Forem: Power Platform

New GitHub Sample Workflows for Power Platform

Kartik Kanakasabesan — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:30:15 +0000

Wait there are GitHub actions for Power Platform?

Power Platform Build Tools as they are officially called, have been available for GitHub for over a year. So, yes, the answer is yes. We have Power Platform GitHub actions documentation available at this location . In addition to the documentation, we also have hands on lab content available here for the users to go try out. One of the folders in the Power Platform Hands on lab is the samples folder. This is the location where our team posts sample workflows (as the name suggests) on actions that can be done with Power Platform and GitHub.

What are the new workflows that we have added?

A lot of you wanted to see the kind of flexibility of the tasks offered for Power Platform in GitHub actions. The purpose of this post is to show you just that.

Username and Password or Service Principal?

That is the first question a lot of folks ask. In the samples folder you will see that there are examples of both. I am biased towards service principals, and I am not ashamed to say it. Username and Password are a viable choice, but make sure that such accounts are not impacted by MFA policies. Considering that runners (if you are using cloud-based pools) are dynamically allocated, MFA will cause issues for your GitHub workflows.

What are the new samples?

The sample workflows are as follows:
1) Create environments
2) Export, Unpack and Commit
3) Delete environments
4) Deploy Managed Application
5) Deploy Unmanaged Application

These new workflows as their name states do things within the Power Platform, let us start with the first one

Create environment

All the workflows use workflow_dispatch calls which means they are manually activated. If you would like to know what are the other types of dispatch mechanism. I would recommend reading up on the event triggers on the GitHub website. Create environment takes a few variables as user input or when invoked remotely via Power Automate (that is a different blog) and then proceed to create a developer environment for Dev, a Sandbox environment for Test, and a Production environment for Production. This particular workflow assumes that you are going to create 3 environments, the assumption here is that Production and Testing environments maybe long lived environments but you developer environments are ephemeral, as in you will be deleting them once you are done. What you say? Deleting developer environments? Yes, if you are persisting your solutions into source control like GitHub, then you can always reconstitute the developer environment from source code.

- name: Create Developer Environment uses: microsoft/powerplatform-actions/create-environment@v0 with: app-id: ${{secrets.CLIENT_ID}} client-secret: ${{ secrets.PowerPlatformSPN }} tenant-id: ${{secrets.TENANT_ID}} name: ${{ github.event.inputs.env_name}}_Dev type: Developer domain: ${{ github.event.inputs.env_name}}Dev
In this case, based on the variables used you can see we are creating the Developer environment and using service principals to do so. Now remember when creating an environment with a service principal, by default the service principal owns it. The next task is user assignment in this case I am adding another user to the environment with similar privileges as the service principal. You can absolutely change those if you like.
- name: assign-user to developer environment uses: microsoft/powerplatform-actions/assign-user@v0 with: app-id: ${{secrets.CLIENT_ID}} client-secret: ${{ secrets.PowerPlatformSPN }} tenant-id: ${{secrets.TENANT_ID}} environment: 'https://${{ github.event.inputs.env_name}}Dev.dynamics.com' user:${{ github.event.inputs.user_id }} role: System Administrator
But in your case, you can add any other role here. You can also add another service principal account as well using
application-user parameter.

Export Unpack and Commit

In this workflow we export a given solution as unmanaged, unpack it, then export the managed version of the solution, and then commit them to the GitHub repository.

About committing managed solution into the source code repository. I am wading into philosophical waters here! Checking in a managed solution to me is like checking in a dll into source code.So, if you have the source code, why check in the dll as well, you can always reconstitute it, right! BTW, if you have no idea what I am talking about for managed and unmanaged solutions, the power platform ALM page is a wonderful place to get acquainted with the concepts. I come from a world where you only check-in the unmanaged contents, put it in a build server and then export from the build server as managed, which makes it immutable and ready for deployment into Test and/or Production.
There is another school of thought, that states that you export both the unmanaged and managed versions of the solution and if all well with the application then just proceed to deploy the managed version into Test and/or Production. The good thing is we support both.

