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Effective Power Platform Governance: Minimal Environment Strategy
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Power Apps
Oct 19, 2022 8:43 PM

Effective Power Platform Governance: Minimal Environment Strategy

by HubSite 365 about Michael Roth [MVP]

Microsoft MVP Business Applications | Power Platform Consultant | Governance & Adoption | reigning minigolf champion

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Unlock your Power Platforms potential with carefully crafted environment strategies from a Microsoft expert, ensuring data security and productivity.

Power Platform Environments: Ensuring Security and Efficiency

In the blog post "Power Platform governance 04 - Think about a minimal set of environments" by Michael Roth [MVP], the author discusses the benefits and functionalities of Power Platform environments. These environments serve as a crucial data security layer and play a pivotal role in organizing Power Platform solutions such as data, apps, flows among others. They can also be tailored to specific needs, ideal for targeting different audience sets or purposes.

Power Platform environments are essential to ensure data security across various geographical areas and different user groups. Each environment can be secured using data loss prevention policies and security groups, ensuring safe business data handling. They are particularly useful when dealing with differing data security requirements across multiple locations.

Moreover, these environments set the foundation for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), crucial in software development. Users can identify their current environments while using platforms such as flow.microsoft.com or make.powerapps.com by checking the upper right corner of the screen.

The author delves deeper into the types of environments available within Power Platform. There are 'default environments' existing within every organization and attached to a database. It is most commonly used for personal productivity as every user is granted the security role of “Environment Maker”, which allows them to create new apps, flows, or connections.

'Production Environments' are designed for long-term use and recommended by Microsoft for most use cases, whereas 'Sandbox Environments' provide the flexibility of copying, resetting, and converting into production environments. 'Trial Environments' are perfect for testing purposes with a 30 days expiration limit and 'Developer Environments' are dedicated for individual learning and developing solutions.

The blog suggests creating an environment strategy based on the organization size and strategic goals. There is a recommendation for having a default environment for personal productivity, a specific environment for team productivity, and a learning environment for makers. The author further suggests setting up separate environments for critical business solutions.

For more details on Power Platform environments, consider visiting the "Power Apps community plan" that provides a comprehensive overview.

Enhancing Security and Efficiency with Power Platform

The fundamental concept of Power Platform environments revolves around compartmentalization, data security, and adaptability. An organization's data, applications, workflows, and other components are all housed within these environments, allowing for an efficient way to sort and distribute assets based on specific needs.

The ability to tailor these environments to various use cases and target different audience sets underscores the flexibility and diversity of the Power Platform. The power to apply varying levels of security layers to each environment makes it an invaluable tool for businesses operating across different countries with unique data security requirements.

Furthermore, Power Platform environments pave the way for adopting a robust Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) approach that ensures the timely delivery, maintenance, and enhancement of high-quality software. With varying types of environments available within the Power Platform, organizations can design a personalized environment strategy that aligns with their size and strategic objectives.

Read the full article Power Platform governance 04 - Think about a minimal set of environments

Power Apps - Effective Power Platform Governance: Minimal Environment Strategy

Learn about Power Platform governance 04 - Think about a minimal set of environments

Microsoft's Power Platform provides a powerful set of tools for automating tasks, building applications, and analyzing data. One feature that sometimes goes unnoticed is the use of Environments. Environments are containers for segregating Power platform assets based on our requirements. They help in separating and protecting business data, and giving power to end-users in a regulated way. They are critical for effective Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) often found in software development.

The question that many users find themselves asking is, how would they know which environment they are currently working in? When using flow.microsoft.com or make.powerapps.com, your current environment will be displayed in the upper-right corner. If you click on that, you will see a list of all environments you have access to, including the default environment which every user has access to.

The platform provides several types of Environments. Notably,
1. Default Environment: This is where all users start creating apps and flows, primarily used for individual productivity. Security wise, each user is given the 'Environment Maker' role, granting the ability to create new applications, flows or connections.
2. Production Environment: These are used for long-term work scenarios and are recommended by Microsoft for most use-cases.
3. Sandbox: Similar to the Production environment, but with added features like copying, resetting and converting into a Production environment.
4. Trial and Trial (subscription-based): These environments are used for experimental, testing, or training purposes and expire after 30 days.
5. Developer environments: Dedicated to learning and developing solutions, these environments are allotted to users subscribing to the Community Plan.

While creating a strategy for utilizing these environments, it depends on the size of your organization and the strategic goals you want to achieve.
- Undertake personal productivity solutions in the Default Environment.
- Developers and learners can further expand their Power Platform capabilities using the Developer Environment.
- For team- or business unit productivity, it is beneficial to set up a specific environment.

Separation of functionalities based on their importance and audience should be the goal, thus segregating personal or team productivity use cases from critical ones. For more critical solutions, each business unit that wants to develop Power Platform solutions should have their separate developer, testing, and production environments.

Learning and optimizing the use of environments in Power Platform will drastically improve the workflow, data security, and overall management of your applications, leading to more efficient results.

  • Power Apps Community Plan
  • Environments overview
  • Defining a Power Platform Environment Strategy
  • Establishing an environment strategy

More links on about Power Platform governance 04 - Think about a minimal set of environments

Think about a minimal set of environments - MichaelRoth42 Blog
Sep 26, 2022 — Power Platform environments are a great data security layer to separate data, apps, flows and other components of Power Platform solutions.
Power Platform governance 04 - Think about a minimal set ...
Sep 28, 2022 — Power Platform environments are a great data security layer to separate data, apps, flows and other components of Power Platform solutions.
Establishing an environment strategy
Aug 15, 2023 — Develop an environment strategy to securely manage resources in Power Platform environments while allowing productive development.

Keywords

Power Platform governance, Minimal set environments, Platform management, Governance strategy, Platform optimization, Microsoft Power Platform, Environment setup, Power Platform implementation, Power Platform enhancements, Platform environment governance.