Step By Step Procedure To Create An Environment For Power Automate

Environments

Environment / Power Platform environment is a dedicated space that allows organizations to store, manage, and share their business data, apps, chatbots, and flows. It serves as a container to separate apps with different roles, security requirements, or target audiences.

For example, at the enterprise-level application development, following a robust application lifecycle management process is essential. This involves starting the development in the development environment, moving everything to the staging environment for testing and quality assurance, and finally moving everything to the production environment.

Overall, using Power Platform environments provides organizations with a flexible and customizable approach to building and managing their apps. It allows them to tailor their approach to their needs and requirements, providing greater control and flexibility over their apps and data.

Advantages of using environments

There are several advantages of using environments in Power Automate, including,

1. Better organization and management: Power Automate environments allow organizations to separate and manage their apps, flows, and data more efficiently. This can help to improve productivity and reduce errors or confusion.
2. Improved security: By separating apps and data into different environments, organizations can implement more granular security controls and reduce the risk of data breaches or other security incidents.
3. Simplified testing and deployment: Power Automate environments make it easier to test and deploy apps and flows across different environments, such as development, staging, and production. This can help to streamline the development process and reduce errors or downtime.
4. Customization and flexibility: Environments in Power Automate can be customized and tailored to meet an organization's specific needs, such as by creating environments for particular teams or departments. This can help to improve collaboration and streamline workflows.
5. Integration with other Power Platform tools: Power Automate environments are closely integrated with other Power Platform tools, such as Power Apps and Power BI. This allows organizations to build more complex and sophisticated solutions that leverage the capabilities of multiple tools within the platform.

Steps to create a new environment in power automate

1. If you are already logged in with admin access in power automate platform, click on the Settings button as shown in the image below and Select "Admin Center". Or you can Sign in to the Power Platform admin center as an admin.

2. Suppose you're logged in to Power Automate with admin access. In that case, you can access the Power Platform admin center by clicking the Settings button (shown in the image below) and selecting "Admin Center". Alternatively, as an admin, you can sign in directly to the Power Platform admin center at https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com.
   
   
   Figure 1: Option to go to Admin Center

3. The Admin center will be open to you, as shown in figure2. A few feature options are in the left navigation bar, from which select "Environments".
   
   
   Figure 2: Selecting Environment in Admin Central

4. After selecting the "Environments" option, the environments window will be open, where all the environments of this tenant will be shown with other important information.
    
5. We can edit or delete any existing environment from here.

6. To create a new environment, click the "New" button from the left upper corner, as shown in figure 3. 
   
   
   Figure 3

7. A modal for the new environment will be open, as shown in figure 4. Here we can create a new environment by providing the necessary information.

8. Provide the name of the environment in position 1 and can select the required region from the given list in position 2. This region should be selected based on the data access localization, making it quicker for the user to access data.
   
   
   Figure 4: Steps to create Environment

9. Select a type of environment as per your requirement from position 3. Basically, there are four types of environment that you can create and a default environment that would be given to all the users who have access to power automate. Here are the types of environments given below,

   1. Default Environment
   2. Develop Environment
   3. Production Environment
   4. Sandbox Environment
   5. Trial Environment
       
10. In position 4, the field purpose is not mandatory but will help describe the environment's purpose.

11. If you want to create a database for your environment, you have to toggle the button to "Yes" in position 5. The database can be created later if we have an environment without a database. An environment with a database is only necessary if you intend to use the Dataverse database, allowing you to create a canvas and model-driven apps. Additionally, the Dataverse provides the foundation for portal apps and enables you to add Dynamic 365 apps. It is important to note that if you do not select the "Enable Dynamics 365 apps" option during the database provisioning process, you will not be able to make this change later. Conversely, you cannot build model-driven or portal apps in an environment without a database. However, adding a database instance to an environment without a database is possible.
    
    
    Figure 5: Adding Database for Environment

12. After selecting Yes, for database creation, the window "Add Database" as shown in figure 5, will be opened.

    1.  In this window, you need to select the default language for the user interface for this environment from position 1.
    2. In position 2, you can provide a unique domain name for all the applications' URL of this new environment.
    3. Select a preferable currency in position 3, which will be used to show in the cost report.
    4. In position 4, there is the option to select Yes/No to enable the feature of Dynamics 365 apps. If you select position 4 on, then the option at position 5 won't be available to select.
    5. In position 6, select the security group that can access the environment.
        
13. In position 6, you can select "Yes" or "No" for Pay as you go with Azure.
14. After inputting all the required values, click the save button in position 7. Your environment will be prepared in a few seconds by clicking the Save button.

Conclusion

There are different environment types that you can create from the admin center, and the default environment, or what we can call a personal environment, will be specified for every user. By default, the environment creation is for everyone unless the admin restricts the environment creation to only specific admins. To create environments with various features, users must possess a valid license. However, this requirement is waived for Global and Power Platform admins, except for trial (standard) environments.