Now, you can unpack managed solutions to and check them in. If you are going to do that make sure the unpack in a different location. the Sample workflow only unpacks the unmanaged solution. Your process maybe different.

Delete environments

This is a simple one where we just delete the Development, Test, and Production environments. When deleting environment remember if there is data in the environment (as in inside dataverse) they would get lost as well. You can use the data migration tool (in a different blog) to export the data and check that into source code as well.

- name: Delete Dev Environment uses: microsoft/powerplatform-actions/delete-environment@v0 with: app-id: ${{secrets.CLIENT_ID}} client-secret: ${{ secrets.PowerPlatformSPN }} tenant-id: ${{secrets.TENANT_ID}} environment-url: ${{ inputs.dev_env }}

Deploying applications

Here we have 2 workflows, in the case of the managed solution, you can see that we only deploy the solution.zip and it pretty straight forward.
- name: Import solution as unmanaged to build env uses: microsoft/powerplatform-actions/import-solution@v0 with: environment-url: ${{github.event.inputs.environment_url}} app-id: ${{secrets.CLIENT_ID}} client-secret: ${{ secrets.PowerPlatformSPN }} tenant-id: ${{secrets.TENANT_ID}} solution-file: ${{ github.event.repository.name}}/${{ github.event.inputs.solution_name }}_managed.zip force-overwrite: true publish-changes: true
All it does is that takes the managed zip file and imports it to the target environment.

Now in the case of the unmanaged solution, there is an extra task that needs to be done. This is called packing the solution, as in reconstituting the solution.zip file. So that it is ready to import.
- name: Pack the solution uses: microsoft/powerplatform-actions/pack-solution@v0 with: solution-folder: ${{ github.event.repository.name}}/${{ github.event.inputs.solution_name }} solution-file: ${{ github.event.repository.name}}/${{ github.event.inputs.solution_name }}.zip solution-type: Unmanaged
- name: Import solution as unmanaged to build env uses: microsoft/powerplatform-actions/import-solution@v0 with: environment-url: ${{github.event.inputs.environment_url}} app-id: ${{secrets.CLIENT_ID}} client-secret: ${{ secrets.PowerPlatformSPN }} tenant-id: ${{secrets.TENANT_ID}} solution-file: ${{ github.event.repository.name}}/${{ github.event.inputs.solution_name }}.zip force-overwrite: true publish-changes: true

Now also realize, when are you importing an unmanaged solution into a target environment, unmanaged means that it can change (as in edit the application), so if you do make changes to the application in the QA environment then make sure export the unmanaged changes to the source repository before exporting the managed solution. Now , importing unmanaged solutions into any environment other than development makes me uneasy, as the best practice is to have unmanaged solutions in your developer environment, and only managed solutions in QA and Production. Some of the patterns you can think of are

Dev (Exports Unmanaged) -> (Imports UnManaged) Build-> Build (Exports Managed) -> (Imports Managed) QA (Exports Managed) -> (Imports Managed) Prod
Dev (Exports Unmanaged + Managed) -> (Imports Managed) QA (Exports Managed) -> (Imports Managed) Prod

There are plenty of other patterns that you can explore these are just some of them

There plenty of other sample workflows in the repository, I am also thinking about creating a repository for the community to share their workflows as well. If this an idea you all like. Please do let me know.

Looking forward to hearing from you all and exploring what other patterns that you have implemented.

3. DevTools & Onboarding

Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Want to learn about Cloud + AI? Follow Microsoft Azure on dev.to 👇🏽

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Learn how to build and manage powerful applications using Microsoft Azure cloud services. Explore the documentation and samples, skill yourself up with tutorials and training. Any language. Any platform.

✨#30DaysOfLowCode is a curated roadmap of daily posts that can help both citizen developers and pro-dev developers explore the value of low-code technologies to solve real-world problems with innovative apps. Visit the website to see the whole series or follow it on dev.to for daily updates.

