Overview view of PowerApps development environment in Power Platform

Quickly create Power Platform Development Environment: Overview view of PowerApps development environment in Power Platform

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Power Platform Development Environment – these days PowerApps development is booming where the trend is to follow no code low code. In simple meaning, give more power to user and developer so, that rapidly they can develop their apps with the minimum code or low code, or no-code approach using the PowerApps development tool itself. In this article, we will learn about how to create the various development environments in PowerApps – Power Platform.

By the way, we should know what is PowerApps.

Power Apps is a suite of apps, services, connectors, and data platforms that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs where you don’t need to have knowledge of the programming language, but I would say if you are good at excel formula it will be an added advantage.

Learning path for PowerApps development – prerequisites – Power Platform Development Environment

In order to learn the PowerApps development one should have the below knowledge at the minimum:

1. Understanding of PowerApps

  • Basic understanding of PowerApps

2. Understanding of the below data model (common data model)

  • Basic understanding of Microsoft SharePoint Online
  • Basic understanding of Microsoft Dynamics 365 – CRM
  • Basic understanding of SQL table as the data source
  • Basic understanding of Excel tables as the data source

3. A basic understanding of PowerAutomate or Microsoft Flow for the event trigger automation.

Overview of environment creation in PowerApps

Like any programming language in PowerApps development also we should have various environments to work on like Dev, Test, Prod, etc. So, before heading towards any PowerApps development, we should have an environment and access to it.

Default environment in PowerApps development platform

Once we log in to the PowerApps platform ( https://make.powerapps.com/environments/Default-8bde4d0e-9bbb-42a2-86ca-46884a08df50/apps?utm_source=office&utm_medium=app_launcher&utm_campaign=office_referrals), we could see that at the top right side (as shown below) the environment name is displayed – that is the default environment, the naming format of the default environment is as “<Tenant Name> (default)”.

Power Platform Development Environment - default environment in PowerApps development platform
Default environment in the PowerApps development platform

So, whatever apps we develop using this environment, will be stored here. Though we have a default environment, it is recommended to create a separate environment for our custom development to avoid messing up with the default environment. Now, in the below section, we will learn how to create a custom development environment in PowerApps.

Power Platform Development Environment – how to create an environment in PowerApps?

We need to follow the below steps in order to create the environment in the PowerPlat form:

  1. Log in to the PowerApps admin portal – https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments
Create environment in Power Platform admin center
Create an environment in the Power Platform admin center

2. Click on the “Environments” link from the left side panel, then click on the “+ New” button.

In the right-side panel, we could see the new environment creation parameters.

Environment creation configuration in Power Platform
Environment creation configuration in Power Platform
  1. Environment name – any valid meaningful text.
  2. Type of the environment which has the below values:
  3. 2.1 Sandbox, 2.2 Trial (subscription-based), 2.3 Production and 2.4 Trial
  4. Local environment selection (Local environments can provide quicker data access.), select your country as the region.
  5. Purpose – this is an optional parameter, here we need to describe the environment creation purpose in a few words.
  6. Create a database for this environment? Yes or No, this is an optional parameter, we are selecting here “No” as the parameter.
  7. Now, click on the “Save” button.
Environment creation configuration in Power Platform without database
Environment creation configuration in Power Platform without database

 

Note:

  • We cannot create the database with the trial tenant subscription, so we have selected the database creation selection as no. In order to create the database, we need to buy an ad-an license. I will discuss this separately in another article.

Once, we click on the “Save” button, we will see this error “This environment can’t be created because your org (tenant) needs at least 1 GB of database capacity. Request ID: 4f019e93-9ae3-4fb1-87d2-7644fbfc7cd2.

This environment can't be created because your org (tenant) needs at least 1 GB of database capacity
This environment can’t be created because your org (tenant) needs at least 1 GB of database capacity

From this exercise, we got to know that we cannot create an environment with the trial tenant subscription, but this is proof of the concept of how to create an environment in the Power Platform admin center, once we successfully create the environment we will see that the newly created environment is displayed in the environments dashboard.

The location of newly created environment in Power Platform admin center
The location of the newly created environment in the Power Platform admin center

Types of environments in power platform

As we saw, there are various types of environments in the Power Platform, such as:

  • Sandbox,
  • Trial (subscription-based),
  • Production and
  • Trial

Note – You may see some more types of environments in your platform.

Now, we will see what are these environments actually are meant for.

Sandbox environment in Power platform

A sandbox environment is any non-production environment of Microsoft Dataverse. Isolated from production, a sandbox environment is a place to safely develop and test application changes with low risk, we can compare this environment with the traditional environment like Dev/Test environment where the developer can develop their apps and test them.

The trial environment in PowerApps – Power platform

Trial environments are intended to support short-term testing needs and are automatically cleaned up after a short period of time. They expire after 30 days and are limited to one user. Provisioning trial environments can be restricted to admins, in short, we can say this is for the limited user and period.

Trial (subscription-based) environment in PowerApps – Power platform

The trial (subscription-based) environment is used to overcome the limitation of the Trial environment. In other words, we can say that this is the upgraded version of the Trial environment. This is the type of trial environment that companies can use to develop larger, multiuser, and multiple-department solutions and perform proof-of-concept reviews. Tenant admins can add a trial (subscription-based) environment to their tenant, or new customers can sign up for a new tenant and become the Global admin.

The production environment in PowerApps – Power platform

This is intended to be used for permanent work in an organization. It can be created and owned by an administrator or anyone with a Power Apps license, provided there are 1 GB available database capacity. This is the same as the production environment in our traditional development model, where the final product will be deployed after the testing.

Note:

  • Whatever type of environment creation you select, the way of environment creation is the same.

How to manage the environment in the Power platform?

Now, from this location, we can manage any environment listed out here.

Let’s double-click on the default environment in order to manage it. On the manage environment page, there are basically four sections:

  • Details – where we can edit the type, region, purpose, etc.
  • Access – where can see the various roles assigned to this environment like “Environment admin” and “Environment maker”
  • Add database – where we can add the database what exactly the database does – it collects, stores, and shares your data for your environment.
Manage environment in Power platform admin center
Manage environment in Power platform admin center

Roles in the environment of PowerApps platforms (Power platform roles)

There are various roles in the environment of PowerApps, such as:

  • Environment Admin
  • Environment Maker

In order to see the environment in the PowerApps platform, the user should have the below roles:

  • The user must be either a member of the Environment Admin or Environment Maker Role
  • The “Contributor” access is needed at least in one app within the Environment

Summary: What do we have here?

Thus, in this article, we have learned the below with respect to creating the development environment in PowerApps – Power platform:

  • What is PowerApps in the Power platform?
  • Learning path for PowerApps development – prerequisites
  • Understanding of the data model (common data model) in the Power platform
  • Overview of environment creation in PowerApps
  • Default environment in the PowerApps development platform
  • How to create an environment in PowerApps – Power Platform?
  • How to fix this environment can’t be created because your org (tenant) needs at least 1 GB of database capacity.
  • Types of environments in power platform
  • Sandbox environment in Power platform
  • The trial environment in PowerApps – Power platform
  • The trial (subscription-based) environment in PowerApps – Power platform
  • The production environment in PowerApps – Power platform
  • How to manage the environment in the Power platform?
  • Roles in the environment of PowerApps platforms
  • Who can see an Environment in a Power Platform

See Also: Power Platform Development Environment

You may also like the below PowerApps article:

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