Tracking configuration changes during a Conference Room Pilot (CRP start to CRP end)
Validating final CRP configuration against golden baseline (CRP to GOLD)
Detecting Configuration Drift over time

Does ConfigCompare capture Snapshots from Tables and Data Entities?

Yes. ConfigCompare can capture and compare configuration from both D365 Tables and Data Entities, supporting a broad range of Configuration Governance scenarios.

How many D365 tables does ConfigCompare cover?

D365 F&SCM contains approximately 14,000 tables. ConfigCompare’s human-curated starter catalogue currently includes approximately 1,930 configuration tables and 200 Data Entities, and can be extended for ISV solutions, bespoke development and customer-specific governance requirements. See Chapter 04: ConfigCompare.

How can customers add ISV or bespoke tables?

ConfigCompare provides a helper from every D365 F&SCM form that surfaces the tables used as data sources by the current form.

Users can select relevant tables, assign module context, describe the purpose of the table, and save the result into the configuration tables parameter list.

Does ConfigCompare support Scheduled Snapshots?

Yes. ConfigCompare supports Scheduled Snapshots captured automatically on a defined schedule.

Does ConfigCompare support Scheduled Comparisons?

Yes. ConfigCompare supports Scheduled Comparisons of Snapshots at regular intervals.

Can Snapshot capture and comparison run as one automated job?

Yes. A Snapshot captured with Instant Comparison is automatically paired with the previous Snapshot from the same environment with the same description, compared, assessed by a nominated Ruleset, and, where results reach the severity threshold, notified to the nominated group. Nobody has to select comparison partners manually. See Chapter 06: Snapshots and Chapter 10: Monitoring & Alerts.

Can ConfigCompare compare workflow or other binary configuration?

Partially. Configuration stored as binary objects (BLOBs), such as approval workflow definitions, is compared by content signature: a change is detected deterministically, but the contents are not decoded, so detailed inspection currently requires reviewing the configuration in both systems manually. Structured decoding of known BLOB formats is on the roadmap (Chapter 26).

Do custom or extension fields get tracked?

Yes. Custom fields added by extension to a table already within the configuration scope are captured automatically. Only new tables and entities need to be registered, through the curated catalogue, manual entry, or the form helper.

Can ConfigCompare compare by localisation or country-specific tax setup?

No. There is no localisation dimension to compare by. Comparison operates by environment, company, table, and column. Localised differences, such as country-specific tax configuration, surface as ordinary Differences when the relevant legal entities are compared.

Differences & Matches

What is the difference between a Difference and a Match?

Difference: Configuration is different between compared environments, companies, or points in time
Match: Configuration is identical between compared environments, companies, or points in time

Both are important. Some Differences are expected; some Matches represent problems.

Why would I care about a Match instead of a Difference?

Matches can be problematic when environments should differ but do not. The canonical example is production endpoints appearing in UAT: an environment isolation issue, typically after a Production database is restored to a downstream environment.

Rulesets can flag undesired Matches with high severity to ensure they receive the same attention as critical Differences. See Chapter 03: Core Concepts and Chapter 08: Rulesets for further examples.

Can ConfigCompare identify which Matches are problematic?

Partially. ConfigCompare identifies every Match; Rulesets determine which Matches require attention based on organisational governance policies.

Rulesets & Responsibility

What are Rulesets?

Rulesets control how comparison results are reported. They can:

Reduce noise by filtering out expected Differences
Classify importance on an eight-level assessment scale (from Emergency, the most severe, down to Insight and Ignore)
Assign Responsibility (the individual, team, or group accountable for reviewing a result)
Flag undesired Matches that should not exist

Does ConfigCompare ship with default Rulesets?

No, deliberately. Which Differences and Matches matter, how severe they are, and who should review them are organisation-specific judgements; a generic rule library would encode someone else’s priorities. Rulesets are built progressively from real comparison results (see Chapter 08: Rulesets).

How do I get started without being overwhelmed by results?

Start iteratively rather than designing rules up front: capture a baseline, run a real comparison, triage the results, and set rules directly from real findings: promoting severities that deserve attention, assigning Responsibility, and setting expected or immaterial results to Ignore. Each review cycle makes routine comparisons quieter and more focused. See the adoption pattern in Chapter 08: Rulesets.

Can Rulesets handle both Differences and Matches?

Yes. Rulesets apply to both Differences and Matches, and can escalate problematic Matches with the same priority as critical Differences.

