Finishing up 2021 by chatting to ‘Chief Technical Penguin’ Aaron Ralls about his love of Cajun-inspired cooking (delicious!), & the importance of setting ourselves up for financial security (not just ‘the moment’).
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Talking with Clifton about his love of travel, the importance of community with both technical & non-technical matters, and just how vital it is to understand Digital Transformation. Without the correct mindset for this, it’s going to be difficult to succeed!
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Don’t you find it absolutely frustrating when there’s a canvas app that you want to get access to, or give other users access to, but can’t see it? It’s REALLY annoying, but it’s sort of the way that Microsoft has designed the platform (at least at this point in time).
See, when a user creates a canvas app, only the creator is able to see & launch it. If other users want to get access to it, the creator needs to share it. This can be done by sharing the app directly with another user, or by sharing it with an AAD Security Group (which is sort of best practise).
Now, of course there’s the Microsoft Power Platform Centre of Excellence solution, which includes a very handy app to assign permissions for canvas apps. After all, if a user is on holiday, sick leave, or has left the company, there needs to be some way of assigning permissions for other users to gain access to it. It’s really helpful, but of course needs the CoE solution installed.
Let’s think of another scenario. What about if we have some canvas apps as part of a solution, that’s deployed through (proper) ALM – such as using Azure DevOps with automated pipelines. Best practise for this is to use service principals (ie non-interactive user logins). This is great, but then the canvas app/s will be owned by this user. So without the use of the CoE ‘Set App Permissions’ canvas app, we’re sort of stuck, as we can’t gain access to the app.
Or can we…..?
So this is a scenario that I’ve been dealing with recently, and I’ve found a really cool workaround that doesn’t need the CoE ‘Set App Permissions’ canvas app to be able to handle the situation.
The example below (amusingly, in my opinion) is actually using the Microsoft CoE solution as an example, but this works with any canvas apps that are held within a solution (against, this heavily supports using solutions for ALL development items!).
So, this is what the actual installed apps look like in this environment:
As we can see, there are a lot of them! But what happens if I’m logged in as my regular user? What do I see if I go to the list of apps? Well, I’ll see the following:
Now, as we can see, I’m able to see the model-driven app (as these aren’t hidden at all). But I’m not able to see ANY of the canvas app! So how can I get access to it, or share it with other users?
Well, if I take a look at the solution itself, I can see the following when browsing to the list of apps (I’m really loving the new Solution Explorer layout, I’ll freely admit!):
I can try to play the canvas app (in this case, the ‘Set App Permissions’ app) directly from the solution. But when I try to do this, I’ll get the following error message:
Now, this is of course happening because I’m not the owner of the app, & the app hasn’t been shared with me at all. So really I was expecting this error to happen.
However, if I take a look at the menu options displayed for me, I can see that the ‘Share’ option isn’t greyed out. I wonder what happens if I click it…
Now this is EXCITING! When clicking the ‘Share’ option on the menu, I’m given the regular sharing screen, where I’m able to set app permissions. So it looks like I’m able to do something here. OK – let’s go ahead & try to share the app with my own user:
So I’ve looked up my own user, and then clicked ‘Share’. This is what happens next…
Waiting with bated breath, and then…
It’s worked! The app sharing has been successful with my user.
Note: The example that I’m using here is with my own user account. However it doesn’t need to be – I can select any user account or AAD Security Group, and share accordingly.
Going to my list of apps, I can now see that the app is showing up for me:
Clicking the app to launch it presents me with the permissions dialogue, and having confirmed permissions, then launches it properly:
So this is indeed a way in which it’s possible to share canvas apps with users and/or AAD security groups, even when a user isn’t the owner of the canvas app.
It is important to note that the user carrying this out does need to have one of the following permissions in the environment:
System Customiser
System Administrator
Without having one of these roles, it’s not going to be possible to carry out the above (mostly because it’s not possible to see solutions & dig down into them).
This is a handy little trick that hopefully will help clear up one of the headaches when trying to share canvas apps! Of course it’s possible to use the Microsoft CoE tool to set app permissions, but if a customer doesn’t have it installed, then this would be another way to approach things.
Have you ever had this issue? How did you go about solving it? I’d love to hear – please drop a comment below…
Discovering Patrick’s love of classics (you’ll never guess how he got into it to begin with), what he does for light reading, and what happens when system security might not be kept quite up to scratch.
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Finding out from Elaiza how she decided to start a side-line in veggie gardening at home, the wonderful produce that she’s grown so far, and her vision for expanding on it!. Also covering personal & professional lifestyles, tips & tricks for starting a new position in a different country, and professional development advice.
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Chatting to Mike about some interesting cars, Batman, & what exactly the word ‘NASA’ means to him. Also covering items such as the joys of printing, data synchronisation, and Mike’s Top Three tips for consultants entering the technology space.
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Talking to Daniel about WHY his brain is smaller than yours, his path in life to become a technologist, and the underlying reasons behind all of it. Discussing his love of automation, and the seasonal show that he & his family provide not just the neighbourhood, but all local visitors!
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Finding out from Ryan how he became a ‘Maker’ in the first place, his professional journey, and how he actually ended up at Microsoft! Also touching on the importance of community
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Chatting to Alvin Ahnassay about his love of travelling, wildlife, & the recent trip of a lifetime. Also touching on the challenges that occur at times, how to deal with them, & finding out how porcupines have featured along the way!
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Talking to Angeliki Patsiavou around her loves of kickboxing & music (find out why she’s grown her hair so long!), & discovering the absolute curve-ball that attendees at a training session threw at her. Did she cope with it? Come listen & find out!
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