Which are the differences between managed and unmanaged solution and when should I use them?

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Posted on by Joel D

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Hi,

Can you explain the key differences between managed and unmanaged solution, with relevant scenarios?

Why, and when, is it so important to differentiate them?

Which are the pros and cons/limits of each of them?

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Charan Raju C R 7 Moderator on at

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Hi Joel,

please go through the below links for better understanding on managed and unmanaged solutions.

docs.microsoft.com/.../solutions-overview

www.crmconsultants.co.uk/.../

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meelamri 13,216 User Group Leader on at

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Hi,

When you deploy your customizations with a managed solution. These customizations cannot be modified on the target environment and if you uninstall the solution, the customizations will be automatically deleted

When you deploy your customizations with an unmanaged solution. These customizations cannot be modified on the target environment and if you uninstall the solution, the customizations will not be deleted, you have to delete them manually if necessary.

According to Microsoft recommendations. Deployment with a managed solution is designed for production environments. This is only a recommendation, it is not a requirement.

Finally, only an unmanaged solution that can be exported. You should always keep an environment containing your unmanaged solutions. This will allow you to maintain your customizations. Indeed, if you lose an unmanaged solution that contains your customizations, it would be almost impossible to maintain your developments and deploy them in another environment.

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Joel D 363 on at

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Thank you for your replies.

As regards to the following statement:

"Managed solutions can be upgraded. Unmanaged solutions can't be upgraded"

What does "upgrade / update a solution" mean, and why / when might I need to do it?

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Charan Raju C R 7 Moderator on at

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If there is any improvement/fix in existing functionality (previously deployed as managed solution), next version of the solution shall be deployed to production. If the solution is managed, previous/existing feature will get upgraded. This improvement/fix can be uninstalled anytime if the solution deployed is managed.

Example, if you have imported ribbon workbench managed solution in your environment, and there is any bug fixing or new features released, you can upgrade by importing ribbon workbench managed solution which contains fixes/features.

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AriaConsulting 2 on at

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There is a very big "gotcha" with managed solutions though. And this happens whether it is something you've developed as a customer or ISV solutions, or even additional MS solutions (such as the marketing automation app). If you install a managed solution that references some of the major master data entities/tables (ex. Account in CE or Customer in BC), and then put in another managed solution that also references that same entity(ies)/table(s), and down the road you wish to uninstall the 1st managed solution, you can only do so by uninstalling any and all managed solutions that were installed after the 1st one.

This is due to the architecture of the horrified UI. Ooops, sorry, the unified UI......

Yes, the product group is aware that they architected the horrified UI following the pattern of PROCEDURAL CODE from the 1990's. No, they have no idea how to correct that problem now. I've actually spoken to one of the senior program managers in the product team.

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Joel D 363 on at

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Hi,

Can you please explain to me the meaning of CE and BC in the following ex that you mentioned?

(ex. Account in CE or Customer in BC)

I have another doubt also related to managed / unmanaged: when try to import an existing entity inside my solution, the entities shown have a State field which can be both Managed or Unmanaged , as in the screen below:

Which is the difference between these two types of entities (managed/unmanaged) ?

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AriaConsulting 2 on at

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CE=Customer Engagement (the combination of Sales, Customer Service/Omnichannel, Field Service and, formerly, Project Automation Services).

BC=Business Central

Managed solutions can only be modified if the flag for enabled to be customizable is set to true. Unmanaged solutions can be changed by anyone with the sysadmin or customizer roles.

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