What does "keeping current" mean when there are three…

What does "keeping current" mean when there are three release trains?

If you run Supply Chain Management, "are we up to date?" is not a one-part question. Three separate things update on three separate schedules, and only one has a calendar you can put on a wall.

This is for the CIO or IT director who has to answer that question in a steering meeting and would like the answer to be checkable.

The claim: three trains, three numbers, one question with no single answer

The service update is a version — 10.0.48, 10.0.49. The Planning Optimization Add-in is an external service with no customer-visible version at all. Demand planning runs its own line entirely, at 1.2.3384.2. Being current on one says nothing about the others, and Microsoft puts this in a single sentence: "Add-in components, Power Apps, and Dataverse are updated independently of the service update package and process for finance and operations apps" (One Version service updates FAQ).

The shape of the problem, before any of the detail:

**Service update (Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce)** — What its version looks like: 10.0.48, labelled CY26Q3: 10.0.48 · Where you read it: Lifecycle Services; Microsoft's targeted release schedule
**Planning Optimization Add-in [GA] — What its version looks like: No published version number · Where you read it: Supply Chain Management, Master planning > Setup > Planning Optimization parameters, General** tab — a Connection status, not a version
**Demand planning app [GA]** — What its version looks like: 1.2.3384.2 · Where you read it: The app's own What's new article

Three admin surfaces, two version lines and one status field, one question.

Train one: the service update, the only one with a published calendar

Microsoft is precise here and the numbers changed relatively recently. "The number of service updates that are released annually is now reduced from seven to four", and "Service updates are released only in February (December self-update), April, July, and October" (One Version service updates FAQ). Two of the four are major: "There are two major updates each year: the April update and the October update."

The calendar itself sits on Service update availability, under a heading Microsoft hedges in the heading itself — "Targeted release schedule (dates subject to change)". Two rows from Microsoft's seven-column table, with the "Preview latest possible update" and "Second autoupdate schedule for production start date" columns omitted; every cell shown is character-exact:

**CY26Q3: 10.0.48** — Preview availability: April 24, 2026 · General availability (self-update): June 5, 2026 · First autoupdate schedule for production start date: July 3, 2026 · End of service: February 16, 2027
**CY26Q4: 10.0.49\*** — Preview availability: July 27, 2026 · General availability (self-update): September 11, 2026 · First autoupdate schedule for production start date: October 2, 2026 · End of service: May 21, 2027

The asterisk is Microsoft's and it means a major release. Microsoft explains its own label: the first half "refers to the calendar year and quarter when the auto update production start date is scheduled", the second "is the product version as it appears in Lifecycle Services."

Note what that label does not contain: a release wave. The service update version and the release wave are different coordinate systems, and the Supply Chain Management planned-features page for 2026 wave 1 (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave1/enterprise-resource-planning/dynamics365-supply-chain-management/planned-features) names no version number either — it lists features and months.

Train two: Planning Optimization, which has no number on the side

Master planning is not part of the application you just updated. Microsoft's words: "Master planning in Supply Chain Management is provided by an external service called the Planning Optimization Add-in for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management" (Get started with master planning). The architecture page is blunter still: the add-in "enables master planning calculation to occur outside Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and the related SQL database", and it is "built as a hyper-scalable multitenant service" (Master planning system architecture).

You install it per environment, from Lifecycle Services, on the Environment add-ins FastTab — and Microsoft is explicit that this is a wiring job rather than a deployment: "The main purpose of installing the Planning Optimization Add-in is to connect the service and the environment. Therefore, you must install the add-in separately on each environment where you use Planning Optimization, regardless of any code moved between the environments."

Neither of those two pages publishes a version number for the add-in, or a release schedule for it. The get-started page publishes a floor on the other train — Supply Chain Management "version 10.0.23 or later" — and a Connection status field with five values, none of which is a version. When your planning results change and your 10.0.x version did not, this is the train that moved.

Train three: Demand planning, its own line and its own admin centre

Demand planning is installed from a different admin plane entirely: Power Platform admin center, Resources > Dynamics 365 apps, searching for the app named Dynamics 365 Demand Planning Application (Install, enable, and set up Demand planning). Its prerequisites are stated at build level, not release level: "Supply Chain Management version 10.0.36, build 10.0.1695.83 or later", "version 10.0.37, build 10.0.1725.60 or later", or "version 10.0.38 (any build) or later".

