Power Platform Solutions Overview

Solutions are used to transport your Power Platform application and their components from one environment to another in an organized self-contained fashion. Within a given solution it can contain several applications as well as their components: Tables, Flows, Components, Connectors, Processes, Web Resources, Choices, and more.

If we think about what makes up a solution it’s a lot like a sandwich, made up of several parts coming together to serve the need of the consumer. The Solution or Bread in our example is the container for all of our ingredients, safely holding them together. The Tables within our solution are the meat because they are the “meat” or backbone of our solution which all other aspects of our application will utilize. The Serving Plate aka the PowerApp is how this is all presented to the consumer. The Flows within our solution tied to our application serve as the condiments tying all of the ingredients together, automating processes, and “adding flavor”. Lastly, components are the lettuce of our sandwich allowing us re-use it in several different scenarios such as navigation, modals, or maybe you don’t want lettuce in your sandwich and turn it into a salad.

Unmanaged Solutions: In a traditional ALM fashion we would utilize the lowest environment “Dev” as the unmanaged solution. This allows for developers to build, organize, and establish a baseline solution without restrictions on what can/can’t be modified. Unmanaged solutions are used in development environments while you make changes to your application. They can be exported either as unmanaged or managed. Exported unmanaged versions of your solutions should be checked into your source control system. Unmanaged solutions should be considered your source for Microsoft Power Platform assets. When an unmanaged solution is deleted, only the solution container of any customizations included in it is deleted. All the unmanaged customizations remain in effect and belong to the default solution.

Managed Solutions: These types of solutions are used to deploy to any environment that isn't a development environment for that solution. This includes Test, QA, and Prod environments. Managed solutions can be serviced independently from other managed solutions in an environment. As an ALM best practice, managed solutions should be generated by exporting an unmanaged solution as managed and considered a build artifact.