Power Platform Build

Tools Hands-on Lab

Module 2
Automating Solution Deployment
Using Azure DevOps

Last Updated: July 10, 2019

Authors: Per Mikkelsen, Shan McArthur, Evan Chaki

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Lab Scenario
In this hands-on lab, you will create an Azure DevOps project, setup permissions and create the required
pipelines to automatically export your app (as an unmanaged solution) from a development
environment, generate a build artifact (managed solution) and finally deploy the app into production.
The lab will also introduce you to Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools.

Create an Azure DevOps Project

We are going to use Azure DevOps for both source code storage and build and deployment automation.
You can use any automated source control and build automation tools using the same principles. Your
configuration data should be exported from a development environment, processed by Package
Deployer, and checked into source control.

1. Log into dev.azure.com with your credentials and click on your organization in the left panel.
Follow the instructions to create a project. Click Create Project.

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2. When the project is completed, you will need to create a Repo to hold the source code. Click on
the Repos link in the left navigation.

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3. Initialize the repo with the default README by clicking the Initialize button.

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Install and Enable the Azure DevOps Extensions for Power Platform
4. On the organization page, click the Organization Settings link in the bottom left of the navigation
panel.

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5. On the organization settings page, click the Extensions link in the left navigation panel.

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6. Click ‘Browse marketplace’.

7. This will redirect you to the Azure DevOps marketplace. Search for Power Platform and select
the Power Platform Build Tools. Note that there are great community options too.

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8. Click ‘Get it free’.

9. Click ‘Install’.

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 10. Click ‘Proceed to organization’.

Configure Azure DevOps Permissions for Build Service Account

The build pipelines that we set up later will be exporting files from an org and checking them into your
source code repo. This is not a default permission of Azure DevOps, so we need to configure the
appropriate permissions for the pipeline to function properly.

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11. Click the Project Settings icon on the lower left of the screen and click the Repositories link in the fly
out menu. Type in Project Collection Build Service in the search box and select it (select the project
collection with the username appended).

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12. The setting for the user is displayed. Select Allow for ‘Contribute’ and ensure that the green
checkbox is displayed.

Build Pipeline 1: Create Export from Dev

The first pipeline you will create will export your solution from your development environment as an
unmanaged solution, unpack it and check it into source control (your repo).

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13. Click the New Pipeline button.

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14. Click Use the classic editor link to create a pipeline.

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15. Leave default values as is and click ‘Continue’.

16. Select ‘Empty Job’ to create an empty job.

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17. Select ‘Agent job 1’ and enable the Allow scripts to access the OAuth token option.

18. Name the pipeline ‘Create Export from Dev’ and click Save.

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19. Changes to your pipeline are also checked into source control, so select the folder, type a
comment, and click Save.

20. You are now ready to start using the Power Platform Build Tools tasks for Azure DevOps in your
pipeline. Select ‘Add a task to Agent job 1’.

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21. The very first task you will is a task that install the required tools on the agent. Search for ‘Power
Platform Tool’.

22. Select ‘Add’ under the Power Platform Tool Installer task.

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 23. This will add the Tool Installer task to the Pipeline. No additional configuration is required for
this task.

Export Solution as Unmanaged

Your unmanaged solution is your source code for your configuration. You should export your solution as
unmanaged to check it into source control.

24. The next task you will add is a task that exports the unmanaged solution from development
environment. Search for ‘Power Platform Export Solution’.

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25. Select the task and Click ‘Add’.

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26. After adding the Power Platform Export Solution task, you will notice that additional
configuration is required. Click on the Power Platform Export Solution (in the pipeline view).

27. This will open the task configuration page:

• Display name is inherited from Build task itself.

• Authentication type: Two types of authentications are available:
o Username/password: simple to setup but does not support multi factor
authentication (MFA). This is what we will use for this lab.
o Service Principal/client secret: recommended and supports MFA. This is harder to
setup as it requires creation of the Service principal and client secret in the Azure
Portal as well as creation of the application user in the Power Platform
environment. Not used in this lab but anyone familiar with setting this up can use
this option instead throughout the rest of the lab.
• Service Connection: This is the connection to the environment that you want to export the
solution from. We will define this in the next step.
• Solution Name: This is the name of the solution you want to export.
• Solution Output File: This specifies the path and filename of the generated solution zip.
• Export as Managed solution: By default, solutions are exported as unmanaged (for
development purposes.) Setting this flag exports the solution as Managed (used for
deployment to any downstream environment such as Test, Pre-Prod and Production).

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28. Select Username/password under ‘Authentication type’. Click on ‘Manage’ next to Service
connection.

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29. This will bring up the connection configuration required to export the solution from the
development environment (user-xx-dev). Click ‘New service connection’.