What is Responsibility?

Responsibility is a freetext field that identifies who should review and respond to a comparison result. Examples include:

Individual names (for example, a named finance lead)
Team names (for example, “Finance Team”, “Supply Chain Governance”)
Functional areas (for example, “Accounts Payable”, “Inventory Management”)
Business units (for example, “EMEA Finance”, “APAC Operations”)
Security groups (for example, “Security Architects”, “Compliance Officers”)

How is Responsibility assigned?

Responsibility is assigned through Rulesets based on criteria such as Module, Company, Table, Business Process, Role, or custom combinations.

At what levels can Rulesets apply?

Rulesets apply hierarchically at five levels: Global, Company, Table, Table and company, and Column. The most specific applicable rule wins (see Chapter 08: Rulesets).

AI & Insights

Does ConfigCompare use AI to compare environments?

No. Comparison is fully deterministic; AI is not involved in comparison logic.

What are AI Insights?

AI Insights are plain-language summaries and explanations generated from Deterministic Comparison output. They can be generated for:

Overall comparison
Per company
Per table

AI Insights help users understand the meaning and priority of comparison results without manually reviewing every Difference line by line.

Does AI replace the comparison engine?

No. The ConfigCompare engine remains the authoritative source of truth. AI Insights explain the deterministic output but never replace it.

Monitoring & Alerts

Does ConfigCompare support alerts?

Yes. ConfigCompare supports alerts and notifications of comparison results based on Ruleset conditions.

Can alerts be triggered on specific conditions?

Yes. Alerts are configured on a comparison result whose assessment level meets a severity threshold.

Do we need a dedicated person to run ConfigCompare?

No. Scheduled Snapshot capture, Instant Comparison, a nominated Ruleset, and a severity threshold with a notification group combine into a single batch job. Humans are engaged only when results exceed the threshold; governance operates by exception, with no dedicated watcher. See the operating model in Chapter 10: Monitoring & Alerts.

Upgrades & Metadata

Does ConfigCompare support upgrade analysis?

Yes. ConfigCompare supports two layers of upgrade analysis:

Configuration Upgrade Analysis: Compares pre-upgrade and post-upgrade configuration to identify changes to settings
Metadata Upgrade Analysis: Examines all tables in the application to identify structural changes introduced by Microsoft updates

What is metadata comparison?

Metadata comparison analyses structural changes in the D365 application rather than business configuration. It identifies:

Table additions and removals
Column (field) additions and removals
Data type changes
Field length changes
Label changes
Schema and structural changes

Does ConfigCompare analyse all tables during metadata comparison?

Yes. Metadata analysis examines every table (with persisted values) in the application to identify every structural change introduced by an update.

Does upgrade analysis compare data as well as structure?

Yes, in two layers. Metadata analysis compares the structure of all persisted application tables; a standard configuration comparison covers the data in the configuration tables. Data is not compared across all application tables at upgrade time. For configuration tables receiving new fields, the data layer shows whether the upgrade wrote values into existing records: inert, active, effective default, or meaning change (see Chapter 16: Upgrades).

Where can I see an example upgrade analysis?

AXImprove publishes curated upgrade commentaries for D365 F&SCM releases on the AXImprove blog, produced from a Contoso reference environment and cross-referenced against Microsoft’s published release documentation.

Does ConfigCompare support Microsoft One Version updates?

Yes. ConfigCompare can support Microsoft One Version update validation through:

Pre-upgrade baseline Snapshots
Post-upgrade Snapshot comparisons
Configuration comparison
Metadata comparison
Impact analysis

What is ConfigUpgrade?

ConfigUpgrade is the platform component that provides pre-upgrade and post-upgrade configuration and metadata analysis. It identifies structural changes introduced by Microsoft updates and assesses impact on customisations, integrations, reporting, and business processes. ConfigUpgrade delivers the Upgrade Analysis capability.

Does ConfigCompare support AX 2012?

Yes. ConfigCompare can support AX 2012 Snapshots and AX 2012 to D365 F&SCM upgrade path analysis.

Can AX 2012 Snapshots be compared with D365 Snapshots?

Yes. AX 2012 Snapshots can be compared against D365 F&SCM Snapshots for upgrade path analysis.

ConfigTrack

What is ConfigTrack?

ConfigTrack provides structured governance and change management for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management configuration changes. It enables organisations to define, manage, and track configuration changes through customised event workflows with built-in risk assessment, role-based approvals, and regulatory compliance support.

