While working on an existing solution in a lower environment (Dev) that had already been deployed to a Production (Live) environment as a Managed solution, we encountered an issue. Our goal was to remove a custom field from an Entity form, but not from the Entity itself. After following the standard procedure to remove the field from the form in the lower environment, we exported the solution, incremented the version number, and imported it into the Production environment. However, the field still remained on the form.
Workaround Solution
To address this, we implemented a workaround. Instead of simply removing the field from the form, we took the following steps:
- Remove the Entire Section: In the lower environment, we removed the entire section that contained the field.
- Re-add the Section: We then recreated the section, adding the desired fields back into the section, excluding the one we wanted to remove.
- Export and Import the Managed Solution: After making these changes, we exported the solution from the lower environment and imported it into the Production environment with an updated version number.
Upon import, the unwanted field was successfully removed from the form.
What Happened in the Background?
By removing and re-adding the entire section, the section’s GUID was changed in the lower environment. This caused the old section (with the field) to be replaced by the new section (without the field) in the target environment during the solution import.
Conclusion This workaround enabled us to successfully remove the field from the form in the Production environment using the Managed solution upgrade process.