Earlier this year, we announced the preview of Deployment pages for makers and admins. Today, we are excited to inform you that these experiences are now Generally Available (GA). Additionally, we’re excited to announce the new Default Pipeline Rule for Environment groups (Public Preview), enabling admins to configure pipelines once and auto-scale access to healthy ALM for all makers.

What’s New with Deployments?

Don’t worry, the act of deploying solutions with pipelines is not changing. What is changing are the useful capabilities offered on each Deployment page. Since January, we’ve baked in advisor-powered recommendations to help both admins and makers follow healthy ALM best practices along with providing the ability to retry failed deployments (in preview, rolling out by June) where action is required— which couples very well with the highlighted “failed deployments” shown on both pages.

Public Preview Release of Default Deployment Pipeline Rule for Environment Groups

The long-awaited rule for environment groups that simplifies the pipeline-environment association process is now here in Public Preview!  For customers using environment groups and rules, it’s now possible to connect an environment group to a pipeline via the new rule. This means admins can scale ALM for their various groups with less effort than ever before, associating all developer and sandbox environments with a chosen pipeline (and pipelines host) with a single click.

This further streamlines the pipeline setup process, making it scalable for multiple groups of environments in an organization. So long as all makers that wish to use the pipeline are in the default team of the pipelines host environment, all the work, including sharing the pipeline record and deployment privileges, is done for you!

What’s next?

More capabilities are currently rolling out, including the ability for makers and admins to retry failed deployments (Preview), and an enhanced view for managing approvals on the Admin deployment page. We’ll announce more shortly.

Learn More

Maker Deployment page

Admin Deployment page

Default Deployment Pipeline Rule

Pipelines in Power Platform

Introducing Maker and Admin Deployment Pages

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Maker Deployment page

Makers can now view all their deployments in one place, regardless of solution or pipeline. If their deployment began from (or was deployed to) the current environment, they will be able to view the run history status of it. Failed Deployments and Active Deployments are highlighted in a convenient overview, so you don’t have to go looking for them either!

In addition to deployment visibility, we’ve included a Get started section that will evolve over time. For now, it will link to documentation to help a maker begin their journey to healthy application lifecycle management (ALM).

To further improve understanding of what healthy ALM looks like, we’ll soon be adding recommendations, where makers are alerted to resolve any potentially unhealthy ALM-related behavior, such as housing high-use apps outside of a solution.

Admin Deployment page

The Deployment page in the new admin center provides a streamlined experience to help administrators learn about, setup, and operation best-in-class ALM. The initial preview provides a central location to view all deployments in the tenant, approve deployment requests, and troubleshoot failures.

Select a pipelines host from the picker to see all the pipelines and deployment history managed with that host. A dedicated Failed deployments view helps admins quickly identify and troubleshoot failures and trending issues.

Admins can approve or reject deployment requests assigned to them. First setup Delegated deployments with service principals as the recommended way to deploy securely.

It is important that admins review changes in the solution and the sharing request. With the help of Copilot-generated deployment notes visible in the request, this becomes easier, but if you want a more granular look, be sure to set up Source control integration and link the repository to the approval.

Managed Operations

The Deployment pages are an offering of Managed Operations, allowing all who make or administrate to gain further insight into their Application Lifecycle Management to ensure that business solutions are reliable and performant in production. Aside from just deployment pipelines, these maker and admin experiences will evolve over the coming months and include many more Managed Operations intersections to take advantage of. So, stay tuned for more updates and please leave your feedback below!

Learn more

Admin Deployment page

Maker Deployment page

Managed Operations

New Power Platform Admin Center

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Make your Custom Pipelines Host Discoverable by Default

If you as an admin want to enable your makers to discover your custom host instead of the tenant-wide platform host when they navigate to Pipelines, this is the feature you’ve been waiting for. Since a change made earlier this year, the platform host and its capabilities became the landing pad for any maker going to the Pipelines page due to its out-of-the-box readiness.

Before, if admins wanted makers to use centrally governed pipelines in a custom host instead of using personal pipelines in the platform host, they would have to first set up a custom host and associate makers’ development environments with it. With a default custom host set, those with pipelines create-access and owners of existing pipelines in that custom host can associate new development environments easily by simply going to the Pipelines experience in those development environments and deploying through a pipeline in the host (new or existing).

“Use a custom pipelines host” Setting

Now, when tenant admins navigate to the Deployment Pipeline Configuration app for the platform host (by clicking “Manage pipelines” from the Pipelines page in make.powerapps.com), they will see a new setting under Advanced Settings. Admins can then provide the environment ID for a custom pipelines host to use instead of the platform host when makers are using pipelines in an environment that has not yet associated with a pipelines host.

