Hi
Since the introduction of segmentation (you can add only certain components of an entity for example) and patches, what would be a good approach for medium and large scale projects? We are working unmanaged in all environments (dev - qa - prd) on most projects, some are managed in qa and prd.
Multiple options:
- one solution with all customizations (for the whole company)
- solutions per business units/functionality (like one for sales and one for service)
- techinical solutions like plugins and workflows in separate solutions
- ...
Do you have one solution with all customizations, plugin assemblies, workflows, etc?
If I read MS guidelines around patches, MS states that it's not advised to use patching on unmanaged PRD environments. Is there any reason for this?
When using patches, does it matter to divide in multiple solutions since patches are smaller to import?
My first idea was the following:
1. Leave masterdata entities (like countries, languages, etc.) out of the base solution. Like this, they are not re-imported every time something small has to be deployed. But I am having troubles when using segmentation, please consider this example:
Entity account has a lookup attribute to new_language.
Base solution contains entity account.
Solution "LookupTest" contains entity new_language (all components except the 1:N relation to account).
When importing, I get following error, which I would not immediately expect:
I would expect that, with segmented solutions, I can take one entity like Language without any link to Account? So I don't take the 1:N relationship with account, and remove Account from the form navigation of Language.
2. Divide between different functional domains/tools which only contain the necessary information for that domain/tool:
Consider for example a tool called AccountSegmentation, which uses Account and has a related entity Account Segments displayed as subgrid on the form. If another solution called AccountReportingTool also contains the same Account form, there is no use in dividing between Account Segments and AccountReportingTool?
When reviewing with what we know and already tried, we feel like going for one big solution using patches to deploy 2-weekly fixes. On some moments in the year we would go for an upgrade solution, to gather all patches back into the main solution. The only drawback is that this solution (not the patch solutions) can become big and import becomes slow.
We are really looking for a solution which enable easier deployment and with which we only deploy the changes approved to deploy.
Thanks in advance!
Kind regards