Welcome to Day #03 of #30DaysOfLowCode!

What We'll Cover

Get onboard with Power Platform
Sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan
Get familiar with the tools
Activity : Sign up for your Developer Plan
Resource s: Explore the Low Code February Collection

Get onboard with Power Platform!

I'm excited to announce that now you can create up to 3 developer environments with the Power Apps Developer Plan! Let's take this opportunity to review how to get a free environment to get started.

Sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan

The Power Apps Developer Plan gives you a free development environment to build and test with Power Apps, Power Automate, and Microsoft Dataverse. It just takes a few minutes to get a developer environment for Power Platform:

Ensure that you have a work account. If you don't, you can create a test tenant first.
Sign up on the Power Apps Developer Plan website.
Once the sign up is complete, you will be redirected to your new developer environment.

Do I need a test tenant?

In an ideal world you would use your existing work account to sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan. If you already have an Azure account, you likely can use the same account to sign up. If this is not possible for any reason, you can create a free test tenant using the Microsoft 365 Developer Program.

Get familiar with the tools

After the sign up you will be in the https://make.powerapps.com and your environment will be ready to use. You can start creating your first Power App.

If you would like to create more environments or manage your environment, visit the Power Platform Administrator Center.

Create new environments in the Power Platform Admin Center

If you are a code first developer, you can use the Power Platform CLI to manage your environments, create code first components and much more. The best way to get our CLI is to download the Visual Studio Code extension.

What's next?

Are you a code first developer? To understand how Power Platform can make you more productive and how you can use code to extend the platform, check the Introduction to Microsoft Power Platform for developers.

For detailed information on the Power Apps Developer plan: Sign up for Power Apps Developer Plan
For detailed information on licensing: Licensing overview for Microsoft Power Platform

Happy coding 🎉.

About the Author

Marcel Ferreira is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, focused on all things Low-Code Development and Power Platform related. Follow him @marcel_ferreira on Twitter or here on GitHub.

Resources

2. You say Low, I say Code!

Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Want to learn about Cloud + AI? Follow Microsoft Azure on dev.to 👇🏽

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✨#30DaysOfLowCode is a curated roadmap of daily posts that can help both citizen developers and pro-dev developers explore the value of low-code technologies to solve real-world problems with innovative apps. Visit the website to see the whole series or follow it on dev.to for daily updates.

Welcome to Day 02 of #30DaysOfLowCode!

What We'll Cover

What is Low Code?
How are the Benefits?
What does Power Platform Provide?
How can we extend Power Platform?
Activity: Join the Cloud Skills Challenge
Resources: Explore the Low Code February Collection

Want to stay up-to-date on all things low-code? Follow the #powerfuldevs tag right here on dev.to! And use the tag to share your own articles and insights so we can amplify them!

#powerfuldevs Follow

Power Platform, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Power BI, Power Automate, Low-Code or No-Code Development, Citizen Apps ⚡️

You say Low, I say Code!

There is a low code revolution underway. We have a surging digital demand with an estimated 500 million more apps that will need to be created in the next 5 years. More and more companies are leveraging low code and no code platforms to bridge this app gap and address workflow and automation needs. In fact, Gartner estimates that 65% of application development will be low code by 2024.

With low code tools like the Power Platform making it easier for business technologists to develop solutions, you might wonder if there's any room for a code first developer in this low code revolution. Well, the answer is, absolutely there is! In fact, code first developers are a critical piece to the puzzle.

What is "low code"?

The term "low code" can mean different things to different people when they first hear it. What we mean when we talk about low code is that with tools like Power Apps, you only need to write a small amount of code to get results that would normally take several more lines of code in a traditional programming language.

In canvas-based Power Apps, the low code scripting language used is called Power Fx. This language is based on the Microsoft Excel formula language which meets many business technologists where they are by leveraging the knowledge they already have.

