Notice of upcoming change: Removing RDP access to Tiers 2, 3, 4, and 5 Standard Acceptance Test (or Sandbox) environments deployed in Microsoft subscription

In the next few months, customers who have purchased Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition (D365FFO) and Dynamics 365 for Retail will no longer have RDP access to the Tiers 2, 3, 4, and 5 Standard Acceptance Test environments deployed in a Microsoft subscription. Today, customers and partners do not have RDP access to the Production environment but are able to have remote access to the Tier 2+ Standard Acceptance Test environments deployed in a Microsoft subscription. Going forward, to improve the stability and reliability of the operations performed in Production environments and to ensure that Tier 2+ Sandbox environments mimic the Production environment, we will be restricting complete RDP access to these environments. We will automate all the processes that require customers to use remote access for these environments before restricting access. Please note that this change does not impact the non-administrator access that is enabled for Tier 1 Sandbox (or Develop and Test) environments deployed in a Microsoft subscription. We will publish another blog post with an FAQ that has details such as the kind of processes that will be automated, type of access that will be allowed after the lockdown, so it helps customers assess the impact of this change. Also, as the proposed release date gets closer, we will release more detailed timelines and guidance on the new features available through Lifecycle Services (LCS).