Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools for Azure DevOps Part 1

 

I am going to write two articles

1^st one will be how to use DevOps Pipeline to Export your solution and add it to Code Repository

2^nd one will be how to Create a Release to Import your solution to various environments

As a per-requisite for this article its a good idea to familiarize yourself the various parts of DevOps, you will have a more successful implementation if you have a good knowledge of what DevOps:

1. Repos

2. Pipeline

   1. Pipeline

   2. Environments

   3. Releases

   4. Library

   5. Task groups

   6. Deployment groups

   7. </> XAML are.

For this article we are going to focus more on how to Create a Pipeline, being familiar with PowerShell Script will be helpful as well.

The following documentation from Microsoft is a good reference

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/alm/devops-build-tools

To start with Create a Folder under your Repository, in my case I called the folder “D365_Solutions”

New Pipeline

Select “Use the classic editor”

Click “Continue”

Click “Enpty Job”

We just Created a Pipeline now what is left is

1. PowerShell Script to read solution Name

2. Use Power Platform Tool to:

   1. Publish Customization

   2. Increase Version

   3. Export Solutions

   4. Run Solution Checker

   5. Unpack the Solutions

3. Use Command Line to Check in our Solution to the code Repository

I used a global variable under Library to store the solution Name, you can decide to store it as local variable.

PowerShell 

Code:

$date=$(Get-Date -Format 'yyyyMMdd')

Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=CurrentDate]$date"

Write-Host "BuildConfiguration is $(ManagedSolName)"

Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=SolutionName]$(ManagedSolName)"

As you can see you do not need that much knowledge of PowerShell the code is pretty much straight forward and simple

Power Platform Publish Customization

Here you have to make sure to Create your enviroments, you have two ways to do it

1. Username/password (no MFA support)

2. Service Principal/client secret (supports MFA)

I have chosen the second one “Service Pricipal/client secrete” I am sure you know how create Application user for your authentication

Power Platform Set Solution Version

Power Platform Export Solution

One note I am exporting the solution as Managed, you have an option to work on as unmanaged too which is not ideal to deploy to upper environments like TEST, UT, PROD

Power Platform Checker

Power Platform Unpack Solution

Command Line Check in Solution to Repository