Managed environments (Part 1)
Tags: powerplatform, powerfuldevs, powerautomate, powerapps
Published: 2023-10-13 11:12:22


Welcome back to our blog series all about Power Platform environments. Today, we're getting into the nitty-gritty of Power Platform Managed Environments.

## 🤔 Managed environments, okey... But what are they?

Managed Environments is a set of tools that make it easier for system administrators to control and monitor Power Platform. These tools reduce the work needed and provide better information. Managed Environments can be used for all types of environments, except for Developer environments.

Some key features of Managed Environments include the capability to restrict object sharing, provide usage insights (weekly) about apps, makers and inactive resources, improve data policies, and simplify Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) with Power Platform pipelines.

## How to enable Managed Environments?
_You must be an admin to enable or edit Managed Environments. That is, you must have the role of global admin, Power Platform service admin, or Dynamics 365 admin Azure Active Directory._

In the <u>Power Platform admin center</u> select <u>Environments</u>, check mark an environment. On the command bar, select <u>Enable Managed Environments</u>. If the environment is already managed, select <u>Edit Managed Environments</u>.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dqpuder2w5g407sovqpz.png)
Configure the features, and then select <u>Enable</u>

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/slp165c7j6ooh5ic2j6g.png)

## So, let's dive into the features available

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## Limit sharing
Admins can control canvas apps sharing. To set up these rules, choose a managed environment from the list in the Power Platform admin center, click "Edit Managed Environments" in the command bar, and find the sharing rules in the "Limit sharing" section.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nk6vx0fj51v47zz7kpq0.png)

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/te29xkm1hte5fbmd3hse.png)

##Solution checker
This is a preview feature in Managed Environments to enforce rich static analysis checks on your solutions against a set of best practice rules and identify problematic patterns.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/iy858lejmogfv8ml39ex.png)
Settings alternative:

- **None:** Disables automatic solution validations during import. No impact on solution authoring, exports, or imports.
- **Warn:** Automatically checks custom solutions during import. If critical issues are found, you receive a warning but can continue the import. A message and email is sent with details of the solution validation issues after successful import.
- **Block:** Automatically checks custom solutions during import. If critical issues are found, the import is canceled. A message and email is sent with details of the validation issues, so there aren't any changes to the environment due to the import failure.

_The email is sent to all users with the roles of Power Platform administrator and Dynamics 365 service administrator. It is also sent to recipients of the weekly digest emails._

##Weekly usage insights
Admins get weekly informed about apps usage and users activities
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6lk0v5izscxqd9j1uz5i.png)

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/b9t4rj9yjg9jua3r2mmo.png)

##Maker welcome content
This is also a preview feature to provide a customized welcome message to makers to get started with Power Apps

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j62s2ymfwo92pxtsvs98.png)

##Data policies
Data policies define the consumer connectors that data can be shared with. They make sure that data is managed in a uniform manner across your organization. They also prevent important business data from being accidentally published to connectors like social media sites. 
With Managed Environments, admins can easily identify all the data policies that are applied to an environment.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4y10542le5dh95g9jq6f.png)

##Pipelines in Power Platform
Aimed to democratize Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for Power Platform and D365 and make this service more approachable  for admins and makers.
_As prerequisite we have: at least three Power Platform environments, all environments must have a Microsoft Dataverse database, you must have a Power Platform administrator or Dataverse system administrator role to install the pipelines application and all target environments used in a pipeline must be enabled as Managed Environments._


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0ayr0kbtg0l1z3sliljs.png)

##Default environment routing
A feature that we all have been waiting for 👏 👏 👏 
This feature allows Power Platform admins to automatically direct new makers into their own personal developer environment when they visit make.powerapps.com for the first time, instead of the default environment.

- Is enabled by Power Platform admins only.
- Requires that the Developer environment assignment setting is enabled for Everyone

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5u1j1cbzplcy3af86h0z.png)
Then, enable the Environment routing

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/r2uyhnwvw6pi0oh0taai.png)
_I'm preparing a new blog post with focus on Environment routing, stay tuned_ 😉

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To be continued...