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Environment groups
Learn how to organize your Managed Environments into groups and govern them in bulk with rules.
pa-admin
conceptual
05/14/2024
mikferland-msft
miferlan
sericks
admin
admin-security
admin

Environment groups

The task of managing Power Platform on a large scale across numerous environments ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands poses a significant challenge for both startup and enterprise IT teams.

Similar to folders, environment groups are designed to help administrators organize their flat list of environments into structured groups based on different criteria, such as business unit, project, and location.

Admins can apply various rules to groups to govern many environments in bulk, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency. For example, admins might apply rules to security, licensing, compliance, or other facets. In this first release, six key capabilities of Managed Environments are available as rules:

Strategies for using environment groups

There are many ways to manage pockets of environments within your tenant using environment groups. For example, global organizations can create an environment group for all environments in each geographic region to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. You can also organize environment groups by department or other criteria.

:::image type="content" source="media/environment-groups-strategy.png" alt-text="Diagram depicting one strategy for using environment groups and aligning it to your existing orgnizational structure.":::

This article covers how to augment your default environment strategy by combining environment groups with default environment routing. Default environment routing gives makers their own personal developer environment. This environment is a secure space to build with Microsoft Dataverse and is similar to OneDrive for personal productivity.

Enabling default environment routing might give you more environments to manage, but automatically creating them into a single environment group ensures they're preconfigured with important baseline controls your organization requires.

Known limitations

  • When creating an environment in the Power Platform admin center, the Developer and Trial subscription-based environment types may become unavailable when first selecting the environment group and the region. This is a known issue that we plan to fix soon. In the meantime, the alternative is to create the environment via API or PowerShell.

Create an environment group

Power Platform tenant administrators can create as many environment groups as necessary to meet their organization's needs. You can create a single environment group named Personal Productivity, then create new developer environments into the group.

  1. Sign in to Power Platform Admin center.
  2. Select Environment groups in the navigation pane.
  3. On the Environment groups page, select New group.
  4. In the Create group pane that appears:
    1. Add a name for your group in the Name field such as Personal Productivity.
    2. Add a brief description of the group in the Description field.
    3. Select Create.

Note

If you prefer to operate outside of the Power Platform admin center, the Power Platform for Admins V2 (Preview) connector offers an alternative solution. It allows the creation and deletion of environment groups and the ability to add or remove environments from these environment groups, facilitating opportunities for automation.

Configure the rules for your environment group

After you create the environment group, Power Platform tenant administrators can immediately add environments or configure the group's rules. Currently, there are six available rules, which are the same capabilities offered when upgrading an individual environment to a Managed Environment.

The sharing limits rule

You can also configure the sharing limits rule. Since the environment group is intended for personal productivity, makers are restricted from sharing their canvas apps with other users. This helps ensure that each environment in the group remains a private space for individual work.

  1. In the Personal Productivity group, select the Rules tab.
  2. Select the Sharing Limits rule to open its configuration panel.
  3. Select Exclude sharing with security group.
  4. Select Limit total individuals who can share to and enter the number 1 in the box.
  5. Select Save.
  6. Repeat these steps until all desired rules are configured.
  7. Select Publish rules.

Note

All rules are equally applied to all environments in the group.

Route environments to your environment group

With your environment group setup, it can now serve as the home for all new personal developer environments that are created by default environment routing. This default ensures that all newly created developer environments are automatically preconfigured to meet baseline requirements from the start.

Select an environment group

  1. Return to the Environment groups page.
  2. Select the Environment Routing button in the command bar.
  3. Under the Environment group section, choose the group you want your new Developer environments to be created in.
  4. Select Save.

Note

For developer environments in the Personal Productivity group, the sharing limit can't be changed in individual environment settings. The same default restriction applies to other rules. To make changes, adjust the rule and the change applies to all environments in the group.

Add environments to your environment group

You can manually add environments to the Personal Productivity group if you have existing Developer environments that belong there.

  1. Select the Personal Productivity group.
  2. Select the Add environments button in the command bar.
  3. Select a single environment from the list of Managed Environments.
  4. Select Add.

Note

  • An environment can only belong to one environment group.
  • Only Managed Environments can be created into an environment group.
  • Any environment type, for example production, developer, or sandbox, can be created into an environment group.

Manually create environments in the group

You can also manually create environments in the Personal Productivity group.

  1. Go to the Environments page.
  2. Select New in the command bar.
  3. Select a group for your created environment.
  4. Enter the other details.
  5. Select Save.

Remove an environment from your environment group

You can remove an environment from a group if it needs unique governance or if you created it by accident.

  1. Select the Personal Productivity group.
  2. Select the environment you wish to remove.
  3. Select Remove from group in the command bar.

Note

When you remove an environment from the group, it retains its configuration. For example, sharing canvas apps is still limited to one user. However, a removed environment is now unlocked and can be managed individually. The environment's Edit Managed Environments panel can be used.

Delete an environment group

As you experiment with environment groups, you might have leftover groups that you want to delete to avoid clutter.

  1. Go to the Environment groups page.
  2. Select the environment group that you wish to delete.
  3. Select Delete group in the command bar.

Important

When you delete a group, first remove all of its environments and ensure no developer environments are routed to it. If a group still has environments, you see a warning that prevents you from deleting the group.

See also

Managed Environments overview
Usage insights
Limit sharing
Data policies
Licensing
View license consumption (preview)
Tenant settings

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