What are Solutions – D365

Introduction

Solutions are used to transport components from one environment to another. There will always be one Default solution which will be used to discover all components and configuration in the system. We can create our own solution and add components which is required to be transferred to other environments. Components can be Apps, Entity, Web resources, Site Maps, Flows etc.

Power App comes with 2 solutions:

1. Common Data Service Default Solution
2. Default Solution

Solution can be created by opening the maker portal and navigate to left and click on Solutions. Now, here as highlighted we can see options from where we can create solution, import solution, open the app source, publish the customizations, switch to classic view and See History. In See History, we can check the operations that has been performed on the solution like Uninstall, import of the solution and export of the solution. When we will open the solution then we will see export and other options.

From the All option, we can apply filter to see the component we want:

Managed and Unmanaged Solution

There are 2 types of solution: Managed and Unmanaged solution. A solution can be either managed or unmanaged.

1. Unmanaged Solution: It is used in development environment where you can make changes. Once the changes are done it can exported as unmanaged or managed solution. Once we delete the unmanage solution, only container/solution will be deleted but any customizations done under that solution will always be part of the default solution. Exported unmanaged versions of your solutions should be checked into your source control system.
2. Managed Solution: we create managed solution by exporting the unmanaged solution to deliver the changes into higher environment like Test, UAT, Production etc. Managed solution cannot be exported.
   • We cannot edit components of managed solution directly. It has to be part of unmanaged solution and then should be exported.
   • When a managed solution is deleted (uninstalled), all the customizations and extensions included with it are removed.
   • When we delete managed solution, any new added components or customizations will also be deleted from the environments. So, basically the data captured into those components will also be deleted. Example: Any field which was custom and was part of the managed solution. So data of that field will be deleted with the field deletion through managed solution deletion.
3. Makers and developers work in development environments using unmanaged solutions, then import them to other downstream environments—such as test—as managed solutions.

4. When you customize in the development environment, you’re working in the unmanaged layer. Then, when you export the unmanaged solution as a managed solution to distribute to another environment, the managed solution is imported into the environment in the managed layer.

5. A solution can be up to 32 MB in size.

Check the solution Life Cycle in my next post.