After all requirement gathering meeting all of us mostly ask ourselves .

“Are we clear on problem?”

and then we say

“Let us build a solution.”

Before getting into the definition of the “Solutions” let’s take a look at the scenario

So here we are in a business meeting with Contoso, a well-known manufacturer company. The CXOs are telling our consultant how he is running the business and how much information he is getting and what kind of information he wants.

CXO says he have is account information but all the information are distributed in multiple places, their employees combine all the information now and then to provide consolidated information which is a manual task for our employees. It would be great if we can reduce this manual effort.

Now this is the problem, what our well-suited Consultant will do now? You are right he just pick one solution from his utility belt and bam problem solved.

So in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solution is nothing but a package which contains different kind of solutions. let’s make it more simple by an example.

you can have n number of solution which contains Account entity , similarly for contact, leads or any other entity, or you can have an entire ready to use Out of the box functionality,

We can have custom industry based solutions, module based solution, or just some add-on product as a solution (ex: ID generator from planet XRM, Ribbon workbench and many more). These solutions striped down your projects timeline and it can help your team to meet their goals on time. These solutions makes your customization reusable just like a raw alpha beta code.

Theses solution also help us to move customization and development between multiple tenants. It is the easy way to copy your sandbox development to production instance.

Solutions exist so that a collection of customizations can be purchased, shared or otherwise transported from one organization to a different. You will get solutions within the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace or from associate degree freelance package merchant (ISV). A CRM solution could be a file that you simply can import to use a group of customizations.

Creating solutions is non-mandatory. You will be able to customise your CRM system directly while not ever making a solution. After you customise the CRM system directly, you work with a special solution known as the Default solution. The Default solution contains all the elements in your system. You will be able to export your Default solution to make a backup of the customizations you have been defined in your organization. This is often smart to have in an exceedingly worst-case situation

Type of Solutions

There are two types of Solution

Managed
Unmanaged

A managed solution can be uninstalled once it is imported. All the elements of that solution are removed by uninstalling the solution. Once you import an unmanaged solution, you add all the elements of that solution into your default solution. You cannot take away the elements by uninstalling the solution. Once you import an unmanaged solution that contains solution elements that you just have already customized, your customizations are overwritten by the customizations within the unmanaged solution. You cannot undo this.

Therefore, in one line, you have an undo button with your managed solutions. unmanaged solutions are risky and often leads to create a messy environment if not implemented carefully

Lets get into details

Managed Solutions

Managed solutions will modify the system solution elements and add new elements. If multiple managed solutions are installed, the primary one installed is below the managed solution installed later. This suggests that the second solution installed can customise the one installed before. Once two managed solutions have conflicting definitions, the final rule is “Last one wins”. If you uninstall a managed solution, the managed solution below it takes impact. If you uninstall all managed solution, the default behaviour outlined within the System solution is applied.

Unmanaged Solutions/ Customization

Unmanaged customizations are any amendment you have been made to your organization through an unmanaged solution. The system solution defines what you’ll or cannot customise by using Managed properties. Publishers of managed solutions have an equivalent ability to limit your ability to customise solution elements that they add in their solution. You can customise any of the solution elements that do not have managed properties that forestall you from customization them.

Next, we will see how to create a solution and what the different types of component it has and how solution import works.

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