SharePoint 2016 Central Admin - System Settings - Manage User Solutions

When you click on the Manage User solutions Link, you will land on Sandboxed Solution Management page. This page will allow you to manage the user solutions (Sandboxed Solutions).


Manage User Solutions page’s direct link - /_admin/UserSolutions.aspx

We all know about the Sandboxed solutions, which were introduced in SharePoint 2010, but now are deprecating mode in favor of SharePoint Add-Ons. Most companies still have On-Premise deployment, which are using Sandboxed solutions as an option.

Sandboxed solutions definition as per TechNet

“A sandboxis a restricted execution environment that enables programs to access only certain resources and keeps problems that occur in the sandbox from affecting the rest of the server environment. Solutions that you deploy into a sandbox, which are known as sandboxed solutions, cannot use certain computer and network resources and cannot access content outside the site collection they are deployed in.”

In certain situations, SharePoint administrator wants to block a specific Sandbox solution, which is going out of control and causing the farm wide issues. There are many other reasons in which SharePoint admin wants to block Sandbox Solutions for certain amount of time.

In Central Admin, as SharePoint Administrator, we can block or unblock a single or multiple Sandbox Solutions.

We can also manage the load balancing settings of the Sandbox code executions. SharePoint provides two type of load balancing options.

  1. Local Load Balancing
    This means the same Server will execute Sandbox Solution, which received the Web request. This solution is not for the production environment due to fact that if high number of Web request, it is received by a single Sandbox Solution.

  2. Remote Load Balancing
    It means the requests for Sandboxed Solutions are routed by the solution affinity. In these options, Sandbox Solutions will pick the Server, which already loads Sandboxed Solution and is run before. This gives us more control on resource management and this option is also recommended. By default, this option is selected.

One thing needs to be kept in mind, whether you are using the Local or Remote Load balancing. Sandboxed Solutions Service must be running on all the Servers, where you want execute Sandbox code.

To block a Sandbox Solution

We are going to block the LifeInSharePoint.Weather Sandbox Solution. Please follow the steps given below.

  • Login to Central admin with the account member of Farm Administrator group and also local admin on the Server.
  • Go to the Manage User Solutions page.
  • In block solutions sections do the following

    1. Click Browse button and upload the solutions, which you want to block.
    2. Enter the reason, so as to why we want to block the solution.
    3. Click Block.


  • You will see solution is added into the Blocked Solutions lists.



  • Click OK.


To unblock a Sandbox Solution

We are going to unblock the LifeInSharePoint.SPTwitter Sandbox Solution. Please follow the steps given below.

  • Login to Central Admin with the account member of Farm Administrator group and also local admin on the Server.
  • Go to the Manage User Solutions page.
  • In blocked solutions sections, proceed, as shown below.

    1. Select the LifeInSharePoint.SPTwitterSandbox Solution.
    2. Click Remove.


  • Now, you will see this solution is gone from the blocked list and is allowed in SharePoint Farm.



  • Click Ok.


To Configure Load Balancing options

Please follow the steps given below to configure the load balancing options.

  • Login to Central Admin with an account member of Farm Administrator group and also local admin on the Server.
  • Go to the Manage User Solutions page.
  • Select either all Sandboxed code, which runs on the same machine as a request or requests to run Sandboxed code are routed by Solution affinity (this option is recommended).


  • Click


In this article, we tried to explain the options available in the Manage User Solutions.

Thank you for reading.