Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Hello nvrhughes,

Yes, this behavior is expected with managed solutions and option sets (Choices) in Dynamics 365.

Here's why and what you need to do:

Understanding Managed Solution Upgrades and Option Sets:

Managed Solutions are Additive: When you import a managed solution as an upgrade, the system generally adds the changes from the new version on top of the existing managed solution. It aims to be non-destructive to data and existing customizations.

Deletion is a Destructive Change: Removing a value from a managed option set is considered a destructive change. Managed solutions, by design, avoid performing destructive changes during an upgrade to prevent potential data loss or unexpected behavior in the target environment. The system assumes that the existing value might still be in use by existing records.

Why the Deleted Value Persists:

When you import the upgraded managed solution:

The system recognizes that you've removed a value from the Choice field in the new version of the solution.

However, it will not automatically delete that value from the option set in the target environment. This is to ensure that any existing records in the target environment that are currently using that deleted value remain valid and don't suddenly have an empty or incorrect value in that field.

What You Need to Do:

You are correct. To completely remove the deleted value from the Choice field in your target environment, you will need to perform an additional step:

Unpublish Customizations: In your target environment, go to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System. It's generally a good practice to unpublish all customizations before making schema-level changes like deleting option set values.

Manually Delete the Option Set Value:
- Navigate to the Choice (Option Set) that you modified. You can find it under Components > Option Sets.
- Open the specific Choice.
- Locate the value that you deleted in your development environment.
- Select the value and click the "Delete" button.

Publish All Customizations: After deleting the value, Publish All Customizations to apply the change to your environment.

Important Considerations:

Data Integrity: Before deleting the option set value in your target environment, ensure that no active records are currently using that value. Deleting a value that is still associated with records can lead to data inconsistencies or errors. You might need to run an Advanced Find query on the entity and field in question to identify any records using the value and update them before deletion.

Unmanaged Layers: You mentioned there are no unmanaged solution layers, which is good. Unmanaged customizations can sometimes interfere with managed solution upgrades.

Future Upgrades: If you delete the value manually in the target environment, and then later import another upgrade of the managed solution from your development environment (where the value is still absent), the deletion in the target environment will persist as it's now an unmanaged change on top of the managed solution.

In summary, the expected behavior for deleting option set values in managed solutions during an upgrade is that the value is not automatically removed from the target environment to prevent data loss. You need to manually delete the value in each target environment after the upgrade and ensure no records are actively using it.

If my answer was helpful, please click Like, and if it solved your problem, please mark it as verified to help other community members find more. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me.

My response was crafted with AI assistance and tailored to provide detailed and actionable guidance for your Microsoft Dynamics 365 query.

Regards,

Daivat Vartak

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