Power Platform Governance: Setting Up Environments for Success
In the first part of this series, we covered the importance of governance in Power Platform to ensure security, compliance, and scalability in your business workflows. Now that we understand why governance matters, the next critical step is structuring your environments correctly.
Power Platform environments act as the foundation for everything you build. Whether you’re creating a simple automation in Power Automate or a full-fledged business app in Power Apps, the way you set up and manage your environments is essential to good governance.
In this post, we’ll explore how to structure Power Platform environments effectively to keep your development organized, secure, and scalable.
What Are Power Platform Environments?
Think of environments in Power Platform as containers or workspaces where apps, data, flows, and connections live. They help organize and separate different types of work, offering a secure way to manage and govern your Power Platform assets.
Every environment has its own resources, such as Power Apps, Power Automate flows, and the Dataverse (for apps that need databases). Environments are isolated from each other, which allows you to keep production, testing, and development activities separate. This is essential for maintaining a secure, well-governed platform.
The Importance of Structuring Environments
Properly structuring environments ensures that your workflows and apps are secure, scalable, and aligned with your organization’s overall governance strategy. Here’s why it’s important:
Security and Compliance:Environments can have different security settings and data loss prevention (DLP) policies. By separating sensitive data and production apps into secure environments, you reduce the risk of data leaks or compliance violations.
Controlled Development Process:A well-structured environment strategy helps ensure that changes are tested and approved before they reach production. This reduces the risk of errors or failures that could disrupt business-critical workflows.
Scalability:With a clear environment structure, it’s easier to scale your apps and automations as your business grows. Teams can work on different projects without stepping on each other’s toes or accidentally affecting live systems.
Best Practices for Setting Up Environments
Here are key best practices to follow when structuring your Power Platform environments for effective governance:
1. Create Separate Environments for Development, Testing, and Production
One of the golden rules of governance is to keep development, testing, and production environments separate. Each type of environment serves a specific purpose:
Development Environment:This is where new apps, flows, and changes are created. The development environment should be a flexible space where users can experiment, prototype, and iterate on solutions without affecting live systems. Allow greater flexibility in connectors and data here, but limit access to sensitive data.
Testing Environment:After an app or flow is built in the development environment, it moves to the testing environment. This is where quality assurance and user testing take place. The goal is to validate that the solution works as expected before pushing it to production. You should mimic the production environment as much as possible to catch any potential issues before they go live.
Production Environment:The production environment is where your live, business-critical apps and flows operate. Only thoroughly tested and approved solutions should reach production. This environment should have the strictest security and DLP policies, with limited permissions to ensure that only authorized personnel can make changes.
2. Leverage Environment Permissions and Security Roles
Each environment should have clearly defined roles and permissions to maintain control over who can create, modify, or publish apps and flows. Power Platform offers several built-in security roles, such as:
Environment Admin:This role has full access to all aspects of the environment, including managing apps, flows, and data. Only a small number of trusted individuals should have this role.
Environment Maker:Makers can create and modify apps, flows, and connections within an environment. However, they can’t manage the environment itself (e.g., create new environments or change security settings).
User:This role is for individuals who need access to apps or flows but shouldn’t have the ability to create or modify them. They can interact with the solutions but cannot alter the underlying structure.
By carefully managing these roles, you can ensure that only authorized individuals can make changes in each environment, minimizing the risk of accidental changes or security breaches.
3. Align Environments with Business Units or Teams
In larger organizations, it’s often helpful to structure environments around specific business units, departments, or teams. This ensures that teams have the autonomy to develop solutions tailored to their needs while still maintaining control through governance.
For example, you could create separate environments for:
Sales and Marketing
Finance and HR
Customer Service
IT and Operations
Each of these environments can have different DLP policies, connectors, and permissions tailored to the specific needs of that department. This also helps prevent cross-departmental interference, so one team’s development won’t accidentally impact another’s production systems.
4. Implement Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies by Environment
Each environment can (and should) have its own data loss prevention (DLP) policies. This allows you to control which connectors and data sources can be used in each environment, ensuring that sensitive data is protected.
For example, in your development environment, you might allow broader access to external connectors for testing and prototyping. However, in your production environment, you might restrict access to only the most secure and approved connectors, such as Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365.
DLP policies can be customized to ensure that only specific types of data (e.g., personal identifiable information or financial data) are shared between approved systems, helping you comply with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA.
Managing Environments as Your Organization Grows
As your organization scales and more teams begin using Power Platform, managing environments becomes even more critical. Here are a few strategies to ensure your environment structure remains scalable:
Create a Naming Convention:Establish a clear naming convention for environments to keep them organized. This makes it easier to identify which environment is used for what purpose (e.g., "Sales-Dev" for Sales Development, "HR-Test" for HR Testing, etc.).
Review and Consolidate Environments Periodically:Over time, your organization may accumulate environments. Regularly review and audit these environments to consolidate where possible, reducing complexity and ensuring that each environment is being used effectively.
Monitor Resource Usage and Costs:Keep an eye on how resources (such as storage and connectors) are being used across environments to prevent unnecessary costs or performance issues. Power Platform provides tools for tracking usage and costs, allowing you to adjust your governance strategy as needed.
Conclusion
Setting up environments is the cornerstone of effective Power Platform governance. By separating development, testing, and production environments, assigning clear roles and permissions, and tailoring DLP policies, you can ensure that your Power Platform workflows and apps are secure, scalable, and well-managed.
In the next part of our series, we’ll take a closer look at implementing Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies—a critical step in safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining compliance.
Stay tuned for Part 3: Protecting Your Data with Power Platform DLP Policies.
With environments set up, it’s time to focus on data policies and how to protect your information.