With Dynamics CRM online, you have never been able to automate a solution deployment fully. With the on-prem version, you can modify the underlying database as needed to accomplish certain tasks but you do not have access to the database in the online version.
If you want to “script” the settings for an org that you just created, you were a bit out of luck. You can export/import a limited set of settings along with your solution, however, not all settings can be set using the solution import/export model.
For example, I have some large web resources that need to be uploaded in a solution. You cannot set export/import the attachment max file size setting, which controls the allowable size of web resources, using the web API or the solution export/import model. This is a well known problem.
How can you automate this?
Use the new Web API in v9.0! The new API allows you to set the settings (except for some settings around categorized search and the preview APIs).
The new web API has an entity called “organization” that contains most, but not all, of the settings.
Use it like any other web API call.
You can always try out the command line tool dynamics-client which allows you set the settings from a file. You can also use powershell but I found it easier to create a json settings file and just have that loaded for me vs writing a script.
