- Master branch

Adopt CI/CD for Power Platform Model Driven Apps by leveraging Azure DevOps

Hands-on lab step-by-step

July 2019

Contents

• Disclaimer
• Overview
• Solution architecture
• Requirements
• Exercises
  • Exercise 1 - Prepare VM
  • Exercise 2 - Create DevOps project
  • Exercise 3 - Prepare Initial Code
  • Exercise 4 - Prepare solution package
  • Exercise 5 - Import solution package to Power Platform instance
  • Exercise 6 - Make a change to entity via online UI
  • Exercise 7 - Create Azure DevOps Pipeline
  • Exercise 8 - Fixing Unit Test
  • Exercise 9 - Pull request to master and deployment
• Summary

Disclaimer

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Overview

This lab explains ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) and CI/CD for Power Platform.

Abstract

Learn how to leverage Azure DevOps Pipelines in continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) for Power Platform Apps - one of the most requested topics from our enterprise clients. This lab covers configuration migration, automatic testing, automatic build and automatic deployment.

Learning Objective

Learn how to effectively integrate development streams, test and deploy solutions across Power Platform instances by utilizing Azure DevOps.

Solution architecture

Common development practice is to have separate environments for Production, Staging/UAT, QA and Development. When team of developers is working on some feature (Feature 1) then feature specific instance is also needed. Developer specific instances are required too.

The challenge is how to effectively integrate all development streams and then deliver results to next instances in the chain.

Let's review how development process looks like for the team of two developers working on the same feature.

1 – Export from Dev 1 instance

2 – Back and forth development

3 – Push to Feature 1 branch

4 – Test/Package/Deploy

5 – Fetch new changes

6 – Back and forth development

7 – Push to Feature 1 branch

8 – Test/Package/Deploy

9 – Fetch new changes

...

55 – Merge to Development

56 – Test/Package/Deploy

In this Lab we implement 1-4 steps.

Requirements

Lab environment:

• Azure Subscription with DevOps license
• VM with VS19 + Git + PowerShell
• 2 PowerPlatform instances
  • Dev for Developer's needs
  • Feature feature instance that integrates work from all in team.

Exercises

Exercise 1 - Prepare VM

• Use Remote Desktop Connection app on your PC to log to lab VM, use credentials from Lab details.
• Open Visual Studio 19 from the desktop. As you load Visual Studio for the first time it asks for account details. Please use Azure credentials from Lab details.

Exercise 2 - Create DevOps project

In this exercise we prepare Azure DevOps project.

• In browser of your choice navigate to https://dev.azure.com and log in by using your Azure credentials.

• Click on Sign in to Azure DevOps.

  

• Click Continue on "We need a few more details" and then click on Get started with Azure DevOps pages.

• Pick a name for your private DevOps project.

  

• In the rop right corner click on circle icon avatar and then click Preview features. Switch Multi-stage pipelines to on.

• In the navigation on the left, click on Repos icon and then pick Files.

  

• Navigate to your default <project name> repository link.

  Copy the code highlighted in the red box below. You will need it in the next exercise.

  

Exercise 3 - Prepare Initial Code

In this exercise we clone code from lab repository and then push it to our Azure DevOps repository.

• In Windows Search type Power Shell to find app, right click on it and select Run as administrator

  

• In the PowerShell window we will execute commands to clone code from Lab repository to your Azure DevOps repository. Execute commands and keep PowerShell window open for later exercises.

  • cd c:\

  • git clone https://[email protected]/bocherch/PowerPlatformCICDLab/_git/PowerPlatformCICDLab

  • cd .\PowerPlatformCICDLab\

  • git remote rm origin

  • In this command replace URL_TO_YOUR_REPO with the url to your repository (red rectangle in the image above)

    git remote add origin URL_TO_YOUR_REPO

  • git push -u origin --all

    Here you will be asked for credentials. Use Azure credentials from Lab details.

Exercise 4 - Prepare solution package

In this exercise we build solution from source code, install required PowerShell module and then create solution package.

• In Visual Studio Open solution from C:\PowerPlatformCICDLab folder and build it (Ctrl + Shift + B).

  In Visual Studio you can see that we have:

  • Plugins project - C# project for custom plugins
  • PluginsTest project - C# test project with unit tests for Plugins project
  • SolutionPackage project - Folder structure with XML files that represents solution.
  • WebResources project - Project for static web resources.

• In PowerShell window execute these commands:

  • Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted

    Select Option A

  • Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Xrm.Data.Powershell

    Select Option A

  • To package project into importable package run .\PowerShell\Pack.ps1. Ignore two warnings after execution.

• Your screen should look like this.

  

• After the last command you have solution.zip in C:\PowerPlatformCICDLab folder. This is the package that was built from the source code.

Exercise 5 - Import solution package to Power Platform instance

In this exercise we connect to PowerPlatform Development instance and then import and publish the solution package.

• Run .\PowerShell\Connect.ps1 in order to connect to online instance. Fill form the same way, just provide your Azure username and password and then click Login.

  

  In the list of available instances pick your Development instance.

