ALM Power Platform - Problem Solving

 Use the logical name of the embedded canvas app

Problem:  I have embedded canvas apps inside a Model app that I deploy via a solution.  When I move from Development to Test, the users reported that they don't have access "This app isn't opening correctly" "It looks like you don't have access to this app."  And when I dive deeper, I see the Model app in Test is point to the Development Canvas App; not the test canvas app.

Initial Hypothesis: My thinking is that the Model App in Test is pointing to the Canvas App in Dev.  In dev, I point to the test canvas app and it works.  The workaround is to Open the managed solution in the Test environment and change the AppId  to the App Id of the canvas App in TEST.   It works but it's an awful work around.  This tells me that my App Name is not working, as the Static App name is used before the AppId (looks for the app name in the current environment) and then the AppId when the app Name doesn't resolve, I believe the app name is not working.  

I changed the AppId (to a non-existing guid) and the app wouldn't load in dev.  The app name should be the logical name and not the display name.    

"The App Name property specifies the name of the canvas app to embed. The model-driven form looks for the canvas app with the specified name in the current environment. If a canvas app with that name can't be found in the environment, the canvas app control will use the App ID to load the canvas app. Enter the App Name for an existing canvas app."  Add an embedded canvas app on a model-driven form - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Resolution:  Open the table > Forms > Form containing the canvas app

Or, another alternative is to use Environment variables for all the canvas AppID's and change them per DTAP environment on the deployment.

More Info:

Share an embedded canvas app - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Guidelines and troubleshooting when working with embedded canvas apps - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn - scroll to "Known issues and limitations with embedded canvas apps", "The App Name property value is missing or is incorrectly defined"

Embed a canvas app on a model-driven form - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Reporting from Dataverse HLD options

Overview:  Recently I was looking at reporting from the Dataverse/CDS and I drew up these options that give the business various options but the overhead grew as the solution improves.  Client is on the MS stack so I have looked at the reporting options, There are a ton of variations but this is a good start for my options.

Reporting options from the Dataverse

Synapse, can be replace by any Data warehouse or Data lake solution and as Dataverse is not massive could also just use regular SQL Server for reporting.

Power BI can be replaced with other tools such as Tablau but for embedding and the MS stack, Power BI makes the most sense.

Continuous Validation with Azure

I listened to Jen Perrin from Microsoft today with Scott Hasselmann on testing for Power Apps from the Ignite 2022 conference.  Chaos Studio is a tool to faking issues such as network faults, and coming backup after say 10 minutes, and it helps determine the behavior that happens.  

I have been thinking and doing continuous monitoring for awhile in SaaS products, thus can be as simple as checking you API's and SPA's are working and checking every few hours and notifying key people as early as possible.  More advanced options are running postman and/or selenium tests that run thru various tests such as login in add and cleaning up some data.  Continuous Validation is fantastic as you can perform scenarios from a specific target.

The tooling and Playwright (which i played with a few years ago) on Azure looks amazing and well suited for the Power Platform.  This is a massive area to improve software, and reliability. 

Power Apps Portal and Power Automate licencing thoughts

Update: 13 August 2023 - Power Apps Licencing has change considerably since this post, for example here is updated information on Power Automate licencing.

My Technical Working Notes for Microsoft Technology: App Insights for Power Platform - Part 9 - Power Automate Licencing (pbeck.co.uk)  A major change in naming and cost has been release August 2023.

Overview:  The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is key to any project.  I recently was asked about a project that wanted to use Power Apps for external user access, the data is in the dataverse/CDS) and their are tons of workflows.  The cost of buying a per app licence for external users is a non-started (without volume discount $5 or £3.80 per user per month  and the only viable options left are:

Design by Cost:

Write the front end using free to distribute front end application (i.e. ReactJs, Angular, C#, Flutter, Blazor,...) and all the flows using the per-flow licencing model.  Per-flow licencing is crazy expensive as it is per flow and my users have lots of flows when the login once a year.  So per flow is also not an option with a custom front-end.  At Ignite 2022, Microsft announce a new Power Automate Embedded SDK with pay as you go pricing, this may be a good option, but's its untested.

The $5/month/app plan doesn't really work as users login over the last few months of the year and all users would need to be licenced all year around so $60 is way too high.  The Power Apps Pay-as-you-go Plan allows costs $10/£7.45 per user that logs in during a month.  So in my case an average user logs in 2 times in a year with the monthly consideration, so i'm still looking at $20 per year.

User/Per App/month: £3.80

User/Month (multiple apps): £15.10

Active User/app/month Pas-as-you-go  £7.45

Power Apps Portals/Power Pages/Dynamics Portals is my last hope.  The licencing is based on per login per 24 hrs.  So a user that logs in three times in a 24 hr period is considered 1 licence.  If the user logs in on 4 different dates at any point in the year, the client is changed for 4 logins.  Need to buy the licences in advance each month.  Sold in blocks, the smallest being 100 logins in a month.  At the lowest levels, cost is $2 per 24 hour login, but this reduces to a much lower cost relatively quickly.   With our expected numbers, we'd get onto Tier 3, and the cost per login is $0.70 per login.  If an average user logs in 4 times a year on separate dates, our cost is basically $2.80 per user per year.

Note there is also a Page Portals Capacity licence required.  We are expecting an average of 175k page views, which cost a further $200.

13 Oct 2022: Licencing for Power Pages change yesterday, 1) monthly anonymous active users 2) monthly authenticate active users.  Prepaid is cheaper than pay as you go, assuming you get you numbers right.  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/power_pages_general_availability#:~:text=Today we are announcing licensing and pricing details,to purchase through prepaid subscription and pay-as-you-go plans.

Summary: In this case, Power Pages is the best option.