Question about Customization Packages

[Josh Kenzer]

If I create a handful of Smart Rules and upload them to an instance via a Customization Package XML file, is there any way to deactivate one of them or do I have to delete the whole package to turn one of them off?

[Lee Savidge]

As far as I know, when you create a custom package, you can't modify things that are deployed by it. You have to modify the package and re-upload it, which is ridiculous for many scenarios. I get that if you have created a custom module that you need to control, but if you're deploying changes from an implementation environment to a live, it's a massive pain in the neck. Things like adding/modifying picklist items can't be done by the end customer. Just a flag in it that allowed end user modification would have been useful. Becuase of this limitation with packages, we end up having to deploy changes to live manually which takes hours and things do get missed or not done just the same way and it makes for a hard time for a live delivery. I used a package once on a customer and due to their design, then had a lot of drop down lists/picklists and these would get modified a couple of times a year to add values. Now, I have to get involved and modify the package and redeply each time rather than just have the customer do what they need to do.

Custom packages... great idea, badly executed in my opinion. Only recently did the XSD get released to allow you to programmatically create the XML package without faults because even creating them used to used to be a manual process, fraught with errors. Well, it still is manual unless you have written an application that puts them together into a package like I did.

My advice, is to release them manually rather than via a package. You'll save yourself a lot of time going forward if they need modification.

[Josh Kenzer]

Thanks Lee. That's what I was afraid of.