What can ConfigTrack do?

ConfigTrack enables organisations to:

Record configuration changes as structured events with context, rationale, and business impact
Assess risk based on complexity, user impact, process impact, and likelihood
Assign responsibilities using RACI matrices to define clear accountability
Manage approvals through escalation workflows that account for risk and urgency
Track task progress from creation through completion and closure
Manage tasks across multiple environments (DEV → TST → UAT → PROD)
Maintain audit trails for SOX, J-SOX and internal control requirements
Integrate with ConfigCompare to validate configuration changes against baselines

Does ConfigTrack support multi-environment deployments?

Yes. ConfigTrack can manage tasks across the entire deployment pipeline. For example, a single configuration change event can include:

DEV: Implement new configuration
TST: Promote and validate
UAT: User acceptance testing
UAT: Business signoff
PROD: Deploy configuration

This ensures structured progression of changes through environments with clear task dependencies.

How does ConfigTrack relate to ConfigCompare?

ConfigCompare provides deterministic evidence of what changed and how it differs. ConfigTrack provides the governance and approval workflow context for why it changed and whether it was appropriate. Together they cover both the evidence and the governance workflow.

ConfigAudit

What is ConfigAudit?

ConfigAudit provides event-level audit and change tracking for critical configuration areas in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management. It captures create, update and delete events on designated Data Entities (Read operations are not captured), maintaining a granular audit trail without bloating the ERP transactional database.

What is the difference between ConfigCompare and ConfigAudit?

ConfigCompare captures point-in-time Snapshots and answers the question “What exists and how does it differ?”. ConfigAudit captures a continuous stream of event-level changes in critical configuration areas and answers the question “What changed within critical configuration areas, and when?”. See Chapter 12: ConfigAudit.

Can ConfigAudit catch changes that ConfigCompare misses?

Yes. ConfigAudit captures transient changes: modifications that are made and then reverted before the next ConfigCompare Snapshot. ConfigCompare would show no change; ConfigAudit shows the complete change history.

Does ConfigAudit detect fraud?

Partially. ConfigAudit captures the complete change history that exposes fraudulent changes, including changes reverted before the next Snapshot; detection and judgement rest with reviewers and the organisation’s controls. A typical scenario involves:

An employee deliberately changing a vendor bank account to their own account
Processing a payment to the fraudulent account
Reverting the change to hide the fraud

ConfigCompare would show no Difference (the account reverted to its original state). ConfigAudit captures the complete change history, exposing the fraud.

Can ConfigAudit catch operational errors?

Yes. ConfigAudit captures accidental configuration changes and their corrections, enabling organisations to:

Identify which transactions were affected by an error
Provide evidence that the incident occurred and was corrected
Implement preventive controls

Where is ConfigAudit data stored?

ConfigAudit maintains dual storage:

Azure tables: Hold the complete audit history for long-term retention
D365 local tables: Hold only the most recent 3 days for fast queries and offline access

All data flows to Azure tables in real time. D365 tables are purged after 3 days, keeping the transactional database lean.

What are materialised read models?

Materialised read models are denormalised copies of audit data, each optimised for a specific query perspective (for example by date, by user, or by record) so each audience queries a shape suited to its needs. See Chapter 12: ConfigAudit.

Can ConfigCompare or ConfigAudit track non-configuration data such as master data?

Yes. Scope is defined by the tables and Data Entities the customer designates, and master-data-style areas such as customers or vendors can be included. Two considerations govern how wide to go: cost grows with the size and change rate of what is tracked, and a tracked area is only worth tracking if someone will actually review its changes. Data no one would review is transactional or document data and should not be in scope. See Chapter 04: ConfigCompare and Chapter 12: ConfigAudit.

Governance & Compliance

Does ConfigCompare support SOX or J-SOX?

Yes. ConfigCompare can support SOX, J-SOX, and internal control processes by providing:

Evidence of configuration Snapshots
Deterministic Comparison results
Monitored changes over time
Audit trails of who changed what and when

ConfigTrack adds governance workflow evidence showing who approved changes and when. ConfigAudit provides event-level audit trails for critical configuration areas.

Does ConfigCompare support audit evidence?

Yes. ConfigCompare supports audit activities by:

Preserving Snapshots as evidence
Producing Deterministic Comparison results
Tracking changes over time
Supporting internal and external audit procedures

Integration & Deployment

What is required for base ConfigCompare setup?

