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Author: uk365guy

{Do you know} Community tools for Microsoft Dynamics 365 & Power Platform – Dataverse

uk365guy

Hello Everyone,

Today i am going to share some of the useful tools for Microsoft Dataverse from Community is XRMTOOLBOX.
XRMTOOLBOX is a place for all community tools click here
It is a windows application connects to Dataverse, providing tools to ease customization and operational tasks.

 

Xrmtoolbox helps to customize or configure task easier and less time consuming.
Browser Extensions:
Level up for Dynamics 365/Power Apps:
The level up tool, helps us to quickly perform advanced/hidden actions in Dynamics 365/Power Apps, without bookmarklets.
Visual Studio Code Extensions:
Building own’s extension for visual studio code the community has taken the benefits of this and has built several of them.
1. Dataverse Devtools : Helps to connect to a Dataverse environment general Typescript definitions for entities, create different type of Dataverse-specific projects and much more.
2. Power Apps Portal Helper : Set of commands that simplify working wirh Power Apps CLI for Portals.
3. PCF Builder : Helps with Initializing, building and testing Power Apps Components Framework components

I hope this helps

Malla Reddy(@UK365GUY)
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{How to} Key areas of Application Lifecycle management within Power Platform

uk365guy

Hello Everyone,

Today i am doing to touch on key areas of the Application lifecycle management.
So lets gets started.
Application lifecycle management which includes governance, development, maintenance.
Which also includes:
  • disciplines
  • maintenances
  • change management
  • support
  • continous integration
  • project management
  • deployment
  • release management
  • governance 
It also provide communication and collaboration between software development teams and related departments, like test and operations.
Important areas of Application lifecycle management:
  1. Governance: requirements management, resource management, nuturing and system administration such as data security, user access, change tracking, review, audit, deployment and rollback.
  2. Application development: software development lifecycle, planning, design, building and testing the application and continuous improvement.
  3. Maintenance: Deployment of app and maintenance of dependent technologies.
As you can see from below image: Application lifecycle is circular development process.
Areas: Plan & track, develop, build and test, deploy, operate, monitor & learn from discovery.
ALM is for Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents and Dataverse.
Microsoft Dataverse lets securely store and manage data and processes that’s used by business applications.
To use Power Platform features and tools available to manage ALM, all environments that participate in ALM must include a Dataverse database.
Solutions are the mechanism for implementing ALM.  Solutions are used to export and import across environments.
Dataverse stores all artifacts including solutions.
Source control is for storing and collaborating on your components.
CI/CD Continuous integration and  continuous delivery like Azure DevOps, which allows to automate, build test and deployment pipeline.
I hope this helps
Malla Reddy(@UK365GUY)
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{How to} Tools and Apps used in Application Lifecycle Management(ALM)

uk365guy

Hello Everyone,

Today i am going to show the tools and apps used in Application Life Cycle Management.
Lets gets started.
1. Power Platform Admin Center
PPAC provides administrators to manage environments and settings for power apps, power automate and model driven apps in Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Apps.

 

Also manages data integration, gateways, data policies, and get key Microsoft Power Platform metrics through Microsoft Dataverse analytics, power automate analytics, power apps analytics.
2. Power Apps:
Power Apps is collection of apps and services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for any business needs.

 

 

It can be connected to business data stored in Microsoft 365, SQL Server etc.
3. Configuration Migration Tool: This tools enables to move configuration and or reference data between the environments.

 

Note: Configuration/Reference data is different from user and transcational data and is used to define custom functionality in apps based on Dataverse.
Know more about the tool here
4. PowerShell Moduels:
PowerShell cmdlets for administrators, app makers, and developers can automate many of the management and monitoring, quality assurance tasks that are only possible manually today in Power apps, the power platform admin center.
Click here
5. Pipelines:

 

Using Power Platform Pipeline admin create and configure pipelines so that makers can deploy the solution by click of a button into other environments like UAT or Production from Development.
 Tools and apps used by developers
 
1. DevOps:
Power Apps build tools to automate common build and deployment tasks related to Power Apps if your DevOps platform is Azure DevOps.
DevOps is the combination of Software development and IT Operations.

