What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 – Selective Components

CRM 2016 is here and it’s full of new enhancements! One of my favorites is the advances in the solutions capabilities of CRM to allow for selective sub-components of a Solution Package. This should come as great news for anyone who has experienced struggles when attempting to get disparate solutions to coexist in a production system. I’ve personally seen this happen when trying to move a small change from a sandbox to production organization. In older versions of Dynamics CRM, any changes to an entity would require moving the entire entity, which includes all attributes, forms and views. For example, if I simply wanted to create a new field in a Sandbox environment, and push it into production, there’s a chance that I would change the attributes of all the related fields in production.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, you can avoid that headache and now move a single field from within an entity. Are you curious to see how it works? I’m glad you asked 🙂

In this example, I’ve built a new solution, and added the account entity.

I don’t want to add any metadata or assets, so clearing the two check boxes should ensure I create a skeleton solution.

I can now create my new field

When I export my new solution, it will only contain the new field that I created, and not all of the other assets normally included. Unzip the solution and open it up in your favorite XML reader. You can see the solution only contains the new field, and weighs in at a very slim 66 lines.

Be aware that you cannot selectively migrate individual elements of an attribute. In my example below, I would simply like to turn on auditing for the Relationship Type field, but not change the option set values in Production. I’ve added the field and only checked the auditing box.

When I export my new solution, I can see that ALL elements for the Relationship Type field are included in my XML, including all of the default option set values.

If you are looking for a certified Microsoft solution partner to help you with your CRM installation, make sure you pick the one that keeps in sync with all of the latest technologies. How can Beringer help you? Please feel free to contact us.