Low Code + Full Code = No Cliffs

Using low-code tools is key to helping to resolve the existing and impending app gap challenge but that doesn't mean that low code alone can solve every business problem. Low code tools like the Power Platform's full potential is unlocked when you combine the low code capabilities with code first development.

The combination of low code + full code creates what we call a "no cliffs" experience that allows business technologists to easily build solutions with low code while professional developers can leverage full code to augment and extend the platform capabilities. The process of low code developers, IT pros and full code developers working together like this is often referred to as "fusion development".

What does the Power Platform Provide?

The Power Platform gives us a holistic suite of low code tools that work together to help us solve business problems. The key products and components of the Power Platform include:

Power Apps for creating custom applications for web and mobile that can be integrated with a variety of systems and services.
Power Automate for automation tasks and orchestrating activities across various services
Power BI for business analytics and interactive data visualization
Power Virtual Agents for creating AI-powered chatbots that can answer questions from your customers and employees
Power Pages for secure, enterprise-grade external-facing business websites
Dataverse which provides a cloud scale data store with robust security that abstracts away data management complexity from the app maker

How can we extend Power Platform solutions?

You might wondering how you can leverage your code first skills with the Power Platform. Let's take a look at some ways that we can extend our Power Platform solutions with code (many of these concepts will be covered in more detail in later blog posts).

UI Components - Leverage the Power Apps Component Framework to extend the UI of our applications with custom code.
Custom Connectors - Create custom connectors, which are essentially a wrapper around an API to communicate to our external data sources and services.
Custom Visuals in Power BI - Use the open-source SDK to create custom visuals for your reports and dashboards
Custom Business Logic - Extend the Dataverse API with your own custom API that implements your business logic
Add CI/CD - Setup continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with your Power Platform solutions

What's next?

In the next series of posts you'll learn more about some of these core concepts and extension points.

If all of this sounds intriguing and you want to get started on your low code development journey, here are some actions you can take:

1️⃣ Sign up for the free Power Apps Developer Plan.
2️⃣ Enroll in the Cloud Skills Challenge to learn more about low code and fusion team fundamentals and start climbing that leaderboard!
3️⃣ Save the page to start your learning on Feb 1, and Subscribe to the blog in your favorite feed reader for updates.

About the Authors

April Dunnam is the Power Platform Advocacy Lead at Microsoft. Matt Soucoup is the .NET Advocacy Lead at Microsoft. Follow them both right here on dev.to for more articles on low-code development and fusion teams.

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I'm a Power Platform Developer Advocate focused on Power Platform at Microsoft and Power Apps/Power Automate MVP Alumni.

Matthew SoucoupFollow

I ❤️ helping developers use the cloud!

Resources

1. Hello, 30DaysOfLowCode!

Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Want to learn about Cloud + AI? Follow Microsoft Azure on dev.to 👇🏽

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✨#30DaysOfLowCode is a curated roadmap of daily posts that can help both citizen developers and pro-dev developers explore the value of low-code technologies to solve real-world problems with innovative apps. Visit the website to see the whole series or follow it on dev.to for daily updates.

Welcome to Day 01 of #30DaysOfLowCode!

What We'll Cover

Why Low-Code?
Start low coding with Microsoft!
The full Low-Code February lineup
Exercise: Take the Cloud Skills Challenge!
Resources: Sign up for the free Power Apps Developer Plan!

Why Low Code?

As the market for low-code platform continues to flourish (with projected growth this year of nearly 20% over 2022), now is the time to explore what it can mean for you.

Low-code development is becoming more popular as businesses look to modernize their IT infrastructure to generate more value in less time.
Developers can focus on the creative aspects of app building while still taking advantage of powerful cloud computing technologies such as scalability, security, and reliability.

Starting today, we invite you to spend a month getting the low-down on low-code development with an exciting series of tutorials, workshops, and interactive resources during #LowCodeFebruary.

