Recently I talked about the wider vision that organisations would be able to use, for helping users get access to the right environments (Default Environment – How to handle? » The CRM Ninja). As part of this, I discussed the Microsoft vision of having environment routing in place, to move users automatically to specific environments.
At the point of writing, there wasn’t anything that I could publicly talk about. However, overnight Microsoft have released functionality around this – what I see as being the first step that this direction is taking. The documentation for this is at https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/default-environment-routing-public-preview/
The functionality released is to enable new users to Power Platform to automatically have a developer environment created for them to access, rather than landing in the Default environment within their tenant. Many organisations struggle with users creating content in the Default environment, when it’s not really (at least not in my opinion) the right place to do this.
Now, when we say ‘new users’, this doesn’t actually mean users newly created in M365 (or Entra ID/AAD). What this means is ‘users who have not accessed anything within Power Platform before’. In the back end, there’s a counter on each user record that keeps track of this, which this functionality is using to determine if users have accessed Power Platform beforehand or not.
What is important to note on this as well is that the Default environment DOES NOT need to be set to Managed for this to work. Microsoft documentation doesn’t make this clear at the moment, but hopefully it’ll be updated soon to clarify this.
Two settings do need to be toggled on within the Power Platform Admin Centre for this to work:
Once these have been set & saved, let’s take a look at how things actually happen. I’ve created a new user for testing purposes:
When signing in, it then briefly shows the general interface that we’re used to for a few seconds:
But, then we get this exciting NEW screen!
And then after a minute or so, we get placed nicely in the new environment:
Looking at the Power Platform Admin Centre, we can see the new environment that’s been created:
To be candid, during my testing things didn’t always work – I had some differing behaviour, or (on one occasion) the interface just hung. I’m going to put this down to being newly released & the product team working through potential issues (remember of course – this is in PREVIEW), and am hoping that they’re resolved very soon.
Also, it’s important to note that the developer environments created through this are MANAGED. Users will be able to create collateral in them, but to run apps etc will need premium licensing in place.
Moving forward, it would be great to have some information displayed to users if something hasn’t worked, as well as notifications to admins (configurable) so that they’re aware as well. Examples of this could include where an organisation has maxed out the number of (free) developer licenses available (yes, I know this sounds stange, but there’s a default limit of 9,999 developer licenses per org).
But I think it’s a great first step forward, and hopefully there will be many different ways that this product will be developed forward. My initial thoughts would include:
- Creating developer environments for existing Power Platform users who don’t have a personal developer environment
- Routing existing Power Platform users who have their own Developer environment to it
- Being able to route to other places as well, including being able to specify which users/groups of users should be routed
It’s an exciting place to be in, and I look forward to seeing more of it!
What are your thoughts around this? Does your organisation allow users to have personal developer enviroments, or do they lock it down?
Thanks for post. With the managed environment licensing restrictions; does this mean the Maker can’t even run the published app, in the routed managed environment? I am assuming this restriction does not limit the normal build -> preview cycle.
Makers can create collateral in a developer environment that’s managed, but indeed would need to have premium licensing to be able to run apps etc. To note, this is only when the environment is enabled as a managed environment. Organisations will now need to start considering premium licensing with capabilities that are being released that are tied to using managed environments.