Low-code platforms have transformed the way businesses handle application development, providing considerable advantages by allowing regular users to design applications and streamline their daily processes. This democratization of technology has permitted individuals without conventional coding expertise to play a role in driving innovation and improving efficiency within their organizations. Nevertheless, this shift has also brought about challenges for large corporations, which now struggle to manage the increasing volume of applications and automations produced by non-technical developers.

To address this issue, Managed Environments were specifically developed.

Here are some intriguing figures:  

  • It's projected that by 2025, 70% of new enterprise applications will be developed using low-code platforms.
  • More than 500,000 organizations, including almost all of the Fortune 500, utilize Dynamics 365 and Power Platform each month.  
  • More than 7.4 million developers per month use Power Platform.

This rapid expansion brings significant issues related to security, oversight, and governance. Managed Environment can address these challenges.
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What is Managed Environments?

It is a suite of premium capabilities that allows admins to manage Power Platform at scale with more control, less effort, and more insights.  

Microsoft Power Platform Applications

Three Key Aspects of Managed Environments

  • Enhanced visibility: Administrators can track activities through weekly reports that outline who is developing which solutions and using which connectors.
  • Increased control: Improved governance over application sharing ensures compliance with security protocols. Administrators can also create a personalized onboarding process for developers beginning their projects.
  • Reduced effort: Setting up a managed environment and leveraging its advantages is straightforward.

Managed vs Unmanaged Environments in Power Platform

Top 10 Features of Managed Environments

These top ten features are just the tip of the iceberg—there are many more to explore. Check out the complete list here.  

  1. Environment groups: Similar to folders, these are designed to help administrators organize the environments into structured groups based on different criteria. Environment groups allow admins to apply group-specific rules, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency. Limit sharing
  1. Limit sharing: Admins can limit how broadly users can share canvas apps.  
  • Exclude sharing with security groups: Select which groups or people users can or cannot share with.
  • Limit the total number of individuals with access: With the option “Exclude sharing with security groups,” control the maximum number of users with whom a canvas app can be shared.  
  1. Weekly usage insights: Activate to receive a weekly email with the usage details of the applications, flows, and users.  
  1. Pipelines in Power Platform: Pipelines can deploy solutions and configurations for the target environment, such as connections, connection references, and environment variables. Any Power Platform customization contained in a solution can be deployed using pipelines, and the simple deployment process also stores all the necessary logs.
  1. Welcome content for makers: Admins can provide customized welcome content to help their makers get started with Power Apps. Adding personalized help content replaces the default Power Apps first-time help experience for makers.  
  1. Solution checker: Administrators can force a check on solutions before any export or import. The three settings are:

    None: Turns off the automatic solution validations during solution import.  

    Warn: All custom solutions are automatically verified during solution import. When a solution with highly critical issues is being imported, an action warning appears, but the import itself continues, and if everything else with the import is fine, the solution is imported into the environment.  

    Block: All custom solutions are automatically verified during solution import. When a solution has highly critical issues, the import process is canceled, showing a message stating that the imported solution had validation issues.
  1. IP Firewall: The IP firewall helps protect organizational data by limiting user access to Microsoft Dataverse to certain authorized IP locations. The firewall analyzes the IP address of each request in real-time. For example, if the IP firewall is turned on in the production Dataverse environment and allowed IP addresses are in ranges associated with the office locations, external IP locations like a coffee shop will not be allowed. If a user tries to access organizational resources from such a location, Dataverse denies access in real time.  
  1. Extended backup: System backups are automatically created for environments with a database. For production environments with Dynamics 365 applications, system backups are kept for up to 28 days. By default, backups of production environments without Dynamics 365 applications and backups of other nonproduction environments are kept for seven days. With Managed Environments without Dynamics 365 applications, use PowerShell to extend the retention period from seven days to a maximum of 28 days.  
  1. DLP for desktop flow: In a managed environment, enabling data loss prevention (DLP) on Power Automate for desktop gives the ability to create and enforce policies that define which connectors users can access and share. This can prevent important business data from being accidentally published to connectors like social media sites, for example.
  1. Default environment routing: This feature allows Power Platform admins to automatically direct new or existing makers into their personal developer environments at make.powerapps.com. Environment routing offers makers an individual, safe space to build with Microsoft Dataverse without the fear of others accessing their apps or data.  

What Is the Cost or Licensing for Managed Environments?

There is no specific license fee for activation, but due to the high processing costs associated with the available features for Microsoft, the classification of premium and standard connectors will be revised after activation.

Before Managed Environments:  

Licenses Before Managed Environments

After Managed Environments

Licenses After Managed Environments


Consequently, all users within the managed environment will require a premium license, regardless of whether the connectors are standard. For more details, see here.

Improving Control and Security

If your organization is struggling with unmanaged environments, insufficient oversight, or worries about the potential exposure of sensitive data due to errors by citizen developers, Managed Environments present a valuable solution. These environments offer improved control and visibility over the activities of citizen developers.

Furthermore, Managed Environments boost security, deliver more comprehensive insights, and extend the availability of environment backups for up to 28 days.

If you have any inquiries or want to learn more about how we can assist you in enhancing governance within your company, please feel free to reach to us.

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This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

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