Start low coding with Microsoft

With Microsoft Power Apps you can quickly build custom apps with drag-and-drop tools and pre-built templates, making it easier to create powerful apps that are tailored for your needs. Low-code development with Azure helps businesses accelerate their innovation cycle and make the most out of their data resources.

Low-code app development through Microsoft Power Platform and Azure can be used to automate workflows, reduce manual efforts, and speed up the development process for building line-of-business apps at a lower cost.

According to Forrester, composite organizations experience benefits of 140% ROI and 45% cost reduction in app development when using Power Platform premium capabilities. The majority of users say Power Platform’s premium capabilities increase revenue and offers faster solution quoting through better data integration.

In other words, with Power Platform you’ll produce more and better code than before, with increased cost savings. That means developing more projects and delivering increased value to your clients. With low code, everyone wins!

The full Low-Code February lineup

We want to give developers the resources you need to enhance your knowledge and skill in low code. Low Code February is a month-long celebration during which we’ll help participants learn the nuts and bolts of low-code development.

You will have access to a series of hands-on workshops, self-guided learning courses, skill challengies, conversations with experts, and a community of fellow learners that will give you the necessary tools to start building in 30 days.

All throughout Low Code February we’ll be running 6 hero initiatives to help you get the most of your newfound knowledge:

#30DaysOfLowCode blog series, during which developers can engage with a daily lesson and skill up on PowerFX, PCF (Power Apps Component Framework), ALM (App Lifecycle Management), Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and more.
- Week 1️⃣: Fundamentals Kick off with a comprehensive introduction to low code with onboarding experience, tooling, developer stories and more.
- Week 2️⃣: Backend Integrations Dive into the nitty-gritty of low-code development with topics like built-in connectors, dataverse, custom connectors, API management, and Azure integration.
- Week 3️⃣: User Interface Put your knowledge to the test by building a Canvas app, plus get an introduction to PowerFX, power component framework controls, and advanced use cases.
- Week 4️⃣: Dev Experience Take your skills to the next level with tutorials on ALM, GitHub Actions, app governance, Power Platform pipelines, and automated testing.
- Week 5️⃣: Wrap-up
#ZeroToHero 🦸‍♀️ Get the latest updates on technologies and products for low code development directly from product teams.
Video + Livestream 📻 Join online conversations with product teams and ask questions.
Cloud Skills Challenge ☁️ Skill up on key cloud technologies with free, self-guided learning courses, and compete to make the leaderboard!
Dev Workshops ⚒️ Explore workshops in your own time as you work through various features or solutions in self-guided mode.
Community Buzz 💡 Connect with the community and contribute your expertise by building interesting demos or writing articles.

Get started today!

Want to get started on your low code development journey with us? Here are some actions you can take today:

Sign up for the free Power Apps Developer Plan. 🙌
Enroll in the Cloud Skills Challenge and start climbing that leaderboard! ☁️
Save the page and Subscribe to the blog in your favorite feed reader for updates. 🔖

It's a #LowCodeFebruary

Nitya Narasimhan, Ph.D — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Want to learn about Cloud + AI? Follow Microsoft Azure on dev.to 👇🏽

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✨#LowCodeFebruary kicked off on February 1, 2023 and will run through March 1, 2023. We decided to reshare the content as a daily post on dev.to for those interested in skilling up on all things #lowcode. Visit the website to see the whole series at a go.

About #LowCodeFebruary

February is traditionally a month where we celebrate family, friends and loved ones - from Valentine's Day to Lunar New Year! We hope you also make this the month you fall in love with a new technology space - low-code app development - and join us for a month of learning, making, and sharing!

We are excited to announce the launch of #LowCodeFebruary, a month-long developer journey that will take you from app development tips, to fusion teams insights, and hands-on tutorials to skill you up on Power Platform, Microsoft Azure, and popular developer tools to enhance your productivity.

Want to stay up-to-date on all things low-code? Follow the #powerfuldevs tag right here on dev.to! And use the tag to share your own articles and insights so we can amplify them!

