Tag: Power Apps#

Dataverse – Git Integration – Preview – Quick Review

Hi Folks,

This post is about Dataverse and Git Integration which is the most sought after feature in the todays automation Era. This is a preview feature, you would need to create a new environment with Early Access enabled to test this feature or you can use an existing US Preview environment for testing this out.

While every MDA(Model Driven Application) and it’s components can be safely and moved across the environments using Solutions with the help of Azure DevOps Pipelines. However when coming to integrating Power Platform Solutions to Azure DevOps, we had to manually export the solution and download them each and every time when we would like to commit the Solution Artifacts to Azure DevOps Repo.

With this new Preview feature we can directly integrate the Power Platform Solutions to Azure DevOps.

Let’s see this action…wait a moment, there were some prerequisites to be considered…

  1. Environment should be a Managed Environment to start using this and you need to be an Admin for the environment
  2. Azure DevOps subscription and license should be available to set this up, also permission to read source files and commits(should be a member of contributor group in Azure DevOps) from a Repo
  3. Your email address used for Azure DevOps and Power Platform Solutions should be the same

Setup:

Connecting Dataverse with Azure DevOps is easy but requires a bit of understanding of the Binding options available.

Well, there were two types of Binding options

  1. Environment Binding – Single root folder binds to all the unmanaged solutions in the environment
  2. Solution Binding – Different solutions uses a different root folder in Azure DevOps for binding

Note: Once the binding is setup, there isn’t away to change, so set this up carefully, else you may need to delete the folder and create a new one in Azure DevOps.

Let’s see one by one…for demoing purpose, I have created two projects in Azure DevOps Instance

  1. Solution Binding: When we use this, all the components will be available as pending changes
  2. Environment Binding: When we use this, all the unmanaged solution components will be mapped to one Azure DevOps root folder. Let’s set this up.

We are currently able to use only Solution binding, as Environment Binding doesn’t show up any changes to be committed, but there is a catch here.

We can set up for Environment binding and verify if the Solution components are getting marked as pending changes or not. Do note that Setting up the Binding is a one time activity for environment, once setup, it can’t be changed from one type to another.

Open https://make.powerapps.com and navigate to solutions and click on ellipses as below

Once clicked on Connect to Git

Since we were currently using Environment binding, let’s select the Connection Type as Environment

Then click on Connect, once connected, you should a alert message in power apps maker portal at the top.

Now create a new solution as below named ecellors Solution

Verify the integration by clicking on Git Integration as below

It should show as below

Now let’s add few components to the solution we created

Once added, let’s publish the unmanaged solution and verify it..

Do look closely, you should see a Source Control icon highlighted in yellow color for illustration.

Also, you should see a commit option available at the top

You should now be able to commit the solution components as if you are committing the code changes.

It also specifies the branch to which we were commiting…

While it takes few minutes unlike pushing the code to Azure DevOps to push the changes, however this would depend based on the number of solution components you were pushing..once it is done, it will show a commit message like below…

Now let’s verify our Azure DevOps Repo..for this you can go back to the main solutions page, click on Git Connection at the top..

After clicking on Git Connection, click on the link to Microsoft Azure DevOps as below

Then you should be navigated to Azure DevOps folder as below where all the solution files will be tracked component wise.

Now we will move back to Power Apps maker portal and make some changes to any of the components inside the solution…

Let’s say, I just edited the flow name and created a new connection reference, saved and published the customizations.

If you did some changes at the Azure DevOps repo level, you can come back and click on Check for updates, if there were any conflicts between changes done in Azure DevOps and component in solution, it will be shown as conflict.

We now have 3 component changes and all were listed here…you can click on Commit.

As soon as the changes are committed, you should see a message saying Commit Successful and 0 Changes, 0 Updates, 0 Conflicts.

Now you successfully integrated Dataverse Solution components with Azure DevOps without any manual intervention required while deploying solutions using Azure DevOps Pipelines.

Hope you learned something new today…while feature is still in Preview and only available for early release, while couple of issues still need to fixed by Microsoft.

I have tested this feature by creating an environment in US Preview region and this feature will be a good value to projects using Automation and this solution repository can be further deployed to other environments using Azure DevOps Pipelines.

This will be rolled out soon next year, hope you learned something new today…

Cheers,

PMDY

Using Preferred Solution in Power Apps saves you time..Quick Review

Hi Folks,

Today, I will be pointing out the advantages of using Preferred Solution and it’s consequences of using or removing it…while the feature is out there from quite few months, yet many of the Power Platform Projects are not utilizing this feature, it can reduce your hassles when many people are working together in a team and you can make sure everyone’s changes go to this solution.

Here we understand what Preferred Solution means to the makers, firstly in order to use this affectively, let’s turn the feature to create Canvas Apps & Cloud Flows in Solutions by enabling this preview feature as suggested below from https://admin.powerplatform.com, this is not mandatory step but would be better as you can add Power Automate flows and Canvas Apps in the Solution and click Save.

Next navigate to https://make.powerapps.com –> Solutions –> Set preferred solution

If no preferred solution is set, by default, it will show the Common Data Service Default Solution to set as Default Solution, if you wish to set another Solution, you can select the respective Solution from the drop down.

Enable/Disable the toggle to show Preferred Solution option in the Solutions Page.

Just click on Apply.

Advantages:

  1. Once preferred Solution is set, any components added by the makers would by default go the Preferred Solution, so makers need not worry about choosing right Solution while creating Power Platform Components.
  2. No need to worry if the solution components will be added in the default solution as the new components will be added to the preferred solution automatically.

Limitations:

  1. Preferred Solutions can be only set in Modern Designer
  2. Components created in Classic Designer won’t go to Preferred Solutions
  3. Custom Connector, Connections, DataFlows, Canvas Apps created from Image or Figma Design, Copilots/Agents, Gateways

You can always delete your preferred solution so that other makers can set their preferred solution, but do this with caution so that none of your team members or your works gets impacted.

Hope this saves few seconds of your valuable time…

Cheers,

PMDY