Introduction

The Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit provides a powerful foundation for governance, administration, and adoption of Microsoft Power Platform. One of its key components is the Environment Request process, which enables makers to submit requests for new environments.

By default, the CoE toolkit supports various environment types but may not explicitly handle requests for Developer environments, which are crucial for individual experimentation and personal app development. This guide provides a step-by-step process to extend the CoE toolkit to support Developer environment creation using Power Automate and the Power Platform Admin API.

Why Support Developer Environments?

Developer environments:
– Are personal environments with a Dataverse database.
– Allow makers to test and build solutions without impacting production.
– Are free (one per user) and ideal for training, learning, and prototyping.

Providing an automated request process for Developer environments ensures:
– Proper governance and visibility into usage.
– Controlled provisioning based on business justification.
– Consistent user experience through the CoE request form.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Extend the Environment Request Form

To enable requests for Developer environments:
1. Add a new option in the Environment Type choice field:
   – Label: Developer
   – Value: Developer
2. Configure conditional logic in the form so that when Developer is selected:
   – Fields like Security Group and Expiration Date can be hidden or ignored.

Step 2: Modify Approval Logic in the Workflow

Ensure your approval workflow (e.g., Env Request | Create Approved Environment) includes a condition to detect if the request type is Developer and routes the request to a dedicated branch with a custom HTTP action.

Step 3: Use Power Platform Admin API to Create Developer Environment

Use the following HTTP configuration in Power Automate:

• HTTP Method: POST
• URL: https://api.bap.microsoft.com/providers/Microsoft.BusinessAppPlatform/environments?api-version=2021-04-01&retainOnProvisionFailure=false
• Headers:
• Authorization: Bearer <token>
• Content-Type: application/json

Body:

{
  “location”: “country”,
  “properties”: {
    “displayName”: “name”,
    “environmentSku”: “Developer”,
    “databaseType”: “CommonDataService”,
    “usedBy”: {
      “id”: “azureactivedirectoryobjectid”,
      “type”: 1,
      “tenantID”: “tenantid”
    },
    “billingPolicy”: null,
    “linkedEnvironmentMetadata”: {
      “domainName”: “environment domainname”,
      “baseLanguage”: 1033,
      “currency”: {
        “code”: “currency code”
      },
      “templates”: []
    },
    “parentEnvironmentGroup”: null,
    “cluster”: null,
    “governanceConfiguration”: null
  }
}

Step 4: Update Dataverse Table with Status

After the API call:
– Use a Parse JSON step to extract environment ID or error message.
– Update the Environment Request record with:
  – Status: Approved
  – Environment URL
  – Provisioned On: UTC Now()
  – Error: if any

Step 5: Notify the Requestor

Send a notification to the maker indicating:
– Approval and environment details.
– URL to access the environment.

Conclusion

By extending the Power Platform CoE Toolkit to support Developer environments, you empower makers to innovate while maintaining governance and control. This ensures a structured approach to self-service environment creation that aligns with your organization’s governance model.