If makers already used the platform host to deploy, it is important to note that the environments in use must be disassociated from that host before they can be used in the newly assigned custom host.

A new world of possibilities for ALM readiness

Now that admins can assign custom hosts as the default host for their makers’ Pipelines experience, they can also granularly control who can create personal pipelines (within that custom host) when they land on Pipelines in any development environment, even if it’s not already associated with the host. Admins can achieve this by assigning the “Deployment pipeline default” role to users or groups within their custom host who they wish to enable personal pipeline creation for. And, of course, makers who don’t have pipelines create-access can use any pipelines that are shared with them by an admin!

Copilot-generated deployment notes are now available worldwide in 20 supported languages

Finally, Copilot-generated deployment notes are available in 20 major languages* for Makers outside of the U.S. Now, depending on your language settings in the Power Platform page you’re deploying from, Copilot will generate deployment notes in that language. Of course, this also means that Copilot can read and process solutions that aren’t just in English!

*supported languages include English, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Import solutions from the environment’s associated pipelines host

Need to hydrate a development environment with a solution that you’ve deployed via Pipelines in the past? Or maybe you’re an admin and one of your makers left the organization along with their personal dev environment? Now, you don’t have to look for the solution manually or upload a .zip file! All solutions deployed through pipelines are now easily accessible in the solution import experience.

Makers can view any solution that they have deployed, while admins can view all deployed solutions in the organization by toggling on Show shared solution deployments. Makers can use this toggle too, but only if enabled through a new admin-controlled Advanced Setting in the Deployment Pipeline Configuration app.

Coming soon

Stay tuned for more exciting Power Platform ALM features coming later this year, and be sure to check out Microsoft Ignite taking place November 18–22, 2024 for highly anticipated announcements!

Learn more about Pipelines and ALM

• Overview of pipelines in Power Platform. Microsoft Docs
• Set a default pipelines host. Microsoft Docs
• Use Copilot to generate deployment notes. Microsoft Docs
• FAQ for “use copilot to generate deployment notes”. Microsoft Docs
• Import solutions from a pipelines host. Microsoft Docs

The post Exciting New Updates for Pipelines in Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

What’s new?

With the latest updates, makers and admins have more control over the structure and usage of personal pipelines, allowing them to customize them to their needs.

Add a stage to your single-stage pipeline

Pipeline owners can append an additional stage to their personal pipelines, enabling them to create a lightweight dev->test->prod 2-stage pipeline if applicable.

Reuse your pipeline in a different development environment

Lightweight pipeline creators can use a pipeline they’ve already made, even if the current environment isn’t linked to the pipeline yet. Then, when the maker deploys, the environment will be linked as a source.

Admins can use Force Link to move environments from one pipelines host to another and instantly resolve cross-host environment association errors

As part of the “environment is already associated with another host” error, there is now a Force Link action available for admins to delink an environment from a current pipelines host and link it to the one they want to govern ALM in.

In addition to these new capabilities, we have also enabled redeploying previous solution versions by default for newly created pipelines. This setting can still be managed by admins in the Deployment Pipeline Configuration app via Manage pipelines.

Easy ALM for Makers

Pipelines for All is a jumpstart to healthy ALM with no extra privileges required, no conflicts with existing environments associated with pre-configured custom pipelines hosts, and, most importantly, no hassle to deploy your solutions.

When deploying, target environments must be enabled as Managed Environments.

Admins still have control

Personal pipelines rely on makers’ import-access to target environments. Admins can directly control what environments makers have import-access to by either creating custom security roles or customizing current privileges. We are also working on other governance features that will scale the management of personal pipelines as well as bulk environment association to a custom host. In custom hosts, unlike within the platform host, pipeline creation can be further restricted and pipelines can be as advanced as you are willing to make them using our various extensibility points.

ALM isn’t a one-size-fits-all space, and we have designed Pipelines with that core principle at the forefront. Pipelines is a solution that has the power to work for everyone, and we are just as excited as you are with each new update we make.

Learn more about pipelines

• Set up pipelines in Power Platform. Microsoft docs

The post Pipelines for All are now Generally Available (GA) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Makers can now initiate a redeployment from a successful deployment record via the Run history tab on the Pipelines page. Pipeline owners will have the authority to control this feature’s enablement as well, so no worries about someone rolling back without permission. In pipeline settings, there is a new configuration option, Allow redeployment of older versions, which can be controlled by the pipeline owner(s). In addition to the setting, there is a confirmation message before deployment configuration and a warning message at the end of the configuration on the summary page specifying that the action is irreversible, so that there is guaranteed intent to overwrite the current solution version with the older one.

