How To Deploy Hotfix In MS Dynamic CRM 2016

Clone-Patching and Clone-Solution

Today, we will learn about the new feature of MS Dynamics CRM Solution Management, Clone-Patching, which is very useful in two conditions.

• Condition 1 When your project has gone live and you want to release the patch.
• Condition 2 If you or your organization works on some product development, using Dynamics CRM.

It’s very interesting as well as easy to manage versioning of the Solution.

For this article, I am creating a solution in my dev instance by the name of InventoryConfiguration with Version 1.1.0.0 and un-managed solution.

Now, the same solution is deployed on the production (targeted) machine with Managed Solution.


Statement

Project has gone live and the client requires some of the fields in contact form to be of 300 characters long instead of 100. This was already shared in UAT, but was missed somehow. Now, we need to add those fields.

Now, we go with this new feature given by Dynamic 2016, CLONE-PATCH

1. Select the parent solution and click on Clone a Patch
   
   
   
   
2. The Clone To Patch window will pop-up. Fill up the details and click on Save button.
   
   
   
   The first thing that comes to our attention is the Version Number. All of us know, but to just bring the context, a version number is usually of the format <major>.<minor>.<build>.<revision>.
   
   
3. A new solution is created with the same name with some suffix.
   
   
   
   
4. Solution was created as blank “No Solution Component “.
   
   
   
   
5. Add the desired components in this new patch solution and work according to your requirement. For instance, I added the field where we need to increase the length.
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. When we create a Patch of any solution, the parent solution does not always need to be edited.

Now, our Hotfix is ready. After testing it, we go for the new option, i.e. Clone Solution.

1. Select the parent solution and click on Clone Solution.
   
   
   
2. Pop-Up comes with some details of Clone Solution.
   
   
   
   Here, we can change the version number as per your organization or product.
   
   
3. There were two solutions, one is parent and the other is patch. But after we click on the Save button of Clone Solution popup window, both of them merge in one. 
   
   
   
   {All the patches are merged with parent solution and delete all patch solutions.}

Now, we can create a Manage Solution and deploy on target machine.

I hope you understood the concept of the patch and solution feature which is very helpful in managing any product or production hotfix.





In my next article, I will try to explain about Auto-Package Deployment.