If you’ve ever worked with Power Automate flows in a managed Production environment, you may have run into this situation:
someone makes a quick change directly in Production, and suddenly a new solution layer is sitting on top of everything.
That usually leads to the question:
“If I deploy a managed solution upgrade, will it overwrite that active layer and fix things?”
The short answer is no. Let me explain why.
How solution layers actually work
Every component in Dataverse (flows, forms, views, apps, and so on) has layers that stack on each other:
Managed layers come from imported managed solutions.
Unmanaged “Active” layer is created whenever someone edits directly in the environment.
The active layer always wins. That means whatever change was made in Production will stay in place, even after you bring in a new managed solution version.
[ Unmanaged Active Layer ] ← always on top if it exists
[ Managed Upgrade Layer ]
[ Managed Base Layer ]
Why a solution upgrade doesn’t fix it?
When you import a new solution with the upgrade option, or even choose “overwrite customizations,” it only applies to conflicts between managed layers.
The unmanaged active layer is untouched. Because it sits on top, it continues to override whatever you just deployed.
How to get rid of the active layer?
If you want your managed solution version to take effect again, you need to remove the unmanaged layer:
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Open the flow from inside the solution.
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Go to More → Details → Solution layers.
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Select Remove unmanaged customizations.
Once you do this, the flow goes back to the managed version delivered by your solution.
Avoiding the problem in the future
Try not to edit components directly in Production. Make changes in Dev or Test and deploy them forward.
Limit maker permissions in Production so flows can’t be tweaked there.
Use CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps or similar) so deployments are consistent and auditable.
The takeaway
Deploying a managed solution upgrade will not clear out an unmanaged active layer. If you want your solution version to apply, you’ll need to reset the component back to its base managed layer.
