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Problems With Managed Solution Merge

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Posted on by FeAsen

We are currently facing a few issues, where the solutions of the PowerApps model-driven app that we customise is not being merged correctly, which makes that the changes we see in Dev are not respected/reflected in the higher environments.

Issue 1, we have options of choices that have been removed and working fine in Dev, but once it is pushed into Test/Prod, the options are not removed. This happens with a few choices.

Issue 2, the Site Map is not coming in the order and with the items present in Dev once that is deployed to Production. Items are changing the order and removed items are not coming through.

Issue 3, fields, and tabs not in the correct order when deployed from Dev to Test/Prod. For this one we found some workarounds, but they are quite time-consuming.

We have already tried all distinct types of export/import and deployment via Pipeline.

We are close to the delivery of this project, and we cannot deliver it with an unmanaged layer to fix these issues.

Could anyone please help us understand what is happening and how we can fix these issues?

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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Parvez Ghumra 1,579 Moderator on at

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@FeAsen I haven't played with Power Platform Pipelines much, but my first recommendation would be explore whether the 'Overwrite unmanaged customisations' option is available if you deploy your managed solution using Power Platform Pipelines. If it is, ensure it is set for your deployment in order to mitigate against any existing unmanaged layers that might be present in your target environment.

If this option is not available, you might need to deploy using an alternative mechanism (eg. manually using the classic experience so you have this option, programmatically via the API/PAC CLI, or using an Azure DevOps pipeline using the Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools extension or Power Platform Github Action workflow) in order to be able to use this option

The next think to check is whether your managed solution layers are in the correct sequence in your target environment for the affected objects. If not, consider using my 'Managed Solution Layer Raise' XrmToolBox tool to resolve this. Details here: https://xrmsolutionsuk.com/blog/managed-solution-layer-raiser

There are also some object specific nuances that might causing the problem here. You can read further here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/alm/how-managed-solutions-merged#merge-option-set-options

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Shashank Bhide 942 Moderator on at

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do you've an active unmanaged customization? are you importing solution in "upgrade" mode or "update" mode, if it's an update mode, then likely the solution merge hasn't happened and old values haven't been deleted. you need a managed solution upgrade with a new version number

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FeAsen on at

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Hi @parvezghumra and @shashankbhide ,

I have no active (unmanaged) layers, tried all options through manual export/import, both Update and Upgrade are giving me the same result of not removing the options from lower solutions. I have also tried the pipeline via PowerApps, ALM and DevOps, nothing worked.

In the past, there was a work around where you could delete the option from the Default solution and then deleted the Active layer, and the deletion would stick, but now it reverts back to the lower solutions instead of respecting the latest.

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Shashank Bhide 942 Moderator on at

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@FeAsen deleting an active layer MUST restore the solution to the latest version solution in solution chain, if that's not happening, I'd suggest to raise a support ticket with Microsoft.

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FeAsen on at

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@shashankbhide

The problem is actually that the top layer is being ignored and the end app is bringing data from the lower layer. I did create a ticket with Microsoft to see if they can help us.

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Fubar 8,338 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Your choices issue is probably either because:

it was imported with another Managed Solution (i.e. you are importing a new Managed solution rather than updating the one that initially installed it), or

started as Unmanaged

In the case of imported from another Managed Solution, your update will just sit on top of that managed solution and only new items or updates you added will come from your newer solution (deletes are not present in your newer solution so existing items will show through from the lower solution) - what you would usually do is import your newer solution and then remove the older solution, or do a version update on the older solution (with the items removed) and import it, then import your newer one - (if choosing to remove the old solution, then your newer solution needs to contain all the items that will be removed when the old one is removed - and your newer one installed before you remove the old one) - you may also be able to get away with importing your newer then finding the specific item and removing the lower solutions layers on that item (if it lets you).

if it started as unmanaged, you have to delete them out and import your managed solution, then remove any unmanaged layer.

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FeAsen on at

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Hi Fubar,

Thanks a lot for your time for looking into these issues.

In relation to the choices, we have a base product, which is all managed, and we require customising it to our clients. Some of the items we need to customise would be to edit the available options in choice fields/global choices, which in times required removing/hiding options. Would we have any option to do that, given the options exist in our base managed solution?

Regarding the Site Map, the situation is weirder. The navigation item didn't exist in the base solution, it was created in the customisation layer and deployed as managed to Test environment, which was later removed from the customisation layer and redeployed. However, the items not only do not seem to be removed, but it also messed with the order of the items in the site map. We had a few instances where this happened, and in one extreme case, we saw the changes done in the customisation to make its way down to the managed base solution, at least when we compare both solutions. Any insights about this one?

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Shashank Bhide 942 Moderator on at

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IMHO, if you're building a product, then you need to have extensibility at your core level, modifying managed solutions and introduce unmanaged customizations isn't recommended. for e.g. if you've to add new optionset values every time for your customers, I'd recommend to design it as a PCF control and have it data driven, so that your customers could add more options without the need of deployment.

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FeAsen on at

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Thank you for sharing your opinion @shashankbhide , however, unfortunately it is not that simple in our case.

To simplify, we do not have control over the base product, we are only further customising a product for a specific client. Due to the size of the product and the number of choices in the system, it is not exactly practical to have a PCF for each of the choices we have.

Basically, our Dev environment receives a package that is managed, from there we do the changes we need and pack it as a higher-level solution and send it to the higher environments as managed. The problem is exactly when we send from our Dev (which works fine) to the managed environments.

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