#powerfuldevs Follow

Power Platform, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Power BI, Power Automate, Low-Code or No-Code Development, Citizen Apps ⚡️

About the Authors

This blog post was co-authored by Sonja Gu a Product Marketing Manager working with the Power Platform ecosystem at Microsoft, helping everyone innovate with low-code technologies and fusion teams! Follow Sonja on Twitter for more updates!

What will we cover?

Let's talk about what you will learn in our developer journey this month. We have multiple initiatives in mind that can help you learn, skill up, engage with experts, contribute to community and watch videos at your own pace.

The #30DaysOfLowCode blog series helps you learn by reading posts from experts, taking you on a 4-week journey from fundamentals, to application lifecycle managment - and cover developer tools and best practices along the way!
The #ZeroToHero series captures blog posts directly from our product teams, sharing the latest features and tips for low code development.
The Dev Workshops page will learning tutorials and resources for all levels, from beginner to advanced.Learn how to build scalable apps, manage app lifecycle management with the Azure services and use popular Developer tools for enhanced productivity.
The Cloud Skills Challenge is a set of curated free, self-guided learning modules focused on fusion teams and low-code development. Complete them in #30Days and make the leaderboard!
The Video + Livestream page showcases live events (e.g., AskTheExpert, LearnLive) and on-demand video shows (e.g., LowCode Revolution) and replays, to help you learn at your own pace.
The Community Buzz section connects you to peer community members. Share your samples and learn from 90+ real-world Power Platform examples shared by the community. And share your contributions with us via GitHub issues or with a post on dev.to usingthe #powerfuldevs tag.

How can you participate?

Want to get started on your low code development journey with us? Here are some actions you can take today:

1️⃣ Sign up for the free Power Apps Developer Plan.
2️⃣ Enroll in the Cloud Skills Challenge and start climbing that leaderboard!
3️⃣ Save the page to start your learning on Feb 1, and Subscribe to the blog in your favorite feed reader for updates.

Ready to get started being a low-code developer, or a pro-dev supporting fusion teams and low code app development?

🏁 #Lets Go!

Streamline your solution development with the Power Platform CLI: Create a solution from scratch

Daniel Laskewitz — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 21:20:59 +0000

In the previous post, I focused on installing the Power Platform CLI, creating the auth profile and switching environments. In this blog, the solution command group is the superstar!

📦 Solution command group

As you expect by now, the solution command group enables you to work with Power Platform solutions. The solution command group has a lot of commands, so it's too much to talk about all of them in this blog. Instead, I will focus on my favorite ones that will get you started.

To see all commands in the solution command group, run the following command:

pac solution help

This will output the following result:

If you have experience with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) in the Power Platform, these commands might look familiar! A lot of them are available as both Azure DevOps taks and GitHub Actions.

👩🏾‍💻 Developer scenarios

Like I explained in the earlier blog, in the Power Platform environments are important. Not too long ago, Microsoft announced that you can have up to three developer environments for free! This helps a lot in this story, since you might work on multiple environments, or you might want to try out how and if your solution moves easily from environment A to environment B. In this blog series, I will describe a bunch of developer scenarios, and in this blog, I will start with creating a solution from scratch.

➕ Creating a solution from scratch

This is the easiest scenario. In this case, you can create a solution by using the pac solution init command.

How? Let's run the help command for that.

🆕 Initialize a solution

pac solution init help will show you all that you need to know.

This shows that there are two required arguments:

Publisher Name (--publisher-name or alias -pn)
Publisher Prefix (--publisher-prefix or alias -pp)

And one optional one:

Output Directory (--outputDirectory or alias -o)

Let's initialize our first solution by running the below command:

pac solution init --publisher-name Microsoft --publisher-prefix msft

When you open the directory in Visual Studio Code, you will see the Solution.xml file, in the src/Other folder. Open that, and let's explore what's in there!