We hope that this simple, yet monumental feature will better assist customers in enabling best ALM practices seamlessly for their organizations, and remove the hassle of restoring previous versions of solutions in target environments.

Learn more about pipelines

Redeploy past solution versions. Microsoft docs

Overview of pipelines in Power Platform. Microsoft docs

The post Redeploy past solution versions using pipelines appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This feature is now available in make.preview.powerapps.com for you to try out, and will be available for everyone in make.powerapps.com by the end of the week.

How does this work?

Thanks to a newly integrated pipelines host available to be provisioned in the platform itself, Pipelines can be set up as soon as you get to the Pipelines page. From the new experience, makers can now create pipelines in environments that are not already associated with a custom host (i.e. environments that are not already using pipelines). The Create pipeline experience enables makers to name their personal pipeline and select a target environment, enabled as a Managed Environment, that they have import access to. From clicking Save, the lightweight pipeline is created, and they are ready to leverage the benefits of pipelines like no .zip file downloads or uploads required, deployment scheduling, inline target environment solution validation, upfront environment variable value validation, recorded deployment stage run history, and Copilot-generated deployment notes.

Who benefits? And what about admins?

Makers who are currently manually exporting their solutions from their development environments and importing to a test or production environment can now instantly benefit from pipelines if they have Managed Environments enabled for their target environment(s). And, when an admin is ready to set up pipelines the traditional way and enable extensibility such as approvals, they still can. The process of going from efficient personal pipelines to a central governed pipeline will also be made easy by the end of next month when this feature becomes Generally Available.

We hope this will make it much easier to get started with Pipelines and enable all makers to adopt healthy ALM practices.

Learn more about Pipelines for All

• Set up pipelines in Power Platform. Microsoft docs

The post Pipelines for All Public Preview: Easily set up pipelines in Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Coming soon: automatic segmentation of environment variable values

Next month, the default experience will no longer export environment variable values in your solution. This makes it easier to follow best practices and avoid inadvertent mistakes. A new “Export value” toggle within the environment variable settings will allow you to opt-in to exporting the value, if needed.

Paired with the new change during deployment, now environment variables will work transparently and as intended by your organization. Of course, if what you have now works for your use-cases, we won’t be overwriting your existing environment variables’ current behavior. But for every new environment variable created (or if you manually turn off the toggle), if you would like to dynamically change the values of your environment variables every time you import or deploy, you won’t have to clear the values since they will already be excluded! 
We hope this recent change demystifies the inner workings of environment variables and enables more makers to use them in their solutions. Look out for the change next month too, enabling all makers to use environment variables with smart defaults that make it easier to follow best practices. As always, thank you to all the makers and admins who expressed passionate feedback that drove these improvements; we hear you!

Learn more about environment variables

• Use environment variables in solutions. Microsoft docs

The post Environment Variables are now Always Visible and Editable during Solution Import and Pipeline Deployments appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

In the two months of Public Preview, we saw an amazing response from the hundreds of customers who were using Copilot to make their deployment experiences even more seamless.

One customer told us, “This is a valuable feature for us. Before, we couldn’t see what the solution contained. Giving this ability to the makers and support team, they are now able to see what this solution contains when the deployments occur. How many tables, environment variables, Canvas apps, etc.— they don’t have to go and hunt down this information because AI provides it for them.”

To make this new capability even easier to use, we made it faster, reducing p95 wait time by 10+ seconds. This also enabled us to create a better experience, where we briefly show a sleek new generating animation and automatically fill the deployment notes field with the solution overview. Innovation does not stop there, though. We are continuing to make improvements to the model, which will make Copilot in pipelines even smarter and more accurate in the near future.

We hope that you will continue to leverage Copilot’s power to help everyone in your organization make ALM faster and more accessible!

Learn more about pipelines

• Pipelines overview Microsoft docs
• Set up pipelines. Microsoft docs
• Run a pipeline. Microsoft docs
• Extend pipelines. Microsoft docs
• Use Copilot to generate deployment notes in pipelines. Microsoft docs

The post Copilot-generated deployment notes for pipelines are Generally Available (GA) appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Solutions can get very complicated very quickly, many times containing dozens of components that would be tedious to summarize and list out. As a maker deploying a solution through a pipeline, that summarization could be critical in providing your admin the context necessary to approve your deployment. Instead of spending minutes describing your solution, why not get Copilot to do it for you instantly?

Using the summarization powers of AI, Copilot will now provide makers a solution overview that includes a brief solution description as well as an overview of the components it contains. The more descriptive you make your solution components’ (e.g., Canvas Apps’) name and description, the more information this solution overview can provide.

