use-solutions-for-your-customizations.md

title	description	ms.custom	ms.date	ms.reviewer	ms.suite	ms.tgt_pltfrm	ms.topic	applies_to	author	ms.assetid	caps.latest.revision	ms.author	search.audienceType
Use solutions for customizations in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises)	Create your own solution to manage your customizations. Learn why you shouldn't create apps and make customizations using the default solution.		02/28/2020				article	Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement (online)	Mattp123	f993c4ed-1fc3-4e47-bef1-d38695ddb11a	57	matp	customizer

Create a solution to manage customizations

[!INCLUDE applies-to-on-premises] Use the Common Data Services Default Solution

We recommend that you create a solution to manage your customizations. With a custom solution, you can easily find just the solution components you’ve customized, consistently apply your solution publisher prefix, and export your solution for distribution to other environments.

If you don’t use a custom solution, you'll be working in the default solution in the unmanaged layer. The Default Solution is a special solution that contains all components in the system. The default solution is useful for discovering all of the components and configurations in your system.

Why you shouldn’t use the Default Solution to manage customizations

There are a few reasons why you shouldn’t create apps and make customizations in the Default Solution:

• The Default Solution contains all components and customizations from all solutions in the environment.
• It is difficult to locate or identify the customizations you have made in the environment using the Default Solution.
• Using the Default Solution, when creating components will also use the default publisher assigned to it. This may result in the wrong publisher prefix being applied to some components.
• The Default Solution can’t be exported. Therefore, you can’t distribute the Default Solution to another environment.

Privacy notices

[!INCLUDEcc_privacy_crm_gcc_solution_import]

[!INCLUDEcc_privacy_crm_customizations]

See also

Customization overview
Getting started with customization
Privileges required for customization
Whitepaper: Patterns and Principles for Solution Builders

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