The first thing that I see is that the solution unique name is SolutionDemo, which is the directory I ran the pac solution init command in. That name gets duplicated in the LocalizedName property as well. The version (1.0) and Managed (value is 2 now, which stands for solution package type both) properties Also, I see the publisher's name Microsoft as the unique name of the publisher. Below that we also see the prefix msft.

Just a heads up: when using the output directory argument, the solution name will be that name. So, it could be handy to use this option instead.

⚙️ Build the solution

Now, we only have our solution, but there's nothing added to the solution. The solution also doesn't exist in a Power Platform environment as well. So, let's first see if we can build the solution and import it into a Power Platform environment.

First, we need to run dotnet build. This builds the project and creates a zip file which we can use for import.

🆕 Git init and git commit

Now is a suitable time to run the git init command to initialize a git repo in your solution folder. This will be useful, because you can then do a git commit for a first init commit. Later, this will be helpful because we can then see the differences between what we committed now and what we have later after we added some things to the solution in the maker portal.

⬆️ Import the solution

Importing a solution can be done by running the pac solution import command. Run pac solution import help to get all the details about the command:

You can use the optional arguments for various scenarios. An example is adding the --publish-changes argument to publish the changes after a successful import. But for now, let's use the standard command to import the solution.

pac solution import

This will import the solution in the currently active environment. If all went well, you should be able to see your solution in the environment:

The solution is empty because there is nothing added to the solution yet. Select "Objects" in the left navigation and let's add something to the solution:

Add a canvas app (New > App > Canvas App, App name: Test App & click create)
- Add a button to the app, save the app & go back to the solution.

Although this is not a functional app, it will show you what this does to the solution folder when we're done with our next step.

🔄 Sync the solution

Because we already have a solution locally, we can make use of pac solution sync. We are going to synchronise the solution in two different ways now:

First, we will use the standard sync command with no arguments.

pac solution sync

The above command synchronises the solution from the Power Platform environment back to the local folder.

After the sync is completed, we can see that five files are changed. This is because the canvas app has been added to the solution.

Because the solution sync by default doesn't unpack canvas apps yet, we can't see what's in the canvas app. But the pac solution sync commands has some tricks up its sleeve:

Let's run the following command and see what happens.

pac solution sync --processCanvasApps

There are eighteen changes now in the solution. This is because the above command also unpacked the canvas app that is in our solution. We can now for instance see the Screen1.fx.yaml file, which is a representation of the screen with the button we added in the maker portal.

When you open that file, you can see that we added a button here:

Commit these changes and keep on working on your solution. If you run pac solution sync after each set of changes, and you commit these changes, you'll build up a history of changes. That's really helpful when others might take over the project later! They can then see exactly which changes you made for a certain requirement.

🎁 Wrap up

This was a tour around some of the solution commands. In the future, I will also write a blog post on how to work with solutions that are already in source control, like for instance in a GitHub repository.

For now, this is the first step into the solution command group. If you want to see more commands, look at the video below!

📺 Power Platform CLI Solutions

A while back, I had a great chat with David Jenni to talk about the solution command group for the Power Platform CLI. Check it out to see it live in action!

Getting Started with the Power Platform CLI

Daniel Laskewitz — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 17:38:03 +0000

As a developer, you might be used to working with the command line. When using low-code tools like the Power Platform, that's not a given. To bridge the gap for developers, Microsoft has created the Power Platform CLI.

Inner loop & outer loop development

The Power Platform CLI works for both inner loop development and outer loop development. The inner loop is for when a developer wants to work on a project and build a new feature for instance. The outer loop is to make sure that what has been built, also can be deployed to other environments. The Power Platform CLI also powers the GitHub Actions for Power Platform as well as the Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools for Azure DevOps.

Which commands are available in the Power Platform CLI? There are a lot... Currently, they are divided in sixteen command groups. Below you can see the overview of those command groups:

A command group is a set of commands that belong to a certain topic. For instance, with the PCF command group you can work with Power Apps component framework projects and initialize, push and version your PCF components.