  

• Run .\PowerShell\Local-2-Online.ps1. This PowerShell script will upload solution.zip to selected instance and then publish it. This script may run 2-4 minutes.

• Login to your PowerPlatform Development instance and validate that you have Sample App. This is the application you've just deployed.

  

Exercise 6 - Make a change to entity via online UI

In this exercise we change the solution via PowerPlatform UI, then we load changes to the local repository.

• Login to https://make.powerapps.com/ to modify solution. Make sure you pick the Development environment in the top right corner.

• Navigate to Solutions and drill into Sample Solution. This is the solution we deployed from the source code.

  

• Do some changes withing this solution. For example you can modify Sample entity. The fast change would be to change the length of the Value field. Save Entity and then Publish all customizations for the solution.

  

• In PowerShell window execute git checkout -b feature/newfeature

• Run .\PowerShell\Online-2-Local.ps1 this loads solution file (zip) from online to your local folder. If it fails with message A connection to CRM is required then run .\PowerShell\Connect.ps1 again and pick your Dev instance.

• Run .\PowerShell\Extract.ps1 this extracts solution into folder structure.

• If you run git status you will see what was changed. Change that you did online was loaded to your PC.

• Commit changes to remote repository:

  • git config --global user.email "[email protected]" this and the second commands are required when you start using Git
  • git config --global user.name "Your Name"
  • git add . - stage changes
  • git commit -m 'Exercise 6 change' - commit changes to local repository
  • git push origin feature/newfeature - push changes to remote repository

At this point we demonstrated steps 1 and 2 from this diagram.

Exercise 7 - Create Azure DevOps Pipeline

In this exercise we create Azure DevOps Pipeline that listens to commits in branches. After commit, pipeline uses source code to build, run tests and package solution. If commit is to master branch then pipeline will also deploy package to Feature PowerPlatform instance. In order for pipeline to "know" where to deploy we use pipeline variables.

• In Azure DevOps navigate to Pipelines Pipelines (in older environments you will see Pipelines Builds in navigation)

  

• Latest Azure DevOps creates pipeline automatically as it sees azure-pipelines.yml is the repository. Generated name for the pipeline is <your project name> CI.

  If pipeline was not create then follow these steps:

  • On the new screen click New pipeline
  • In Where is your code? page select Azure Repos Git and then on Select a repository select the name of your project.
  • azure-pipelines.yml is pulled from repository for your review. Click Run to finish creating pipeline. Pipeline starts immediately on Master branch. Pipeline will fail on the first stage because of failing unit test. We will fix unit tests in the next exercise.

• To finish setting up the pipeline we need to set pipeline variables.

  Navigate to the Pipelines Pipelines, click on your pipeline and then click Edit. You will see yaml source. On top right corner click on three dots menu and select Variables.

  

• Please add the following variables:

  • eurl - use Feature url from Lab settings page
  • eusername - use Feature username from Lab settings page
  • epassword - use Feature password from Lab settings page
  • packagetype - set it to Unmanaged. This setting gives you ability to deploy Unmanaged and Managed solution packages.

  system. variables are added by Azure DevOps system.

• Click Save and queue and then pick your newly created branch feature/newfeature

• Click on Branches in left navigation and after page is loaded click on three dots for master branch row. Then click Branch policies. We are going to set a rule that pull requests to master must be followed by successful pipeline run.

  

• In the newly loaded window click `Add build policy.

• In the sliding Add build policy form select your pipeline for Build pipeline and then click Save

Exercise 8 - Fixing Unit Test

In the previous exercise we created a pipeline and it detected that one of our tests is failing. We are going to fix it now. Failing demonstrates how the branch wll be automatically tested in the future.

• Open .\PluginsTest\SamplePreCreateTests.cs file and change Assert.False(true); to Assert.False(false);. In this lab we are not teaching how to write unit tests but we show how to build infrastructure that builds code, tests code, packages it and then deploys.
• Commit change to Azure DevOps repository
  • git add .
  • git commit -b 'bag fix'
  • git push origin feature/newfeature
• After pipeline job is finished you will see that first Stage of pipeline was completed successfully. Second stage was skipped because it is a deployment stage that runs only when we push code to master branch.

Exercise 9 - Pull request to master and deployment

In this exercise we verify continues deployment. azure-pipelines.yml has steps that pipeline runs when branches are updated or when pull request is created. Let's create a pull request that takes changes from feature/newfeature to master

• In Azure DevOps navigate to Pull Requests

  

  Then in the top right corner click New pull request

• Pick feature/newfeature in Select a source branch. Put any title and then click Create

• Click Set auto-complete to open Enable automatic completion form and then click Set auto-complete. This step tells Azure DevOps to Complete pull request after successfully running the pipeline.

• The last step is: Azure DevOps runs pipeline on newly updated master branch. During this pipeline job second stage will be activated which deploys changes automatically to Feature branch.

Summary

Configured solution allows us running tests, builds, packaging jobs and deployments for all new branches in the future. This significantly saves time and prevents from human errors.

This Lab demonstrates 1-4 steps from this diagram

All further steps follow the same pattern.

For questions and comments please contact [email protected]