Solution deployment is always a major concern for Dynamics 365 projects. This
blog is to discuss the OOTB options available for Solution management
and focuses on Managed solution deployments in an online environment.
In
a typical Dynamics 365 project you can have multiple deployments as the software customization code is moved using solutions from one
environment to another.
Consider a solution as a bucket of components. Components is customization's done based on user story / requirements. So each solution is basically a group of user requirements delivered to environments for QA and UAT testing and finally deployed to Production.
Effective Solution management requires -
1. Ability to identify, track and control the solution versions deployed in each environment
2. Ability to differentiate between the software codes deployments between multiple environments
3.
Ability to uninstall (rollback) to an earlier version if an error is
detected in the current version of the solution (using managed
solutions)
4. Ability to map and connect user story (requirements) to software customization's (components)
Solution Types
There are 2 types of Solutions –
1. Managed Solutions
2. Unmanaged Solution
Most
of the code deployments in the past versions of Dynamics 365 (CRM) was done using unmanaged solution. It was a challenge to work with Managed
solution in a production environment. Also managed solution were mainly
used by ISV’s for add-on package software distribution by Microsoft
partners.
Some of the risks involved with using unmanaged solution in Production are –
1. It is difficult to control the code getting modified in a non-development environment.
2. It is not possible to roll back or undo the changes made with an unmanaged solution
3. Deleting an unmanaged solution does not delete the customization's in the solution
There are advantages to using Managed solutions -
1. A managed solution only includes solution components that have been customized.
1.1 This prevents unintentionally changing existing solution components on the system where the solution is installed,
1.2 It also keeps the size of the managed solution smaller.
2.
Managed solution helps in keeping control over any changes made in the
non-development environments.
You can defined what custom component can
or cannot be customized in the managed environment. The managed
properties have to be set in the unmanaged solution before exporting as
managed solution.
3. Versioning and patching / updating is useful and easy to manage with OOTB functionality.
Risks involved with Managed solution –
If a managed solution is deleted it deletes the following –
1. All data stored in custom entities that are part of the managed solution
2. All data stored in custom fields of system entities that are part of the managed solution
Hence
it is never a good idea to uninstall or delete a managed solution as it
will delete the data. You can update the managed solution thus
maintaining the data.
Details
about versioning, patching and updating managed solutions will be
discussed in my next blog – Managing Solutions in Dynamics 365 Part-2.
Multiple Solutions –
Agile projects have a continuous development cycle. The solution will grow in size
and complexity. It also requires multiple releases to production. It is a good practice to divide the solution into
different multiple solutions so it is easy to manage and move from one environment
to another.
For example – You can divide your customizations and configuration components into 2 different solutions. It is also a good practice to
have a separate solution for Security Roles to avoid user issues
implications during deployments. So there can be multiple solutions like
- Configurations / Customization's / Security Roles etc.
Resolving conflicts -
There can be a plethora of solutions OOTB from Microsoft (the last time I counted it
has @14 managed solutions if you include all options), ISV solutions
and custom development solutions which can be managed and / or unmanaged.
It is important to understand how Dynamics 365 will resolve
conflicts. The figure below shows how the different solutions interact
with the System solutions resulting in the final application behavior. The system solution is the default OOTB solution. Managed solutions and Unmanaged customization's determine what the user will finally visualize and experience.
When
there are multiple solutions Dynamics 365 will resolve conflicts
using the two strategies – Merge and Top Wins.
1.
Merge – All UI components are re-calculated and merged from bottom to
top. The unmanaged customization are last to be displayed.
2. Top Wins – All other non UI customization's the conflicts is resolved based on the solution components that is applied last.
Update to a Managed solution does not follow the above rule.
If
unmanaged customization's already exists for updates made to a managed
solution, the user may not see the updated changes in the organization.
The user will be given an option when updating the Managed solution
whether to overwrite or preserve any existing customization's on top of
the Managed solution.
In addition the following is to be noted for updates to managed solutions
1. Forms merging – Any form customization's may need to be further
customized after the updates are published.
2. Site Map – Site map customization's need to be verified and further
changes may be needed as they are also getting merged.
In my experience it is better to have a pre-production staging environment to do a complete test before the solutions are deployed to production.
I
hope the above helps in understanding and managing solutions. In my next part II of this
blog I will write about the solution versioning and patching options.
Let me know your past experience with solutions and if you are using Managed solutions for
deployments.
Thanks for reading.
Mihir Shah
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