Installation

The Power Platform CLI can be installed on Windows, MacOS and Linux devices. The easiest way to install the Power Platform CLI, is to install the Power Platform Tools extension for VS Code. This will automatically install the CLI and makes it available in the integrated terminal. For Windows, it's also possible to install the CLI as via a MSI Installer

Although Power Platform CLI is a cross-platform CLI, some commands only work on Windows. That's simply because those commands work with tools that haven't been available cross platform. In the docs on Microsoft Learn, you will see which commands don't work cross platform.

Connecting to your Power Platform environment

With the installation done, we are on our way, but we still need to connect to the Power Platform environment to be able to do something with the Power Platform.

There are two concepts that you need to be aware of:

A tenant, this is your own part of the Microsoft Cloud that's available for your company. Some people work with multiple companies, and they might have to connect to multiple tenants
An environment, you can see this as a container inside your tenant which enables you to group data and content you have. This way you can have multiple environments to make split development work from testing and production workloads

In the Power Platform CLI, you should first connect with the tenant before you can work with the environments. To connect with a tenant, we are going to use a simple command in the pac auth command group:

pac auth create

This command will open a browser window and ask you to log in with your credentials. When you are logged in, you can use the following command to list the connection you have created:

pac auth list

This command lists all the auth profiles you have created. If this was the first time connecting with the Power Platform CLI, this will only show one profile. In the scenario where you work with multiple customers, this is an especially useful command to see which profile is available for which customer and you can use the pac auth select to easily switch between these profiles.

If you want to know which other commands are available in the pac auth command group, make sure to go to aka.ms/pac/auth

Next, we also want to see which environments there are in the tenant. To do this, run the following command:

pac org list

This command will output a list with environments that are available in your tenant. If you want to see which environment you are currently connected to, you can run the pac org who command. This command will also output useful info like the environment ID, the user ID of the currently logged in user, and more!

If you want to switch between environments, you can run the following command:

pac org select --environment {ID}

Don't forget to replace the {ID} part with the ID, URL or unique name that you can get from the pac org list command. To verify that you're connected to the right environment, you can run the pac org who command.

If you want to know which other commands are available in the pac org command group, make sure to go to aka.ms/pac/org

Power Platform CLI overview

A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure to have a chat with Kartik Kanakasabesan, who is the Program Manager of the Power Platform CLI. In the video, which is embedded below, Kartik shows how you can use the Power Platform to your benefit.

Forem: Power Platform

New GitHub Sample Workflows for Power Platform

Wait there are GitHub actions for Power Platform?

What are the new workflows that we have added?

Username and Password or Service Principal?

What are the new samples?

Create environment

Export Unpack and Commit

Delete environments

Deploying applications

3. DevTools & Onboarding

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What We'll Cover

Get onboard with Power Platform!

Sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan​

Do I need a test tenant?

Get familiar with the tools​

What's next?

About the Author

Resources

2. You say Low, I say Code!

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What We'll Cover

#powerfuldevs Follow

You say Low, I say Code!

What is "low code"?

Low Code + Full Code = No Cliffs

What does the Power Platform Provide?

How can we extend Power Platform solutions?

What's next?

About the Authors

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Matthew SoucoupFollow

Resources

1. Hello, 30DaysOfLowCode!

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What We'll Cover

Why Low Code?

Start low coding with Microsoft

The full Low-Code February lineup

Get started today!

It's a #LowCodeFebruary

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About #LowCodeFebruary

#powerfuldevs Follow

About the Authors

What will we cover?

How can you participate?

Streamline your solution development with the Power Platform CLI: Create a solution from scratch

📦 Solution command group

👩🏾‍💻 Developer scenarios

➕ Creating a solution from scratch

🆕 Initialize a solution

⚙️ Build the solution

🆕 Git init and git commit

⬆️ Import the solution

🔄 Sync the solution

🎁 Wrap up

📺 Power Platform CLI Solutions

Getting Started with the Power Platform CLI

Sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan

Get familiar with the tools