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Why are my managed package metadata components not showing up?
Why are my managed package metadata components not showing up?

Searching for managed package metadata in your org to org comparisons

Valerio Chang avatar
Written by Valerio Chang
Updated this week

In an org to org comparison, if you are trying to compare managed package subcomponents (such as a managed custom field on a non-managed custom object) you may find it confusing that they don’t always show up in your comparison results. This article explains why this is happening.

In the section Prerequisites for managed package metadata to appear in your comparison results in this article, we note that there are two ways to view managed package metadata components.

These depend on whether you have the Installed package metadata type included in your metadata filter or not.

As a result, if your source and target have differing versions of a managed package (or the managed package does not exist in one of your orgs) you will see the following behavior:

  1. If the Installed package metadata type is not included in your metadata filter, the managed package subcomponents will appear in your comparison results.

  2. If the Installed package metadata type is included in your metadata filter (e.g. you use the Default comparison filter), the managed package subcomponents may not appear in your comparison results. You will see New / Different / Deleted items for the Installed package itself in the comparison results.

Let's take a look at some comparison results examples

Example for point 1:

On below screenshot we have comparison results where trailheadapp is installed in both the source and target orgs.


But because Installed package metadata is included in the metadata filter (of this comparison), we don't see any sub-components of the trailheadapp in the comparison results:

Example for point 2:

On below screenshot we have compared the same source and target orgs where the trailheadapp is installed in both orgs. Our metadata filter configuration is set to:

All the sub-components of the trailheadapp are showing up in the comparison results when "Include managed packages" option is set to "All" while Installed package metadata type remains unselected in the filter.

On below screenshot we're specifically narrowing down the search to Custom object and Custom object permission components of the trailheadapp managed package:

What other aspects should I consider?

It's important to note that Gearset can only detect different versions of managed packages if Installed package is included in your metadata filter.

If the managed package versions are different, those detected metadata differences could well be a result of version difference (new components etc) and not user customization. Accordingly, Gearset prevents those subcomponents appearing in your comparison results.

Understanding this, you will need to decide if you want Gearset to know that the managed packages versions are different or not, and adjust your metadata filter accordingly.

Are you looking for more advanced filtering options?

For more advanced filtering options that allow you to include and exclude specific items in your metadata filter, you may want to take a look at the Regex feature: Using regex in custom metadata filters.

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