Use Pipelines in PowerApps

Setup environments

For this example we are going to use 3 environments a development environment where we are going to build all our apps, a test environment for testing the app and a production environment for all the apps that are in production. All these 3 environments need to be managed environments. To create and maintain the pipelines where are going to create another environment “Pipelines Host” this environment doesn’t need to be managed.

Install Power Platform Pipelines

Select the “Pipelines Host” environment and go to “Dynamics 365 apps”.
Selecting “Install app” will give you a list of all apps you can install.
Select “Power Platform Pipelines”, click “next”, “accept the terms” and click “install”.
The installation will take 3-5 min.

After the installation is finished, navigate to the “pipelines host” environment. Here you will see that there are solutions added and a model driven app “Deployment Pipeline Configuration”

Define environments

First we are going to add the different environments that we are going to use in the pipelines.
For this click on the left side on “environments” and click on “new” at the top of the screen.
After this you will need to add all the details of the environments.
The environment type will be “development” for Test en production the type will be target.
You can find the environment ID in the admin center if you click on the environment.
Click “Save & Close”.

Do this for the 3 environments and wait unit the Validation Status is on Success.

Setup Pipeline

Now we are going to create a pipeline. Go to the Pipeline section and click “add”.
Give your pipeline a name and click “Save & Close”.

Open the pipeline and click on “Add existing Deployment Environment”.

Select the Development environment and click on “add”.

Setup stages

After that click on “new deployment stage”.
Give your stage a name and select the Target as Test.
The Previous Deployment Stage will be empty for this step because it is the first step.
Save the Stage.

Create another stage for the deployment to production. Here we are going to add the “Deploy to Test” stage in Previous Deployment Stage.

Use the pipelines

Now your pipelines are ready to use.
Go to your development environment en open the solution that you want to use.
On the left side you can select the pipeline icon.
Choose the pipeline you want to use and click on “Deploy to here” in the “Deploy to Test” step.

You will get a notification of connections or variables that need to be updated. Make sure to resolve them and continue to Summary where you can choose the version and deploy it to test.

After the solution is deployed in Test you can deploy it in Production. From the moment you successfully deployed the solution to production you first need to deploy to test again before you can deploy to production again.