This Public Preview feature is currently limited to U.S. environments and pipelines, but we are planning to expand the capabilities of Copilot across geographic regions with support for different languages. Eventually, we will be updating this feature to include a summary of version differences between deployments, keeping this solution overview structure for first deployments in a pipeline. This is also foundational for the future of solution descriptions in Managed Environments, making it easier than ever to manage solutions, so be sure to keep an eye out for that in the coming months!

Copilot is empowering Power Platform makers and admins to be exponentially more efficient, and simultaneously making ALM easier than ever before. Try it today when deploying using pipelines.

Learn more about pipelines

• Pipelines overview Microsoft docs
• Set up pipelines. Microsoft docs
• Run a pipeline. Microsoft docs
• Extend pipelines. Microsoft docs
• Use Copilot to generate deployment notes in pipelines (preview). Microsoft docs

The post Copilot now powers deployment notes for pipelines in Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

It has been amazing to see how pipelines in Power Platform have been used over the past few months since the general availability (GA) release in March, saving companies like Lumen time and with ALM becoming approachable to more citizen developers. Today, we’re excited to announce many new features available in Pipelines! In this blog post, I’ll be going through the latest updates to the pipelines experience and guiding you through the steps to making your deployments more powerful than before.

The biggest theme of this update is making pipelines better serve their intended purpose: executing deployments when and how you want. To avoid unexpected disruption of production-level applications and services, we have integrated these new features into pipelines while staying true to our ease-of-use mission.

Scheduled Deployments

Now when you go to deploy, there will be an option to schedule the deployment for a later time. To avoid deploying changes during your organization’s business hours, for example, you can schedule it for any time you want after hours or on weekends. Now makers don’t have to wait until after hours to deploy after hours!

Need to make a change and cancel the deployment? No problem! In the maker portal and within the Pipelines configuration app, admins and makers can cancel scheduled deployments as well as those pending approval.

In a later update, scheduling will be able to be admin-controlled, meaning that makers will only be able to schedule deployments for admin-preset timeframes (or not; however your organization would prefer it).

Extensibility

Deployment process customization has finally arrived. Pipelines extensibility provides admins more control with the ability to configure deployment gates and apply custom logic at multiple steps of your deployment process. With Power Automate cloud flows, choose from over 1,000 built-in connectors or use your own custom connectors to run your own custom logic.

Configuring a pre-step condition on a deployment stage ensures the deployment request to the target environment is pending until the deployment is approved or rejected. Respectively, the system then carries out the automated deployment or notifies the maker of what changes are needed for approval.

Note that deployments will run in the requesting maker’s context. Soon, deploying via service principal will be supported.

Another common use case is integrating other systems. For example, committing solutions to a source code repository or running automated tests and code scans. With Power Platform handling the heavy lifting, these hybrid approaches enable advanced functionality at a fraction of the setup and maintenance costs when compared to running CI/CD tools standalone. Perhaps most importantly, the maker friendly in-product experience doesn’t expose background complexities.

Release Notes

Now makers can add notes to their deployments. Adding context to deployments can assist admin in understanding what is being deployed and the purpose of the deployment. This can be leveraged with extensibility to give admins who are approving deployments more context for the deployment and solution contents.

These deployment notes will also be available in the run history and pipelines configuration app for future reference, so management of deployments becomes easier as well.

Coming soon, everyone will be able to use the AI-suggested deployment notes to automatically generate deployment notes, from solution descriptions to version diffs.

Support for Power Pages

Building on the excitement from Power Pages configuration being supported in solutions, pipelines is now available within the solution experience in the Power Pages portal.

Sovereign cloud support

By mid-June, pipelines will be available in all sovereign clouds (in addition to all public cloud regions).

Learn more about pipelines

• Pipelines overview Microsoft docs
• Set up pipelines. Microsoft docs
• Run a pipeline. Microsoft docs
• Extend pipelines. Microsoft docs

Videos:

• Pipelines for Power Platform 101. Video on the purpose of pipelines and everything you need to use them successfully with Prabhat Pandey
• How to do ALM with Power Platform. Video comparing what’s available in Azure DevOps, GitHub, and pipelines in Power Platform with Casey Burke and Kartik Kanakasabesan
• Microsoft Mechanics. Video on Managed environments and pipelines with host Jeremy Chapman and Power Apps GPM Evan Lew
• Power CAT Live. Video on pipelines with host Phil Topness, and PM’s Casey Burke and Kartik Kanakasabesan

We hope that you continue to use pipelines to make ALM easy for everyone, and look forward to even more updates in the coming months!

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