ALM Accelerator for Power Platform

Application Lifecycle Management is referred to as ALM. It is a procedure that includes software application development, testing, and upkeep. The administration of the application’s retirement and release is also included in ALM. ALM is involved in Planning – to establish the app’s lifecycle, defining requirements, and allocating resources. Development – to creating the application’s design and writing its code. Testing – to verify that the program works as planned and making the application usable is known as deployment. Updating and maintaining the application’s functionality. Retirement – When an application is no longer required, it is removed from service. ALM ensures that applications fulfil corporate objectives, facilitates better teamwork and communication while lowering process inefficiencies and cost overruns. Also does it enhance the dependability, safety, and quality of products.

ALM Accelerator:

An application lifecycle management (ALM) canvas app called the ALM Accelerator for Power Platform offers a streamlined interface to Azure Pipelines and Git source control. It is a reference implementation of ALM principles and patterns that helps you get started with ALM in Power Platform by utilising built-in platform features. Azure Pipelines YAML and PowerShell templates, as well as low-code canvas apps designed for makers and administrators, are used in its building. Makers can deploy their solutions in Power Platform, activate version history, and carry out source control with the ALM Accelerator for Power Platform app. All your Power Platform components, including apps, flows, customisations, and so forth, must be included in a solution to use the ALM Accelerator.

Maker teams and Power Platform creators are the target audience for the ALM Accelerator. Makers who wish to share their work with other people and save it with a history of changes but are not aware with ALM ideas. Makers who wish to work with source control and deployment automation in a familiar manner and who are at ease with the more complex ideas of Git, like pull requests, branching, and combining. One should be an administrator with a deeper grasp of Power Platform environments, solutions, and Azure Pipelines to set up and configure the ALM Accelerator. Additionally, one must be knowledgeable in Dataverse administration and Microsoft Entra.

The options for ALM in Power Platform:

1. By making ALM automation features more accessible to all developers, administrators, and makers, Pipelines for Power Platform seeks to democratise ALM by integrating them with Power Platform and Dynamics 365 services.
2. You can create your build and release pipelines by combining Power Platform Build Tools jobs with other Azure DevOps processes. Teams frequently implement the following pipelines: Initiate, Export from Dev, Build, and Release.
3. Developers may create automated software development lifecycle processes to create, test, package, release, and deploy apps with GitHub Actions for Power Platform. They can also automate tasks and manage bots and other Power Platform components.

Pipelines for Power Platform (Pipelines)

The purpose of pipelines is to make ALM easier for businesses. They are the Power Platform’s maker-initiated ALM’s strategic in-product experience. For transferring solutions between environments, pipelines offer features that are comparable to Power Platform’s manual export and import capabilities.  When service principals are supported, users can deploy to different environments without needing elevated access. Additionally, companies can customise Pipelines before and after deployment to add their business processes on top of them. In addition to offering the opportunity to add unique steps to the deployment pipeline, this provides organisations authority over the approval procedures.  Generally, Pipelines are the best option if your company wants to begin using ALM rapidly and does not require control over the source code files for your solutions.

Power Platform Build Tools/GitHub Actions and Power Platform CLI (Build Tools)

The purpose of Build Tools is to provide developers and IT administrators with the means to accelerate the automation of highly customised ALM. The limitations of Pipelines can be overcome by using Build Tools to integrate particular organisational and business processes in your ALM process, regulate solution code, enabling code-first situations, and eliminate the requirement for makers to have elevated permissions in downstream environments. Build Tools is typically the choice for organisations that need granular control over their ALM processes and have access to developer resources like DevOps or GitHub.

Conclusion

The goal of the ALM Accelerator is to make ALM easier for both sophisticated code-first makers and low-code creators. Built on top of the Build Tools, the ALM Accelerator speeds up the process of getting started with them without requiring a fresh start. Both the associated canvas application and the ALM Accelerator pipelines are free source. It can be used in its current form or as a model implementation that you can modify. In general, if your company wants to offer a maker experience on top of the Azure DevOps processes that power ALM and needs fine-grained control over your ALM processes but has the resources to construct them from scratch, you can go with the ALM Accelerator.

About CloudThat

CloudThat is a leading provider of Cloud Training and Consulting services with a global presence in India, the USA, Asia, Europe, and Africa. Specializing in AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, VMware, Databricks, and more, the company serves mid-market and enterprise clients, offering comprehensive expertise in Cloud Migration, Data Platforms, DevOps, IoT, AI/ML, and more.

CloudThat is the first Indian Company to win the prestigious Microsoft Partner 2024 Award and is recognized as a top-tier partner with AWS and Microsoft, including the prestigious ‘Think Big’ partner award from AWS and the Microsoft Superstars FY 2023 award in Asia & India. Having trained 650k+ professionals in 500+ cloud certifications and completed 300+ consulting projects globally, CloudThat is an official AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Microsoft Gold Partner, AWS Training Partner, AWS Migration Partner, AWS Data and Analytics Partner, AWS DevOps Competency Partner, AWS GenAI Competency Partner, Amazon QuickSight Service Delivery Partner, Amazon EKS Service Delivery Partner,  AWS Microsoft Workload Partners, Amazon EC2 Service Delivery Partner, Amazon ECS Service Delivery Partner, AWS Glue Service Delivery Partner, Amazon Redshift Service Delivery Partner, AWS Control Tower Service Delivery Partner, AWS WAF Service Delivery Partner, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon OpenSearch, AWS DMS and many more.

To get started, go through our Consultancy page and Managed Services Package, CloudThat’s offerings.