Connecting Visual Studio to a UDE Environment on Power Platform

Installing Visual Studio 2022 and Preparing the Development Tools

In the previous article of the series, we covered how to create a developer-enabled UDE environment by using the Power Platform Admin Center interface.

Proceeding through the interface is especially useful in the first trials. Seeing which option is on which screen, how Dynamics 365 apps are enabled, where Platform Tools and Provisioning App are installed from, and where the Developer Tools option appears makes the process easier to understand.

However, in real life, especially for partners, ISVs, or teams managing multiple environments, doing these operations from the interface every time is not a very sustainable method. The environment creation process needs to be standard, repeatable, and documentable.

In this article, we will look at how we can do the same work with PowerShell.

Why PowerShell?

The most important advantage of creating a UDE environment with PowerShell is that it standardizes the process.

When creating an environment from the interface, many selections are made manually. Settings such as template selection, region, demo data, developer tools, language, and currency are determined by the user each time. Naturally, this increases the possibility of errors.

On the PowerShell side, we include these decisions in the script. This way, the same script can be reused for different tenants, projects, or trial environments with small changes.

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In the first article of this series, I tried to explain what UDE is, how it differs from the classic development VM approach, and why it is important.

In this article, we are moving a little more into the practical side. Our goal is to create a developer-enabled UDE environment for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations by using the Power Platform Admin Center interface.

I will cover environment creation with PowerShell in a separate article. In my opinion, creating the first environment through the interface is more useful for seeing the screens and understanding the logic of the process. After that, making the same process repeatable with a script becomes much more meaningful.

Before you start

There are a few basic prerequisites that should be ready before creating a UDE environment.

First of all, the user who will create the environment must have the required admin permissions. Usually, one of the following roles is sufficient:

• Power Platform Administrator
• Dynamics 365 Administrator
• Global Administrator

The tenant must also have the appropriate licenses and capacity to create Finance & Operations applications. Especially Dataverse database capacity and Operations database capacity should be checked.

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For many years, Lifecycle Services had a central role in the Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations world. Creating new projects, managing environments, provisioning cloud-hosted environments, deployments, database operations, and many other operational processes were handled through LCS. For anyone working on Finance & Operations projects, LCS was almost the natural starting point.

However, the direction Microsoft has been taking recently is now quite clear. Finance & Operations environment management is gradually moving toward Power Platform Admin Center. In new projects, PPAC is taking a more central role instead of LCS. Finance & Operations environments are now starting to be managed under the same administration experience together with Dataverse, Power Apps, Power Automate, Copilot Studio, and other Dynamics 365 applications.

I do not think this change should be interpreted simply as “we will now create the environment from another screen.” Microsoft is aiming to manage the Business Applications product family through a more integrated platform. From this perspective, it is quite meaningful that Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, Project Operations, Dataverse, and Power Platform components are moving closer to the same management experience.

Of course, this transition is not fully complete yet. On the Power Platform Admin Center side, not every function we are used to in LCS has a one-to-one equivalent. Some features will be moved to PPAC over time, some will change with a different approach, and some will probably not continue in their old form. On the other hand, PPAC also brings new possibilities in terms of capacity management, environment visibility, Power Platform integration, Dataverse connection, and centralized administration.

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