Working with Dynamics CRM/Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM/D365CE) solution imports can often feel a lot like persuing a new diet or exercise regime; we start out with the best of intentions of how we want things to proceed, but then something comes up to kick the wheel off the wagon and we end up back at square one 🙂 Anything involving a change to an IT system can generally be laborious to implement, due to the dependencies involved, and things can invariably go wrong at any stage in the process. The important thing is to always keep a cool head, take things slowly and try not to overcomplicate things from the outset, as often the simplest or most obvious explanation for an issue is where all due attention should be focused towards.

In the case of CRM/D365CE, we have the ability to access full log information relating to a solution import - regardless of whether it has failed or succeeded. This log can prove to be incredibly useful in troubleshooting solution import failures. Available as an XML download, it can be opened within Excel to produce a very readable two tab spreadsheet containing the following information:

• The Solution tab provides high-level information regarding the solution package, its publisher, the status of the import and any applicable error messages.
• The Components tab lists every single attempted action that the solution attempted to execute against the target instance, providing a timestamp and any applicable error codes for each one.

The above document should always be your first port of call when a solution import fails, and it will almost certainly allow you to identify the root cause of the failure - as it did for me very recently.

An unmanaged solution import failed with the top-level error message Fields that are not valid were specified for the entity. Upon closer investigation within the import log, I was able to identify the affected component - a custom attribute on the Quote entity - and the specific error message generated - Attribute…has SourceType 0, but 1 was specified:

The reason why the error was being generated is that a field with the same logical name was present within the environment, something which - for clearly understandable reasons - is not allowed. In this particular scenario, we were doing some tidy up of an existing solution and replacing a calculated field with a new field, with a different data type, using the same attribute name. The correct step that should have been taken before the solution import was to delete the “old” field in the target environment, but this was accidentally not included in the release notes. After completing this and re-attempting the solution import, it completed successfully.

The likelihood of this error ever occurring in the first place should be remote, assuming that you are customising your system the right way (i.e. using Solution Publisher prefixes for all custom attributes/entities). In this occasion, the appropriate note as part of the release documentation for the solution would have prevented the issue from occurring in the first place. So, as long as you have implemented a sufficiently robust change management procedure, that includes full instructions that are required to be completed both before and after a solution import, you can avoid a similar situation when it comes to replacing entity attributes within your CRM/D365CE solution.