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

The post Introducing Maker and Admin Deployment Pages appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Every organization’s journey to adopt Microsoft Power Platform is unique. A tenant environment strategy lays the foundation to help accelerate usage in a manageable and secure fashion. An effective environment strategy is crucial for maintaining control, ensuring security, and maximizing efficiency. Our white paper delves into the key components of such a strategy, offering actionable insights and best practices for organizations of all sizes. This white paper shows you how to align your Power Platform tenant environment strategy with the product capabilities and vision and how to best use the latest features of the platform to implement a strategy that can allow your adoption of Power Platform to reach enterprise scale.

Key highlights of the white paper 

1. Understanding Environment Types: Learn about the different types of environments available in Power Platform, including Production, Sandbox, and Developer environments, and how to use them effectively.
2. Governance and Compliance: Discover best practices for establishing governance policies, ensuring compliance with industry standards, and maintaining data security across all environments.
3. Environment Lifecycle Management: Explore strategies for managing the lifecycle of your environments, from creation to decommissioning, to ensure they remain efficient and relevant.
4. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies: Understand the importance of DLP policies in protecting sensitive information and how to implement them within your Power Platform environments.
5. Monitoring and Maintenance: Gain insights into monitoring the health and performance of your environments and learn about maintenance tasks that keep your solutions running smoothly.
6. Scaling and Performance Optimization: Find out how to scale your environments to meet growing demands and optimize performance for better user experiences.

Access the white paper on Microsoft Learn and start building a robust environment strategy that aligns with your organization’s goals and needs.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to explore the white paper and share your thoughts with us. How has Power Platform transformed your business? What challenges have you faced in managing your environments? Reach out to us at powerpnp@microsoft.com.

The post Develop a tenant environment strategy to adopt Power Platform at scale appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

As organizations expand their Microsoft Power Platform footprint to meet the needs of their users for application modernization and the inclusion of Microsoft Copilot, administrators can utilize premium features such as managed environments to govern at-scale quickly and easily, while increasing visibility and control. However, as more environments are deployed, administrators need a way to streamline governance and ensure consistency.

Explore more about environment groups and rules in the official documentation.

Making governance at-scale even easier
Environment groups empower admins to establish governance policies through customizable rules, ensuring consistency across environments and eliminating chaos. Microsoft Power Platform administrators can create environment groups. These groups serve as holders for related environments. You can use environment groups to organize your environments by department, project, cost center, or any other relevant criteria, offering a systematic way to manage collection of environments in aggregate.

In each environment group, administrators can uniformly apply six key capabilities of managed environments to all associated environments. These include setting sharing restrictions for canvas apps, utilizing AI to generate app and solution summaries, and enforcing best practices with solution checker—eliminating the need for manual solution checking. This initial suite of rules is just the beginning, with plans to expand in the near future, providing Microsoft Power Platform administrators even greater control over their environment groups.

By joining a group, an environment automatically follows all of the group’s rules. You don’t need to set it up manually. This makes sure that all environments in the group are aligned with the basic standards from the start. To ensure that each environment in an environment group maintains the configuration settings determined at the environment group level, the administrators of those single environments within the group will not be able to alter those settings and fall out of compliance with any configured rules.

Why is environment routing important?

Thanks to environment groups, these environments come preloaded with essential admin settings, including sharing limits and solution-checker, making adoption a breeze for Microsoft Power Platform admins. Previously, new makers had to figure out which environment to work in. With default environment routing, this decision happens automatically. Environment routing is a feature that automatically directs new makers to their personal developer environments instead of the default environment.

Personal developer environments are individual workspaces, similar to Microsoft OneDrive, where makers can confidently build apps and solutions using Microsoft Dataverse without worrying about others accessing their work, assets, and artifacts. Admins no longer need to be concerned about makers accidentally working in the default environment, where their work might conflict with others.

When combining with environment groups and rules, these environments come preconfigured with environment-level governance settings, including sharing limits and solution checker. This feature helps new makers to avoid confusion and conflicts when working in Microsoft Power Platform and helps admins to manage their environments more easily. Learn more about environment routing here.

Next steps
Environment groups and rules streamline management with efficient oversight over multiple environments using a centralized, consistent approach. This ensures uniform standards and configurations across all environments, significantly enhancing developer efficiency by providing ready-made, pre-configured environments that eliminate the need for manual setup. Consequently, this uniform governance simplifies administration and reduces overhead, leading to a more efficient development process. We’re excited to see how organizations continue to develop their Microsoft Power Platform adoption, build centers of excellence, and provide the tools needed for organizations to build modern, enterprise-scale solutions safely and securely.

We value your feedback and want to hear from you on what features and improvements you would like to see added to environment groups and rules. Throughout 2024, we’ll be enhancing environment groups based on user input. Stay tuned for exciting updates.