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30. This will bring up the New service connection screen. Select ‘Generic’ from the list of
connections and click ‘Next’.

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31. Fill out the required details:
• Server URL: https://<environment-url>.crm.dynamics.com. This should be the URL to your
development environment.
• Username: username of a user with admin access to the environment.
• Password: Associated password for the user.
• Service Connection name: This name will be used to identify which environment to connect
to in the Build tasks.
• Description: Give the connection a description that helps you identify the environment the
service connection connects to.

A sample connection is shown below.

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32. Click ‘Save’. You will be in the pipeline service connections area in your project.
33. Close the browser tab and go back to the previous tab where you were building the pipeline.
Select the Service connection that created in the previous step.
Note: You might have to click the refresh button before the newly created Service connection is
available to select .

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34. Fill out the remaining details:
• Solution Name: $(SolutionName)
Note: This will use the input parameter that you specify when running (queuing) the build
pipeline.
• Solution Output File: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\$(SolutionName).zip
Note: This will add the file to your repo and retain the existing solution name.

35. Save the Build Pipeline by clicking Save & Queue, then save from the top command bar and
clicking Save on the dialog.

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Unpack Solution
The solution file that is exported from the server is a zip file with consolidated configuration files. These
initial files are not suitable for source code management as they are not structured to make it feasible
for source code management systems to properly do differencing on the files and capture the changes
you want to commit to source control. You need to ‘unpack’ the solution files to make them suitable for
source control storage and processing.

36. Click ‘Add a task’, then search for ‘Power Platform Unpack’.

37. Add the Power Platform Unpack Solution task to the pipeline.

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38. Open the task to configure settings for the task with the following details:
• Solution Input File: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\$(SolutionName).zip
• Target Folder to unpack solution: $(Build.SourcesDirectory)\$(SolutionName)
• Type of solution: Unmanaged

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39. Save the updated pipeline.

40. You can leave the comment blank.

Commit Solution Files to Source Control

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Next, we are going to add some scripts as a next pipeline step to commit the solution to the repo. The
reason we allowed for scripts to access the OAuth token when we started building the pipeline was to
allow for this next step.

41. Add a Command Line task to your pipeline by clicking the + button, searching for ‘command’, and
adding it.

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42. Select the task, give the task a display name and copy the following script into the script textbox:

echo commit all changes

git config user.email "[email protected]"

git config user.name "Automatic Build"

git checkout master

git add --all

git commit -m "solution init"

echo push code to new repo

git -c http.extraheader="AUTHORIZATION: bearer $(System.AccessToken)" push origin master

43. Screenshot provided below:

44. Save the task (Save & queue > Save).

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Test your Pipeline
45. Select ‘Queue’ to execute your pipeline.

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46. Leave the defaults and click ‘Run’.

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47. You can see your build has been queued. You can navigate to it directly in the notification on this
screen or using the Builds area in the left navigation.

48. The desired outcome would be a series of green checkboxes, but if you have some issues with your
pipeline, you should see the errors in the log. You can click on those for more details if you like. In
our case, we have not defined our solution name variable yet, so the export step will fail. This was
done intentionally to show you what a failure looks like and how to look at the details.

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49. Go back to your pipeline by selecting the pipeline name from the top of screen. You also get there
from clicking Pipelines in the left navigation and the select the pipeline you want to edit.

50. Click the ‘Edit’ button.

51. On the pipeline screen, switch to the Variables tab and click ‘Add ‘to add a new variable.

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52. Use ‘SolutionName’ for the name of the variable and add your unique solution name as a value. It
should be ALMLab if you are using the solution from Module 1.

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53. Click Save and Queue and observe the results. Fix any issues until you get a successful build.

Note: You can get more details about any issues found by setting the variable ‘debug’ to ‘true’.

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54. Let’s go look at what it added to your source control now. Click Repos and Files and notice that it
added a new folder that contains your solution files.

Pipeline 2: Build your Managed Solution

Your unmanaged solution is checked into source control, but you need to have a managed solution to
deploy to other environments such as test and production. To obtain your managed solution, you
should use a Just-In-Time (JIT) build environment where you would import your unmanaged solution
files then export them as managed. These managed solution files will not be checked into source
control but will be stored as a build artifact in your pipeline. This will make them available to be
deployed in your release pipeline.

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55. Navigate to your pipelines and add a new build pipeline.

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56. Click “Use the classic editor” link to build the pipeline without YAML. On the next screen use the
defaults and click ‘Continue’. Finally, click on the ‘Empty job’ link on the template selection page
shown below.

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57. Name the pipeline ‘Build Managed Solution’ and Save it. This will give you an empty pipeline.

