Environment variables for Power Automate

Overview: Environment variables are great in Power Platform but when using managed solutions and ALM there are a couple of points that will make your deployment and support easier.

Background:  Power Platform has Environment Variables (env vars) that are sored in two entities within the Dataverse namely: definitions and values.

We deploy env vars thru solutions and can easily amend with adding an unmanaged layer.

Problem:  In you managed environment you end up with a tangle of env vars that make upgrading solutions fail.  in a nutshell, deleting unmanaged layers using the UI, only clears the value of the env var variable part. And not the definition part. The unmanaged later env var is made up of two parts and stored in the 2 environment entities in the Dataverse.  Both must be removed.

It makes sense as in UAT we have env vars initially setup in a solutions, then we have unmanaged layers added when we amended the values, then later we use a different solution to deploy the latest env var from a different solution.

What I have seen is env being deployed as part of a 1 solution for all artefacts approach, as the project grows more solutions are added for packaging and each of these solutions has a few more env variables.  Eventually as you use the env vars across multiple Canvas apps, Power automate instances, you build a dedicate solution for env vars.

Best Practice:  Well what I recommend at least

1. Put all variables into a single solution from the start, it means it is easy to deploy them quickly across all your DTAP environments e.g. uat, Prod.
2. In the unmanaged solution ensure the env variables do not have a "current value".  Set the "default value" in Dev.
3. Run settings files to fill the "Current value" in each DTAP env, have the current values for each env in a single settings file that will push the settings via the pipeline i.e. setting-uat.json, setting-prd.json

Tip: If you need to change any value merely rerun the solution containing the env vars, don't ever use an unmanaged layer to change env vars.

Tip: It's better to build your Power Platform environment in DevOps pipelines but if you use existing environments and merely push solutions on top (much more common), then clean up your existing vars as outlined below.

1. Delete both the definition and variable parts (manual) until the environment UAT, PRD has no custom env vars. - use the Dataverse meta api
2. Run the single env var solution.
3. Never add unmanaged layers to env variables, if you need it changes, change the solution package and deploy, should take minutes to do. 

Common Azure Services

Azure Key Vault - Secure config storage and retrieval

There are SDK's for working with Azure Key Vault such as the "Azure Key Vault secret client library for .NET (SDK v4)".  Extremely easy to get secrets from the secure vault using C#.

Azure Storage

Create a Service SAS for a Blob storage container

Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer is a great tool for reviewing your Azure Storage and in the case below I used it to add some Azure table storage for a demo customer list.

There is also a web edition of Storage explorer that is in preview as of 18 Nov 2020.

App Service - Host Web sites or WebAPI

Azure Artifacts - Code and share your packages via NuGet, and npm packages with Azure Artifacts for more reliable and scalable builds

Azure Data Factory (ADF) - Basically PaaS fully managed Azure ETL/SSIS.  Many connectors to ingest data.  Send to Azure Synapse Analytics.

Azure Big Data

Azure Synapse Analytics  - is a managed PaaS solution that brings together ADF, Data Lakes (both Storage and Analyse) and Azure Data Warehouse under single managed solution.  Easier than the individual pieces and scales as you need with almost unlimited capability.  Azure Purview - discover and analyses all your data, integrates with AIP.  Azure Synapses simplified analytics, sold as a PaaS (Serverless) or dedicated.  Easiest way to draw data out of Azure Synapse is Power BI.  Easy to bring data into Azure Synapse from CosmosDB and SQL databases (no affect on performance) can automatically push the data into Synapse, no need for ADF. And the data is in live time.

Azure Application Configuration - Feature Toggles/Feature flags are extremely useful in code.  This service is great for turning on experimental features, operation feature, environment/release features, and security features.  Feature Toggles (aka Feature Flags) (martinfowler.com)  Use for feature flags whereas KeyVault is for secrets.

Azure Resource Explorer - Documentation on Azure API's and ability to call the APIs.

Azure Policy - Azure Policy Templates can be custom created that apply rules to your subscription.  There are a lot out of pre-canned policies.  You can enforce naming conventions, tagging standards, enforce deployment of resources into specific regions, ....