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Solutions overview

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Solutions are used to transport apps and components from one environment to another or to apply a set of customizations to existing apps. A solution can contain one or more apps as well as other components such as site maps, tables, processes, web resources, choices, flows, and more.

Solutions are the mechanism for implementing application lifecycle management (ALM) in Power Apps and other Power Platform products, such as Power Automate.

Note

To learn more about the solution concepts and how solutions are used for application lifecycle management, go to Overview of ALM with Microsoft Power Platform in the Power Platform ALM guide.

This section will focus on the manual tasks that app makers need to perform while working with solutions in Power Apps.

Get started: solution concepts

Before you work with solutions, it's important that you get acquainted with the following solution concepts:

  • Two types of solutions (managed and unmanaged)
  • Solution components
  • Lifecycle of a solution (create, update, upgrade, and patch a solution)
  • Solution publisher
  • Solution and solution component dependencies

To learn more, go to Solution concepts in the Power Platform ALM guide.

Default solutions

Power Apps provides you with the following default unmanaged solutions:

  • Common Data Service Default Solution. This solution is available for makers to use by default for their customizations in an environment. The Common Data Service Default Solution is useful when you want to evaluate or learn Power Apps. However, we recommend that app makers work in their own unmanaged solutions.
  • Default Solution. This is a special solution that contains all components in the system. The default solution is useful for discovering all the components and configurations in your system.

However, we recommend that you create a solution to manage your customizations. More information: Use a solution to customize in the Power Platform ALM guide.

Managed properties

You can control which of your managed solution components are customizable by using managed properties. We recommend that you set managed properties so that your managed components can’t be modified. This helps protect your solution from modifications that may cause it to break after it's imported into another environment, such as test or production.

More information: Managed properties in the Power Platform

Work with solutions in Power Apps

Within Power Apps, you can view a list of solutions by selecting Solutions in the left navigation. You can perform these solution tasks:

  • New solution: To locate and work with just the components you’ve customized, create a solution and do all your customization there. Then, you can easily distribute your solution to other environments. More information: Create a solution

  • Import: Import a solution into your environment. More information: Import solutions

  • Open AppSource: Microsoft AppSource is where you can go to get solutions tailored to your industry that work with the products you already use.

  • Publish all customizations: Publish all active customizations in your environment.

  • Switch to classic: Open the classic solution explorer.

  • See history: View details about solution operations over time, such as import, export, and uninstall. More information: View the history of a solution

    Solutions area.

From the Solutions area, select a solution to view all of its components.

Demo solution with all components.

You can browse through all the components in a solution by scrolling through the items. If there are more than 100 items in the list you can select Load the next 100 items to see more.

Load more components.

Search and filter in a solution

You can also search for a specific component by its name.

Search component.

Or filter all items in the list by the component type.

Filter component by type.

Contextual commands

As you select each component, the actions available in the command bar will change depending on the type of the component you have selected and if the solution is the default or a managed one.

Component specific commands.

When you don't select any component, the command bar will show actions applied to the solution itself.

Solution specific commands.

With solutions that are unmanaged or the default one, you can use the New or Add Existing command to create or add different types of components. More information: Add solution components

Note

You can't add components to a managed solution. When you try to, you’ll get the following message:
"You cannot directly edit the components within a managed solution. You’ll need to add it to another unmanaged solution that you’ve created to customize the component. The component might not be customizable."

Additional privileges required

Some components may require certain Dataverse privileges for users to run the component when the component is imported into the environment from a solution.

Flows

To use or run a flow from a canvas app that is included in a solution, you must have permissions to that flow through someone sharing ownership or run permissions. When an app in a solution is shared with a set of users, the flows must also be explicitly shared.

More information: Security roles and privileges

Use pipelines in Power Platform to deploy solutions

Easily deploy solutions to test and production environments using pipelines in Power Platform. Once pipelines are in place, makers can initiate in-product deployments with a few clicks. Makers do so directly within their development environments. More information: Overview of pipelines in Power Platform

Known limitations

The following limitations apply to the use of canvas apps, flows, and custom connectors in solutions.

  • If you encounter a canvas app publishing error: the app has connections to flows that are no longer in the environment, remove any deleted flows from the app. Then save and publish the app.
  • Canvas apps shared with Everyone that go through environment backup and environment restore operations aren't shared with Everyone in the restored environment. Notice that the canvas app can be shared with a security group, and the app in the restored environment is shared with that security group.
  • Solution cloud flows using the Project Roadmap connector or using delegated authorization can't be added into solutions yet. The workaround for this limitation is to edit the flow to remove the Project Roadmap connector usage and/or delegated authorization, add the flow into a solution, and then change the flow back as needed.

To learn more about customizing the individual components in a solution, go to the following topics:

  • For table, table relationships, column and message customizations, go to Metadata.
  • For table forms, go to Forms.
  • For processes, go to Processes.
  • For business rules, go to Business Rules.

Troubleshooting solutions

For known issues and information about how to troubleshoot working with solutions, go to Manage apps and solutions in the Power Apps Troubleshooting documentation.

Next step

Create a solution