Following their original deprecation announcement back in January, 2020, Microsoft have now withdrawn the Regional Discovery Service.
What was the Regional Discovery Service?
With Dataverse, server and organisation allocation may change as part of datacentre management and load balancing. The discovery service provided a way to discover which server is serving an instance at a given time. This was used primarily for third party applications or SDK assemblies, with each region having its own discovery URL:
- North America https://disco.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- North America 2 https://disco.crm9.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) https://disco.crm4.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- Asia Pacific Area (APAC) https://disco.crm5.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- Oceania https://disco.crm6.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- Japan (JPN) https://disco.crm7.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- South America https://disco.crm2.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- India (IND) https://disco.crm8.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- Canada https://disco.crm3.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- United Kingdom (UK) https://disco.crm11.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
- France https://disco.crm12.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
However, any applications that used the above methods are now likely to encounter connection issues.
Why has the Regional Discovery Service been withdrawn?
Microsoft has developed a new Global Discovery Service that caters for the same discovery scenarios, but in an improved fashion thanks to its modern software architecture. It provides a single place to efficiently discover organisation instances without needing to know the instance region.
How do I modify my code to use the Global Discovery Service?
Microsoft have published a comprehensive guide to assist developers with their required code changes to use the new service.
Is my organisation likely to be affected by this?
If your organisation has no third party applications or code, then you will likely notice no impact at all. However, if you are using applications that integrate with Dynamics 365, such a ClickDimensions or Tibco Scribe Insight, then you should check that you have not encountered any service issues. Existing clients of Strategy 365 who have been affected by this deprecation should contact the Strategy 365 support team who will be happy to assist further.
