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Managed and unmanaged Solutions

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Posted on by DimaN

Hello all,

I recently came across the so-called solutions in CRM Dynamics, more specifically unmanaged as well as managed solutions. However, I am not quite sure when I should use which one. When using CRM Dynamics internally, should the environment be developed with unmanaged solutions or should managed solutions also be used there? The difference between the two is quite clear to me, but not the best practice use cases. For customer use, I assume that the environment will be developed with managed solutions. In-house, however, the system is then developed with unmanaged solutions because historical adjustments can be made more quickly? Does anyone have experience with this?

Many thanks in advance

/DN

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PerezAguiar Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: Managed and unmanaged Solutions

Hello Dima.

Several conditions apply here. But the most important is to have clear the "managed" vs "unmanaged": An "unmanaged" solution allows you to continue making changes, while a "managed" means that no more changes are released on that version. For example, you have a form with some changes that switches field distribution as well as adding new fields. The developer is going to make the changes on their environment, but you will need to pass this through 2 tests:

- How does this change works with the rest of stuff & Data you have?

- Are the users OK with these changes?

In order to check the first test, you should have an "intermediate" environment (namely UAT, PreProd, testing or something like that), where you'll see how that form behaves with datasets and volume closer to real. In order to solve the second test, you should ask a few key users to test on the same environment (UAT, PreProd, Testing, etc) and validate usability.

If an of those tests has issues, a new iteration with the customizations will take place, and here lies the question: Would you upload something to production that is not the same that you've uploaded to the previous environment? IF you upload to UAT an Unmanaged solution to UAT and a Managed to Production, you might be missing some changes. The idea is to aim for consistency (what goes to Testing is the same that will go to Production, to avoid changes on the process).

This is why sometimes, companies that have several developers might have another environment "Integration", that will contain Unmanaged solutions, and once all code/customizations are deployed into that INtegration environment, will use to generate the Managed solution that will move to UAT (so the same "Managed solution" approach used to move between INT and UAT is the same process between UAT and Prod)

Regards,

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ankit_singhal 560 on at

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RE: Managed and unmanaged Solutions

Yes, Best practise is to deploy a managed solution in a higher environment. So, no one can not make any changes in higher environments directly. Changes should be made in a dev environment first and then go in higher enironment using managed solution.

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DimaN 55 on at

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RE: Managed and unmanaged Solutions

Thank you for the answer. However, what if a request comes from e.g. the sales department to change an existing view from, say, 3 months ago? For example, a field should be added or removed from the view. Would a new solution be created especially for this? Because if you were to work with unmanaged solutions, you could simply revise the existing one. Or how do you see it?

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Inogic 651 on at

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RE: Managed and unmanaged Solutions

Hi Dima,

You are correct in your assumption.

Unmanaged solutions are typically used during the development phase of a Dynamics CRM project as they allow quick and easy changes to be made to the solution. Managed solutions are used during solution deployment to a production environment. They provide a level of protection to the solution components and ensure the solution remains stable and secure. Using unmanaged solutions during development and managed ones for deployment to a production environment is recommended for internal use. However, the final decision of using either type of solution depends on the project’s specific requirements.

For additional information, kindly refer to the following link-

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customerengagement/on-premises/developer/introduction-solutions?view=op-9-1#unmanaged-and-managed-solutions

Thanks!

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