The post Announcing General Availability of environment groups and environment routing appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

What’s new?

By default, Microsoft-managed encryption keys are used to encrypt and secure all customer data. However, to give customers greater control over their own data, CMK allows customers to instead leverage an encryption key from their own Azure Key vault, which Microsoft does not manage. Once the CMK policy is applied to the environment, all existing and future Power Apps data – the app source code and assets – will maintain encryption via the customer’s encryption key. This will also be applied retroactively to any Power Platform environment already enabled for CMK. This change is an admin-led action that will be invisible to makers and end-users using Power Apps today.

You can find step-by-step instructions on how to apply this to your environments at https://aka.ms/PowerAppsCMK.

The post Announcing General Availability of Customer Managed Keys for Power Apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

For more details, you can refer to our documentation @ https://aka.ms/PowerAdvisorDocs. You can bookmark the link https://aka.ms/PowerAdvisor, to access the Power Platform Advisor.

During the preview, we observed hundreds of customers actively using Advisor to optimize thousands of apps. We’ve also got some fantastic feedback during our preview phase. Here are a couple of quotes from our customers:

“At Provoke Solutions, we’re thrilled about the transformative impact of the Power Platform Advisor offering. This advancement marks a significant leap, enabling our global customer base to manage and govern the Power Platform on an unprecedented scale. With the introduction of the automation options and recommendations, we’re not just boosting efficiency; we’re enabling a Power Platform administrator to deliver on the promise of delivering a well governed environment to their organization. The Advisor is a testament to the potential of innovative technology to redefine platform management and governance, promising to be a game changer for our customers.”

– Brendon Ford, COO, Provoke Solutions

“At Chemours, the advisor is an essential component in the Microsoft Power Platform admin center for our governance processes. It helps us to quickly identify any orphaned applications, that can be business-critical and assign new owners to mitigate business process impact. The advisor feature, offers a comprehensive solution for admins to efficiently manage governance and security, ensuring data and applications are safeguarded at all times. We’re thrilled with the investment and look forward to the future, with advisor, and making advisor available in all products of the Power Platform.”

– Akash Patel, Business Application Governance and Innovator, The Chemours Company

These quotes highlight the impact Power Platform Advisor has had in optimizing their Power Platform tenant and enhancing their overall governance experience.

What’s Next?

As we move forward, Power Platform and Environment admins should expect several additional recommendations coming to the Advisor. We are continuously working to improve and expand the capabilities of Power Platform Advisor based on your feedback and needs.

We Value Your Feedback

Your feedback is invaluable to us. As you start using Power Platform Advisor, we encourage you to share your thoughts and experiences. Your insights will help us enhance this feature and better serve your governance needs. Thank you for your continued support and happy optimizing with Power Platform Advisor!

The post Power Platform Advisor is generally available appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Admins will now receive user recommendations for Power Apps premium licenses based on usage within the organization. Recommendations will be refreshed every 30 days and will include users with Basic Power Apps licenses, active trials, or those who have already requested a license.

An admin will also be able to filter the list of recommendations by recommendation type (e.g. Trial) and will also be able to remove users from the list if they choose.

Once a user selection has been made, an admin can either assign these licenses directly or choose from a list of security groups that are enabled for Group-Based licensing in their organization. Note: Power Platform Admins can only assign licenses to security groups that they are an owner of.

For more information, check out our documentation. We value your feedback and input as we continue to enhance our capabilities. Thank you for choosing the Power Platform!

The post Power Platform admins can now assign licenses via Intelligent Recommendations – now in public preview! appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We’re excited to let you know that the IP firewall feature is now generally available for the Power Platform environments across all regions. This feature allows you to control access to Dataverse, enabling you to implement stricter security measures. With IP Firewall, Power Platform administrators can configure IP restrictions on each of the Power Platform environments, allowing access to Dataverse only from allowed IP ranges. This helps mitigate risks of insider exfiltrating the data and prevents token replay attack from restricted IP ranges. We hope this feature will help you keep your organizational data secure and protected.

When you configure the IP firewall on the Power Platform environment, it will only allow the requests from the configured IP ranges and reject all other requests, thereby allowing you to restrict the access to Dataverse.

Get Started

Power Platform admins can enable IP restrictions on Power Platform environments (available per licensing requirement) individually via Power Platform admin Center, by default this feature is turned off.

To enable the IP firewall on a Power Platform environment, you can pursue the configuration steps outlined in this article. You can also refer to this demo on IP firewall.

Finally, your environment IP firewall settings will look like below.