 

The primary goal of DevOps is the software development lifecycle and provide continuous integration continuous delivery(CI/CD) with quality software.
Microsoft Power Platform  Build Tools for Azure DevOps here
2. Version Control System:
To keep track of the changes on the files  by keeping track of changes committed to softwate code.
 Getting started with GIT Here
3. Package Deployer:
    Lets administrators or developers deploy packages of relevant assets to Dataverse instances. Packages can consist of not only solution files but also flat files, custom code and HTML files. CDS  provides Visual studio template for creating packages that can be used with the package deployer tool or with PowerShell to deploy them to CDS Instance.
Learn more about Package Deployer Here
4.Solution Packager:
It is a tool that can unpack a compressed solution file into multiple XML files and other files, so they can be easily managed by a source control system.
Learn more about Solution Packager Here
5. Power Platform CLI:
Its a single stop developer command line interface that empowers developers and app makers to create code components.
More about Power Platform CLI Here
 I hope this helps
Malla Reddy(@UK365GUY)
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{How to } Run Pipelines in Power Platform

uk365guy

Hello Everyone,

Today i am going to show how to run Pipelines in Power Platform.
Lets gets started.
Must have following:
1. Pipelines must be created and associated with the environment that is used for development environment.
2.The development environment must have Microsoft Dataverse and  Dataverse plus Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Apps.
3. The user should have previleges to run the pipelines, i.e Deployment Pipeline Administrator, Deployment Pipeline User. for more info click here
4. The user should have import privileges to the target environments associated with Pipeline.
5.Power Platform Pipeline application must be installed in your pipeline host environment.
Now lets see in action.
Go to Solutions area, either create a new solution or select unmanaged solution.

 

In order to deploy to the pipeline there are two options we can choose anyone of it.
1. once solution is opened, on the lefthand side of the solution click on the “Pipeline”

Choose the Pipeline from the drop down and then click on Deploy here.

or click on Overview:
We can also deploy from here too.

 

After deploy we can see the solution is deploying into the Production.

Note: Always use version control, for example we can not deploy the version 1.0.0.1 to production before it has been deployed to test, in our example i have deployed to production. After Deploying to test, same solution will be deployed to Production too. Even if afterwards you made changes to the solution without incrementing the version.
We can monitor the Pipeline page in the solutions area which displays all deployments activity.
Click on the Run History we can see the deployed solution into the production.
I hope this helps
Malla  Reddy(@UK365GUY)
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{How to} Install Power Platform Pipeline for Power Platform Managed Environments

uk365guy

Hello Everyone,

Today i am going to show how to install Power Platform Pipeline in Power Platform for Managed Environments.
Lets gets started.
There are some prerequisites:

 

  • Microsoft recommends four Power Platform environments like dev, uat, pre prod, production.
  • But can be implemented with atleast 3 environments to create the power platform pipeline.
  • Must have Dataverse Database.
  • Microsoft Dataverse for teams isn’t supported currently by Microsoft.
  • Should have Power Platform Administrator, or Dataverse system Administrator role.
  • All environments including dev and production used in the Pipeline should be enabled as managed environment.
In Microsoft terminology they recommend as
Host environment – Production
Dev Environment – Development Environment
Target Environment – UAT, Integration Testing, Production.
In a nutshell: Each environment should have unique name for environments.
So install the Pipeline application in the Host environment(Production).
Open the Production environment and click on the “Resources” and enlarge it and click on the “Dynamics 365 Apps”
Refer to below screen shot.
Then a list of Dynamics 365 Apps displayed on the screen and look for Power Platform Pipeline, click on the “…” and click install.

 

New pop up will appear on the righthand side of the screen.

choose the “Environment” and agree terms and conditions. Click Install.

Installation started, refer to the above screen.

Then copy all environments id’s which are participating the Power Platform Pipeline.
Then check the Deployment pipeline in the environment you have enabeld the Pipeline.

List of Power Apps will be displayed.

Open the “Deployment Pipepline Configuration” App from the Apps – Dynamics 365

Then create the the new environment records from the Model Driven App.

Similarly create environment record for the target environment

Then select the “Pipepline fron the left navigation pane.

Create a new deployment pipeline:

 

Additionally when we install Pipeline for the environment, new security roles created and users who are going to administration needs to have these roles assigned.
1. Deployment Pipeline Administrator
2. Deployment Pipeline User
Assign “Deployment Pipeline User” role to Power Apps makers, it doesn’t allow to create, edit, delete pipelines
Read previlege will be sufficient for makers on Pipeline record.
Makers must also have previlege to export solutions from source development environments, as well as privileges to import solutions to the target test and production environments for which the pipeline deploy to. By default system customizer and environment maker roles have these privileges.
You can also share with pipeline administrators, they should have access to all the environments with in the pipeline.
Finally we can manage all in one place and monitor deployments.
I hope this helps
Malla Reddy(@UK365GUY)
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