The capability to stage managed solutions was introduced in Dynamics CRM 2016. One of the problems addressed by staging is deleting components bundled in a managed solution.

In the past, to delete managed solution components, you had to introduce a holding solution (holding solutions are intermediary solutions that look like the final solution (with the deleted components) but they keep the schema (and the data) intact). The original solution was then deleted, and then the updated managed solution was reimported, followed by the holding solution removal.

The steps were cumbersome but unavoidable. The introduction of staging allows you to resolve the same problem addressed by two steps: stage and upgrade.

This recipe focuses on the steps required to stage a solution followed by its upgrade.