Its versions are a separate series running from 1.0.0.1067 — which Microsoft records as "the first general availability (GA) release of Demand planning" — up to 1.2.3384.2 as documented today (What's new or changed in Demand planning). Along the way: Croston's method inside Best fit model - version 3 (preview) [PP] at 1.1.0.4, and Generative insights [PRP], first listed at 1.0.0.2502 as Generative insights into seasonality patterns (production-ready preview) and extended at 1.0.0.2999, where Microsoft's own sentence calls it "the public preview".

And here is the sentence that makes this an architecture problem rather than a documentation annoyance. Under 1.2.3384.2, Microsoft lists:

"Improved performance when exporting forecasts to Supply Chain Management. This improvement is

made possible by a new index introduced in Supply Chain Management version 10.0.48."

An improvement on train three, delivered by a change on train one. You can be fully current on Demand planning and not have the improvement, because the thing that enables it lives in a version number the Demand planning release notes do not otherwise mention.

What Microsoft publishes here, and what it does not

Be careful with this, because "Microsoft doesn't document it" is a claim about every page Microsoft has written. So, narrowly, and only about pages opened on 2026-07-31:

The One Version documentation and the release-plans hub publish no combined currency view. The release-plans hub lists Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform as two separate links under each wave, and the Power Platform plan says so in its own words: the Dynamics 365 features "have been summarized in a separate release plan and a downloadable PDF" (Power Platform 2026 release wave 1). Inside the Dynamics 365 plan the split continues — Business Central sits under smb, finance and operations under enterprise-resource-planning. On the admin side, the unified admin experience overview describes provisioning and lifecycle operations, and lists Lifecycle Services features not implemented in the Power Platform admin center; it is not a currency report either.

One dated point, because it changes what you are allowed to say in August. The 2026 release wave 2 plan is not published. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2026wave2/ returns HTTP 404; the hub lists 2026 release wave 1, 2025 release wave 2 and 2025 release wave 1 and nothing newer; and the Dynamics 365 release schedule carries a "Key dates" section for 2026 release wave 1 only. Its generic milestone table gives the example wave 2 dates as September 16 for release plans in English and October 1 for general availability. Anything sold to you as a wave 2 feature today has no plan behind it.

Where this goes wrong

Reading a release plan as a statement about your tenant. The plan is a wave document and carries Microsoft's own warning — "delivery timelines may change and projected functionality may not be released". Your environment is on a version. Those are different facts.

Assuming the add-ins ride the service update. They do not, and Microsoft says so in the sentence quoted at the top. A planning result that changed after a quiet month is not evidence that nothing shipped.

Treating the coupling as one-directional. The intuition is that add-ins depend on the core, so keeping the core current keeps everything current. The 10.0.48 index shows the real behaviour: train three's improvement was gated on train one's version, which means the combination has to be current, and neither the One Version documentation nor the release-plans hub states the combination.

Reading prerequisites at release level when Microsoft wrote them at build level. "10.0.36" is not the prerequisite. "10.0.36, build 10.0.1695.83 or later" is.

What to do this week

Three numbers, and they take about twenty minutes to collect.

The service update version and its end-of-service date. Read the version in Lifecycle Services, find its row on Microsoft's targeted release schedule, and write down the End of service date. That date, not the version, is the one that constrains you.
The Planning Optimization connection status, at Master planning > Setup > Planning Optimization parameters, on the General tab. There is no version to record — record the status and the date you checked it.
The Demand planning app version, checked against Microsoft's What's new article, and whether the Supply Chain Management version underneath it is 10.0.48 or later.

Write those three on one line and date the line. That line is the combined view those two document sets do not publish for you.

Where we would draw the line

We would not build a currency report that shows a single version and calls it the estate's status — it hides exactly the drift it is supposed to surface. We would not treat the Planning Optimization connection status as a version substitute; it answers "connected", not "which build". And we would not schedule a planning-model change into the week after an autoupdate window without knowing which of the three trains moved.

Dynamics 365 manages the update. Deciding which combination of versions your planning results are actually running on — and re-deciding it every quarter — is the part it leaves to you.

About Cognilium Cognilium is the AI optimization layer for Dynamics 365 — complementary apps that optimize the pricing, inventory, warehouse and planning decisions your ERP manages but can't optimize. Built on Power Platform, Dataverse and Azure. https://cognilium.ai · https://www.linkedin.com/company/37180269/

Go and collect the three numbers above. If they disagree with what your steering pack says, book a fifteen-minute call and we will walk your estate's version map with you, live — no deck. https://cognilium.ai

What does "keeping current" mean when there are three release trains?