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58. A small note on navigation. If you have problems seeing your newly created pipeline, you can click
the little folder icon on the pipeline main page as the default view is only the recently used
pipelines. If you have not used your pipeline yet and it does not show up in the list, change the view
to all pipelines and you should be able to see and interact with it.

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59. In your empty pipeline, add the Power Platform Tool Installer task.

60. Add the Power Platform Pack Solution task.

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 61. Configure the pack solution task with the following parameters:
• Source Folder of Solution to Pack: $(Build.SourcesDirectory)\$(SolutionName)
• Solution Output File: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\$(SolutionName).zip

62. On the pipeline screen, switch to the variables tab in the pipeline and add the SolutionName variable
with your unique solution name. This should be ALMLab if you are using the solution from Module 1.
Click Save (through the Save & Queue dropdown).

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63. The next task will be to import the solution into your build server, so we need to add a
connection to that environment before we add and configure the task to do the import. Click
the ‘Project settings’ link in the lower left of the screen and navigate to ‘Service connections’,
then click ‘New service connection’.

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64. Select ‘Generic’ on the New service connection page and click ‘Next’.

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65. Fill out the required details:
• Server URL: https://<environment-url>.crm.dynamics.com. This should be the URL to your
build environment
• Username: Username of a user with administrator access to the environment
• Password: Associated password for the user
• Service Connection name: This name will be used to identify which environment to connect
to in the Build tasks
• Description: Give the connection a description that helps you identify the environment the
service connection connects to

The sample connection is shown below.

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 Note: If you forgot to record it the server URL for your build environment, simply visit
https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com click the environment. This will open another
displaying the environment URL. Make sure it is your build environment.

66. Click ‘Save’. You will be in the pipeline service connections area in your project.

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67. Navigate back to your Build Managed Solution pipeline (If you don’t see the pipeline go to step
57 on how to view all pipelines). Click Edit, and then add the ‘Power Platform Import Solution’
task to take the solution file and import it into your build environment.

68. Select the connection you just added to your build server and provide the following for the
solution input file: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\$(SolutionName).zip.

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69. Add a task to export the solution file as a managed file.

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70. Select your build environment, check the ’Export as managed solution’ checkbox and enter the
following details:
Solution Name: $(SolutionName)
Solution Output File: $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)\$(SolutionName)_managed.zip

71. The files at this stage will be in the build agent and we need to publish it as a build artifact. Add
a new pipeline step Publish Pipeline Artifact.

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72. Leave the predefined values as-is and click Save & Queue:

73. Monitor it until it is successful.

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Release Pipeline: Release to Production
74. The next task will be to import the solution into your production server, so we need to add a
connection to that environment before we add and configure the task to do the import. Click
the ‘Project settings’ link in the lower left of the screen and navigate to ‘Service connections’,
then click ‘New service connection’.

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75. Select ‘Generic’ on the New service connection page and click ‘Next’.

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76. Fill out the required details:
• Server URL: https://<environment-url>.crm.dynamics.com. This should be the URL for your
production environment.
• Username: Username of a user with administrator access to the environment
• Password: Associated password for the user
• Service Connection name: This name will be used to identify which environment to connect
to in the Build tasks
• Description: Give the connection a description that helps you identify the environment the
service connection connects to

The sample connection is shown below.

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77. Click ‘Save’. You will be in the pipeline service connections area in your project.

78. To deploy a build, you will configure a release pipeline. Navigate to the release pipelines. You
likely won’t have one yet, so click on the New pipeline button.

79. Click on Empty job when selecting a template.

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80. Give it a stage name and then close the stage dialogue.

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81. Next, we need to add the artifact that will be used in the deployment. Click the Add button in
the Artifacts list. In the Add an artifact screen, select your ‘Build Managed Solution’ from the
source build pipeline. To make it easier to not have to deal with encoding spaces in filenames,
change your source alias to something simple, like Build. Leave the rest as default. Click Add
when completed.

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82. Switch to the Tasks view and click the plus button to add a new task.

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83. In the tasks view, click the plus button to add a new task.

84. Add the Power Platform Tool Installer tasks.

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85. Add Power Platform Import Solution task to the pipeline.

86. Configure the solution import to use the production environment connection and the following
for solution input file:
$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/Build/drop/$(SolutionName)_managed.zip
Click ‘Save’.

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87. Switch to the Variables tab and add a variable named SolutionName and the unique name of the
solution to import. If you are using the solution created in lab 1, the solution name should be
‘ALMLab’. Click ‘Save’ and then ‘OK’ in the next dialog.

88. Click the “Create release” button. This functions like Queuing a build pipeline, only for release
pipelines.

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89. Click ‘Create’ on the popup panel.

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 90. Monitor your release until it is succeeded, or troubleshoot if it is not successful.

91. For final confirmation, log into your production system and see your application!

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