PL400 : Automate Deployments(Implement application lifecycle management (ALM))

Software can be deployed manually or automatically. Manual deployment requires the involvement of a team at each stage of the software delivery process. Uses automatic deployment technology that enables automatic releases to different environments. Automated deployment in Dynamics 365 Customer and Power Platform is always a challenge. It is a practice that allows us to fully or semi-automatically ship code across multiple stages of the deployment process, from initial development to production.

If our DevOps platform is Azure DevOps, we can use Power Apps tools to automate common build and deployment tasks related to Power Apps. This includes synchronization of solution metadata between development and our version control system, build build artifacts, deployment to downstream environments, provisioning or provisioning of the environment, and the ability to perform static analytics checks against our solutions using the Power App Checker service.

Microsoft Power Platform Build tools are supported only for a Microsoft Dataverse environment with a database.

Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools is a collection of Power Platform-specific Azure DevOps build tasks that eliminate the need to manually download custom tooling and scripts to manage the application lifecycle of apps on Microsoft Power Platform. Tasks can be used individually to perform a simple task, such as importing a solution into a downstream environment, or used together in a pipeline to organize a scenario.

The build tasks can largely be categorized into four types:
  1. Helper
  2. Quality Check
  3. Solution
  4. Environment Management

Helper Tasks:

Power Platform Tool Installer:

This task is required to be added once before any other power platform build tool task in build  and release pipelines. This task installs a set of power platform- specific tools required by the agent to run the Microsoft Power Platform build tasks.

Quality Check

Power Platform Checker:

This task runs a static analysis check on our solution against a set of best practice rules to identify any problematics patterns that we might have inadvertently introduced when building our solution.

Solution Tasks:
Power Platform Import Solution: Import a solution into a target environment.
Power Platform Apply Solution Upgrade: Upgrade a solution that has been imported as hold solution.
Power Platform Export Solution: Export a solution from a source environment.
Power Platform unpack solution :
Tasks a compressed  Solution file and decompresses it into multiple XML so that these files can be more easily read and managed by a source control system.
Power Platform Pack Solution :
Packs a solution represented in source control into a solution.zip file that can be imported into another environment.
Power Platform Delete Solution: Delete a solution in the target environment.
Power Platform Publish Customization: publishes all customization in an environment.
Power Platform Set Solution Version: update the version of a solution.
Power Platform Deploy package: deploys a package to an environment.

Environment Management Tasks:

Automate common environment lifecycle management (ELM) tasks:
  • Power Platform  Create Environment
  • Power Platform Delete Environment
  • Power Platform Backup Environment
  • Power Platform Copy Environment

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