Call to Action:

1. Enable IP firewall in Audit-Only Mode: If you haven’t already, enable the IP firewall feature to protect your organizational data by limiting user access to Dataverse from only allowed IP ranges. You can learn more about how to enable this feature by visiting the following link: IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
2. Review firewall audit logs: You can review the audit logs and It’s helpful when you’re configuring restrictions on a Power Platform environment. We recommend that you enable audit-only mode for at least a week and disable it only after careful review of the audit logs. IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
3. Enable IP firewall in enforcement mode: Once you have tested the IP firewall in audit-only mode and reviewed the audit logs, you can go ahead and enable the IP firewall in enforcement mode.

Learn More:

• IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
• (451) IP Firewall in Dataverse – YouTube
• Protect enterprise solutions with new Microsoft Power Platform security features – Microsoft Power Platform Blog

The post Control Access to Dataverse with IP Firewall: Secure Your Data with Ease appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

With Power Platform Advisor, you can:

• Get proactive, personalized best practices recommendations.
• Improve the overall health of your Power Platform tenant.
• Take inline actions or automate actions using cloud flows.

With this public preview, recommendations are initially focused on Security and Operational Efficiency. Advisor makes it easy to clean up unused apps, lock down overshared apps, and add owners to abandoned apps. You can view these recommendations, see the individual resources involved, and evaluate and take inline actions.

Power Platform Advisor offers several capabilities:

• Top Recommendations visible on the Power Platform admin center homepage and in the Advisor page that can be accessed from the left navigation menu.
• Actionable Recommendations for impacted apps and resources.
• Automated Actions using cloud flows extensibility and the new Power Platform Admin v2 connector (currently in preview).
• Weekly Focus Card in Teams highlighting the top 2 recommendations based on impact.
• Share Recommendations feature for team collaboration or to delegate actions.

“At Lumen Technologies, we have found that using advisor in Microsoft Power Platform admin center is essential for our maintenance and governance. It enables us to quickly re-assign apps that have no owner or quarantine apps that are not in compliance. When used in conjunction with the Center of Excellence Starter Kit, advisor completes the picture. We are excited about the investment and the future how with advisor we can better protect and ensure the safety of our data and apps.” –

Andrew Gaskins, Principal Solution Architect, Lumen Technologies

Power Platform Advisor is accessible to all tenant admins in the Power Platform admin center and customers with at least one Managed environment in their tenant via https://aka.ms/PowerAdvisor. It’s currently being rolled out to all the tenants and will be available in all tenants by the end of this month. Tenant analytics should be enabled in your tenant for Power Platform Advisor to work, and it might take up to 3 days for the recommendations to show up once the tenant analytics is enabled.

Learn more at https://aka.ms/PowerAdvisorDocs.

We are just starting the journey with Power Platform Advisor and have many more recommendations and actions lined up over the coming months. We are eager to see how you will use Advisor to optimize your Power Platform deployments. Your feedback is invaluable to us, so please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and experiences.

The post Introducing Power Platform Advisor appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Introducing Easier License Management for Power Apps

Starting in December 2023 we are introducing a set of changes which will make it easier for admins to manage license assignments for Power Apps per-user licenses. We understand the complexities admins face when identifying users in need of Power Apps licenses, and we’re excited to introduce enhancements to license assignment process that will make license management easier.

Currently, admins must determine which users within their organization require Power Apps per-user licenses. Once these users are identified, these licenses are assigned through the Microsoft 365 admin center. In response to feedback from admins about the challenges of determining which users need Power Apps licenses, we recently introduced a feature to automatically assign licenses to users when they are needed.

This feature, called License Auto-claim for Power Apps (see Manage auto-claim policies in the Microsoft 365 admin center | Microsoft Learn), enables admins to establish a policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center which directs Power Apps per-user licenses to be automatically assigned to unlicensed users when they first access a Power App that requires a premium license.

Automatic Creation of Auto-claim Policies

As part of our ongoing commitment to simplifying license management for administrators, we’re automating the creation of auto-claim policies for tenants with managed environments.

Starting December 2023, an auto-claim license policy for Power Apps per-user licenses, named ‘Auto-Created Policy for PowerApps,’ will be created in the Microsoft 365 admin center for tenants currently using managed environments. Under this policy, if a user without a Power Apps per-user license launches an app in a managed environment, they will automatically be assigned a Power Apps per-user license if one is available in your tenant.

By default, this policy will be applied when users launch Power Apps in managed environments. However, admins can choose to extend this policy to apply to Power Apps launches in standard environments as well via a setting in the Power Platform admin center.

Admins remain in control

Admins maintain authority over the default Auto-claim Policy. Global admins have the right to manage the policy in Microsoft 365 admin center and view a report of which users have been assigned licenses via the policy. Similarly in the Power Platform admin center admins can decide whether the policy should apply to managed environments only or to all environments.

In addition, if there is an existing auto-claim policy set up for Power Apps no new policy will be created, and the existing policy will continue to apply to all environments.

