Finding your feet with Power Platform environments – Part 01

Introduction

In this series, we’ll look at Power Platform environments. We’ll have a look at what they are, what they do, how to create them and how to administer them.

What is a Power Platform environment?

A Power Automate environment is a container that can is used to separate applications and flows based on pre-determined criteria, e.g., security requirements, or target audiences.

A common example is the use of one environment for development of flows (with limited access) and another for production environments (with less restricted access for all users)

What types of environment are there?

There are three types of environment in the available:

• Production
• Sandbox
• Trial.

Production environments are suited for stable workloads where you have predictable usage.

Sandbox environments are for building proof-of-concept applications and flows that might need to be reset without recreating the entire environment.

Trial environments will expire after 30 days. These environments are best suited for evaluating technologies.

You can more information about the types of environments here.

How do I create an environment?

1. Go to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com and sign in
2. Select Environments from the left -hand navigation
3. Select + New
   
   
   
4. A fly-out window will appear in the right-hand side of the window
5. In fly-out form, give your environment a meaningful name
6. Select the Trial type environment
7. Select the geographical region for the environment
8. Choose whether or not to create database for you environment.
   Note: If you only intend to use simple data sources, e.g., Excel or SharePoint, you don’t need a database. However, if you don’t create one you won’t be able to users features such as the Common Data Service, AI Builder or UI flows.
   
   
   
9. Provide the Language of your choice and Currency. For the purposes of this exercise, do not enable Dynamics 365 apps or sample apps and data. Select Save to create your environment.
10. After a couple minutes, your environment should be provisioned and you should see the following status message displayed in the Admin center. You might need to select Refresh for the State field to update.

In the next post, we’ll look at the basics of managing your new environment.