Base setup requires:

Installing and licensing ConfigCompare through a deployable package using the standard D365 F&SCM deployment method
Defining the environment name
Defining modules and tables through the curated catalogue, manual entry, the form helper, or a combination of these methods
Configuring at least one Azure Storage Account

This base setup is separate from deeper governance design such as Rulesets, Responsibility assignment, ConfigTrack workflows, alerts, and operational reporting.

Does ConfigCompare require Azure Storage?

Yes. ConfigCompare requires at least one Azure Storage Account to store and organise ConfigCompare artefacts.

Organisations can use a single Azure Storage Account or multiple Azure Storage Accounts depending on how they want to separate, file, retain, and manage configuration evidence across environments, tenants, customers, or governance scenarios.

All ConfigCompare artefacts (Snapshots, Comparisons and audit history) are stored in Azure Storage owned and controlled by the customer. AXImprove holds no customer data; data ownership remains with the customer at all times.

Does ConfigCompare export to Excel?

No. Comparison results are designed to be reviewed in the product’s drillable result grids rather than exported; multi-page static exports are not a practical way to consume configuration comparisons. ConfigCompare can export to Data Management Framework packages for supported Data Entity scenarios.

Do comparisons have to run in Production?

No. Snapshot capture runs in each environment, but comparisons can run in a nominated control environment (UAT, GOLD, or a purpose-built governance environment). Snapshots reach the control environment through a shared Azure Storage Account and Synchronize with Azure Store, or through remote Snapshot API calls. See the deployment topology in Chapter 06: Snapshots.

Does ConfigCompare support Data Management Framework packages?

Yes. ConfigCompare can export to DMF packages for supported Data Entity scenarios.

Is ConfigCompare a deployment tool?

No. ConfigCompare is a Configuration Governance Platform. It can export supported DMF packages, but deployment is not its purpose.

Does ConfigCompare compare transactional data?

No. ConfigCompare compares configuration, not transactional data; transactional records such as journals, orders, and transactions are out of scope by design. Master-data-style areas can be included deliberately; see “Can ConfigCompare or ConfigAudit track non-configuration data such as master data?” above.

Enterprise & Scale

What scale has ConfigCompare been benchmarked against?

In a Contoso-scale reference environment with 30 legal entities, ConfigCompare captured 201,000 configuration records, with Snapshot capture and comparison operations each completing in approximately 30 seconds. Actual timings depend on selected scope, environment performance, and workload. The same environment holds an average of 46,148 multi-option settings for each legal entity, which indicates the volume of configurable decisions a comparison covers. See Chapter 06: Snapshots.

What is Central Command Center?

Central Command Center orchestrates Snapshots and comparisons across multiple ConfigCompare installations or D365 F&SCM instances using APIs. It coordinates activity without performing comparison logic; the ConfigCompare engine performs the actual comparisons.

Does Central Command Center perform comparison logic?

No. Central Command Center orchestrates requests. The ConfigCompare engine performs the comparison logic in each instance.

Can ConfigCompare work across multiple tenants?

Yes. ConfigCompare supports Configuration Governance across multiple Dynamics 365 instances and Microsoft tenants. Cross-tenant operation is delivered through the Cross-Tenant capability. Cross-Tenant is a licensed capability (Chapter 22: Licensing).

Users & Adoption

Does ConfigCompare require a full governance rollout before it becomes useful?

No. A full Configuration Governance rollout may include detailed Rulesets, Responsibility assignment, ConfigTrack workflows, approvals, alerts, and operational reporting.

Those deeper controls can be introduced progressively.

After installing the deployable package and applying the licence, customers can load the curated configuration catalogue and begin capturing meaningful configuration evidence in around 15 minutes. This timing is based on the curated catalogue and a standard deployment; actual effort depends on the selected scope and the environment.

What drives ROI for ConfigCompare?

ROI is typically realised by replacing manual investigation and spreadsheet-based validation with repeatable Snapshot capture and Deterministic Comparison.

Common ROI drivers include:

Reduced manual comparison effort
Faster release and deployment validation
Earlier detection of Configuration Drift
Shorter support investigations
Reduced risk of expensive production remediation
Less effort preparing audit evidence
Better routing of results to the right functional, technical, support, or audit owners

Who uses ConfigCompare?

Typical users include:

Functional consultants
Solution architects
Technical architects
ERP administrators
Support teams
Internal audit teams
Compliance teams
Microsoft Dynamics partners
Managed service providers
CIOs