Yes, this is a known and frustrating consequence of copying a Production environment with managed solutions over your Sandbox. The platform's logic to ensure consistency with the source environment leads to this conversion.
Here's a breakdown of the situation and several potential solutions to allow you to continue making and testing changes in your Sandbox and deploy to Production:
Understanding the Core Problem:
- Managed Solutions are Locked: Managed solutions are designed to be deployed as final, non-editable packages in target environments (like Production). They prevent direct modifications to ensure consistency and prevent accidental breakage.
- Sandbox Needs to be Editable: Your Sandbox environment is crucial for development, testing, and making adjustments before deploying to Production. Having it filled with managed solutions defeats this purpose.
- Pipeline Deployment Requires Unmanaged Solutions (Generally): Pipelines typically work by exporting unmanaged solutions from your development/test environment, applying version control, and then importing them as managed solutions into Production.
Potential Solutions:
Here are several approaches you can take, each with its own trade-offs:
1. Maintain a Separate "Development" Sandbox:
- Concept: The cleanest and most recommended long-term solution is to have two Sandbox environments:
- "Test/Mirror" Sandbox: This is the one you periodically refresh from Production to mirror the live environment for realistic testing (like you just did). This will contain managed solutions.
- "Development" Sandbox: This is a separate Sandbox where you keep your solutions as unmanaged. Developers make all their changes and build new features here.
- Workflow:
- Develop and make changes in the "Development" Sandbox (unmanaged solutions).
- Export the unmanaged solutions from the "Development" Sandbox.
- Import the unmanaged solutions into the "Test/Mirror" Sandbox to test against a Production-like environment.
- If testing is successful, export the unmanaged solutions from the "Development" Sandbox and import them as managed solutions into your Production environment via your pipeline.
- Pros:
- Clear separation of development and testing.
- Production-like testing environment.
- Clean deployment process to Production with managed solutions.
- Cons:
- Requires managing two Sandbox environments.
- Initial setup and ongoing synchronization of the "Test/Mirror" Sandbox.
2. Re-Provision Your Sandbox Environment:
- Concept: If you don't have a second Sandbox readily available or prefer a simpler approach for now, you can re-provision your existing Sandbox. This will essentially reset it to a clean state.
- Workflow:
- Backup your current Sandbox if there are any critical unmanaged customizations or data you want to preserve (though this somewhat defeats the purpose of mirroring Production).
- Navigate to the Power Platform Admin Center.
- Select your Sandbox environment.
- Click "Reset" in the top menu.
- Choose the reset options. You'll likely want a minimal reset without sample data.
- After the reset, import your unmanaged solutions from your source control or a previous export.
- Pros:
- Returns your Sandbox to an editable state with unmanaged solutions.
- Cons:
- You lose all data and configurations that were in the Sandbox after the Production copy. This means you'll need to re-import any test data or unmanaged solutions you had there.
- It's a disruptive process.
3. Export Unmanaged Solutions Before the Production Copy (Preventative Measure):
- Concept: This is a preventative measure for future refreshes. Before you copy Production to your Sandbox, ensure you have exported all your unmanaged solutions from the Sandbox.
- Workflow:
- Before copying Production to Sandbox, export all unmanaged solutions from your Sandbox. Store these exports securely (e.g., in source control).
- Perform the Production to Sandbox copy. This will convert everything to managed.
- After the copy, re-import the unmanaged solution exports back into your Sandbox. This will bring back your editable layers on top of the managed base.
- Pros:
- Allows you to retain your editable layers in the Sandbox.
- Cons:
- Requires remembering to do this before each refresh.
- Might lead to complexities if the managed base from Production has significant schema differences from your unmanaged layers. Thorough testing will be crucial.
4. Manually Create Unmanaged Versions (Complex and Not Recommended for Large Solutions):
- Concept: You could theoretically try to manually recreate your solutions as unmanaged in the Sandbox by identifying the components and adding them to new unmanaged solutions.
- Workflow:
- Identify the components within the managed solutions in your Sandbox.
- Create new unmanaged solutions.
- Manually add the same components to these new unmanaged solutions.
- Pros:
- Theoretically gives you editable versions.
- Cons:
- Extremely time-consuming and error-prone, especially for complex solutions.
- You lose the history and structure of the original solutions.
- Difficult to ensure you capture all components accurately.
- Not a practical solution for most scenarios.
Recommendation:
The first option (maintaining a separate "Development" Sandbox) is the most robust and recommended long-term strategy for a healthy Dynamics 365 development and deployment process. It provides clear separation and a reliable testing environment.
If you need a more immediate solution, re-provisioning your Sandbox (option 2) is a viable way to get back to an editable state, but be aware of the data loss.
Option 3 (exporting before copying) is a good preventative measure for future refreshes if you choose to continue refreshing your primary Sandbox from Production.
Option 4 is generally not recommended due to its complexity and potential for errors.
To get your pipelines working again, you'll need an environment with unmanaged solutions that you can export and use as the source for your Production deployments. This likely means either using a dedicated "Development" Sandbox or re-provisioning your current Sandbox and re-importing your unmanaged solutions.
Consider discussing your environment strategy with your team to implement the most suitable long-term solution.
