One of the most important concepts in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform is understanding the difference between Managed Solutions and Unmanaged Solutions, because choosing the right type directly affects how you manage Customizations and Deployment.
- 📌 Unmanaged Solution: usually used in Development Environments. ✅ allows components to be freely added, edited, and deleted. ✅ suitable while building and developing solutions. ✅ developers can make changes directly. ⚠️ not recommended to be deployed directly to a Production environment.
- 📌 Managed Solution: usually used in Test and Production environments. ✅ protects customizations from being edited directly. ✅ gives better control over deployment and versioning. ✅ makes managing updates and upgrades easier. ✅ the preferred choice for Production environments.
- 🎯 When do I use each type? 🔹 Development Environment ← Unmanaged Solution. 🔹 Test / UAT / Production Environment ← Managed Solution.
- 📌 What are Solution Layers? When more than one Solution is installed on the same component, the system creates Layers. Each Layer represents a set of customizations applied to the component, and changes are applied based on the order of the Layers (Layering). Example: Base Solution → Managed Solution A → Managed Solution B → Active Layer. In this case, the topmost Layer takes priority when displaying or executing customizations.
- 💡 Understanding Solution Layers helps with: ✅ resolving conflicting customization issues ✅ understanding the source of changes ✅ managing solutions professionally ✅ applying ALM best practices inside Dynamics 365