When setting up a Power Platform environment, proper governance and administration are critical. In this video, Brian Knight from Pragmatic Works shares the top five steps every administrator should take to ensure a secure and well-managed environment. Whether you’ve inherited an existing setup or are starting fresh, these actions will help you maintain control and prevent costly mistakes.
Why Governance Matters
Power Platform enables organizations to build apps, automate workflows, and create solutions quickly. However, without governance, environments can become chaotic, leading to security risks, resource misuse, and poor lifecycle management. These five steps will help you establish a strong foundation.
1. Restrict Environment Creation
- By default, anyone in your organization can create environments, consuming resources and storage.
- Navigate to the Admin Center via make.powerapps.com or make.powerautomate.com.
- Under Settings, limit environment creation to specific roles: Global Admin, Power Platform Admin, or Dynamics Admin.
- Allow trial environments for everyone since they don’t consume storage and auto-clean after 30 days.
- Restrict add-on capacity usage to admins to prevent unauthorized consumption of purchased resources.
2. Rename the Default Environment
- The default environment often becomes a dumping ground for apps.
- Rename it to something meaningful like Personal Productivity to clarify its purpose.
- State that this environment is for small, personal apps—not enterprise-level solutions.
- Optionally, customize the URL and add emojis for easy identification.
3. Implement Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies
- DLP policies prevent users from connecting to risky or unauthorized services.
- In the Admin Center, go to Resources > Policies and create a new policy.
- Block all connectors except those needed for personal productivity (e.g., SharePoint, Office).
- Exclude Dev, QA, and Prod environments from restrictive policies to allow enterprise app development.
- Set default groups to block new connectors automatically.
4. Add Security Groups to Environments
- Without security groups, anyone can access environments, creating management challenges.
- Assign security groups during environment creation or edit existing environments to include them.
- This ensures only authorized users can access and build apps in specific environments.
5. Customize Themes for Branding
- Branding your environment improves user experience and consistency.
- In Advanced Settings > Customizations > Themes, clone an existing theme and adjust colors, navigation bars, and logos.
- Publish the theme and preview changes to ensure alignment with your organization’s branding.
Additional Best Practices
- Encourage developers to use Solutions for better portability and lifecycle management.
- Review Product and Features settings to enable useful options like co-authoring and mapping services.
Final Thoughts
These five steps—restricting environment creation, renaming defaults, implementing DLP, adding security groups, and customizing themes—form the foundation of a secure and well-governed Power Platform environment. For deeper insights and hands-on guidance, explore Pragmatic Works’ Power Platform Admin in a Day class.
Ready to take control of your Power Platform environment? Start with these steps today and ensure your organization is set up for success!
Don't forget to check out the Pragmatic Works' on-demand learning platform for more insightful content and training sessions on Power Platform and other Microsoft applications. Be sure to subscribe to the Pragmatic Works YouTube channel to stay up-to-date on the latest tips and tricks.