Compatibility with existing process for license assignment

For organizations already following a distinct license assignment process, administrators can still benefit from the Auto-claim policy while maintaining their current workflow. Admins will have the ability to review the list of users to whom licenses were assigned through the Auto-claim policy in the M365 admin center. They can then make necessary adjustments, such as unassigning auto-claim-assigned licenses and moving users to designated groups to leverage Entra group-based licensing.

We trust that this update will streamline your licensing procedures and reduce the workload associated with license management for your administrators.

For more details on Auto-claim policies for Power Apps licenses, be sure to check our documentation here:  Auto-claim policies for Power Apps licenses – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

The post Simplified License Assignment for Power Apps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

In line with our commitment to streamline license administration and empower customers to ensure compliance while optimizing their product investments, we’re excited to unveil a significant advancement in our strategy. We’re dedicated to automating license management processes, effectively easing the complexity and administrative load associated with license assignment. It is with great pleasure that we introduce the public preview of auto-claim for Power Apps licenses, a feature that empowers administrators to effortlessly set up policies within the Microsoft 365 admin center. These policies enable automatic license assignments to unlicensed users when they engage with Power Apps that require licensing.

This capability extends to Power Apps per user licenses, offering administrators the opportunity to establish auto-claim policies, much like they do for other Microsoft licenses. Once configured, this policy proactively addresses licensing needs for individual Power Apps users within the tenant.

• Users lacking standalone Power Apps licenses who launch premium apps that mandate a premium license will have the license automatically assigned to them.
• Additionally, users accessing apps within a managed environment, without a standalone Power Apps license, will be seamlessly granted a Power Apps per user license.

Set up auto-claim for Power Apps

How to set up auto-claim policy:

Refer to Microsoft Learn documentation on how to create an auto-claim policy for complete instructions.

The introduction of auto-claim for Power Apps licenses not only reduces administrative overhead but also ensures that users have the necessary licenses to fully enjoy the Power Apps experience without interruption. This feature aligns with our continuous effort to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Stay tuned for more updates on this feature as we continue to refine and expand its capabilities for other Microsoft Power Platform products. Your feedback is invaluable as we work together to shape the future of license management within the Microsoft ecosystem.

View license consumption for Power Apps and Power Automate

We’re thrilled to announce that the Power Automate licensing experience is now available for public preview in the Power Platform admin center. This exciting development complements the existing Power Apps licensing experience that’s already in public preview. With these enhancements, administrators can now enjoy unprecedented insights and control over license consumption within their organization.

This new feature provides administrators with valuable insights and improved visibility into the consumption of Power Automate licenses. It equips administrators with the necessary tools to effectively track and manage licenses.

It provides answers to critical licensing questions, including:

• Which licenses are used to execute flows in a specific environment?
  With this comprehensive view, administrators can easily identify the licenses actively utilized for running flows in a selected environment. This insight is invaluable for optimizing license allocation and ensuring efficient resource utilization.
• Which flows do not comply with licensing requirements?
  This feature acts as a guardian of compliance, helping administrators identify flows that do not meet the necessary licensing requirements. It highlights any flows that may be running without the appropriate licensing, allowing administrators to take corrective action and ensure compliance with licensing policies.

How to access the experience

Use the Billings (preview) > Licenses (preview) page in the Power Platform admin center to monitor the consumption of your organization’s Power Apps and Power Automate licenses and easily spot environments that might have licensing issues. Get answers to questions like these:

• What types of licenses are being used to launch apps?
• What licenses are being used to execute flows?
• How many users are actively consuming Power Apps or Power Automate licenses in a specific environment?
• Who are the users who are actively consuming Power Apps licenses or Power Automate licenses?
• Are there users in my environment who need standalone Power Apps or Power Automate licenses?
• Which flows are out of compliance?

Incorporating these insights into your licensing strategy can lead to cost savings and more efficient utilization of your Power Apps and Power Automate licenses.

Private preview of Power Apps licensing experience tenant view

Exciting news! We’re also starting the private preview of the Power Apps licensing experience tenant view, which provides Power Apps license consumption details across the entire tenant. This broader view allows you to gain insights into how Power Apps licenses are utilized across your organization.

Sign up for the private preview to be among the first to explore this powerful feature and further enhance your organization’s licensing management.

The introduction of this new licensing consumption view is a significant step forward for administrators managing Power Apps and Power Automate licenses. It empowers them with the data they need to make informed decisions, optimize license allocation, and maintain compliance effortlessly. These features are designed to simplify the complex world of licensing, making it easier than ever to ensure your organization is getting the most value from its investments.

Take control of license consumption

Ready to take control of your license consumption and compliance? Head over to the Power Platform Admin Center, explore the Billings (preview) > Licenses (preview) page, and unlock a new level of visibility and control over your Power Apps and Power Automate licenses.

The post Simplifying license management with auto-claim for Power Apps and licensing insights for Power Automate appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.