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Run a training session

You are running a Business Central course and want an environment for each trainee, or one shared environment for the class. You want them ready before people arrive and costing little between sessions. Everything here happens in the portal at app.bcdock.io, with no terminal.

Check how many environments your plan allows

Each plan has a limit on how many environments your company can have at once. Hibernated environments count toward that limit, so a class that keeps its environments between sessions uses its places for the whole course.

Plan Environments at once
Free trial 1
Pay-as-you-go 3
Starter 5
Pro 30
Enterprise Agreed with us

The free trial includes one environment and 7 hours of running time. That is enough to try a lesson on your own, but a class needs a paid plan. Rates are on the pricing page. To choose a plan, open Billing in the portal. For more than 30 environments, email support@bcdock.io.

One environment per trainee, or one for the class?

One per trainee lets everyone post and break things without getting in each other's way. One shared environment, with a Business Central user for each trainee, uses one place and works when the exercises do not collide.

A few days before: create the environments

  1. On My Environments, click Create Environment.
  2. Pick the region closest to the class, the country your trainees work in, and the BC version the course is written for. Give each environment a name you can match to a trainee, for example course-anna.
  3. Click Create, and repeat for each environment you need.

Each new environment takes about 15 minutes. You can start the next one without waiting for the one before.

Set them up, then hibernate

Open each environment with Open Business Central and sign in with the username shown on the environment's page. Press Reveal there for the password. Then set it up for the course:

  • the exercise data the course uses;
  • a Business Central user for each trainee, created in Business Central under Users. See Microsoft's guide to managing users in on-premises deployments. Give trainees their own user, not the environment's own sign-in.

When an environment is ready, open its page and click Hibernate, then confirm. It keeps everything you set up and its web address, and it stops using active hours until you resume it.

Before each session: resume

Resume the class's environments at least 30 minutes before the session starts: click Resume on each environment's page and confirm.

  • A resume usually takes about 5 minutes.
  • If no server with room is running in your region, one has to start first, and the resume takes about 10 to 15 minutes.

Check that each one shows Running and opens before the trainees arrive. Then send each trainee their environment's web address and their Business Central user.

After each session: hibernate

Hibernate every environment when the session ends. Trainees' work is kept exactly as they left it, at the same address, for the next session.

If one is left running, we email you after it has had no activity for 2 hours, with links to hibernate or delete it. It does not hibernate anything by itself, so make hibernating part of closing the session.

When the course is over

Delete the environments you no longer need: on each environment's page click Delete and confirm. That frees their places for the next course. A deleted environment's stored backup is removed 7 days later, and we cannot restore a deleted environment.

Sandbox only

Use course data or made-up data, never a real client's. See limitations.