Solved: Explanation of solutions and environments with regards to PVA

Explanation of solutions and environments with regards to PVA

After reading Microsoft's documentation, I am still confused about some Power Platform concepts (specifically solutions and environments) and what they should be used for in the development process. I would like some clarification to see if I understand them correctly, so please tell me if I am misunderstanding anything. To my knowledge:

Environments

where data, apps, flows, etc. are stored (if you have a Dataverse database setup because you can have 0 or 1 per environment; I don't know what happens if you have 0)
you should use separate environments if the things you are building have different roles/security requirements/users, this includes things dev/stage/prod
you manage user access and security settings using an Azure AD tenant

Solutions

how to organize apps, flows, etc. under a name and publisher
whenever anything is created through Power Apps/Power Virtual Agents/etc, it is put in an environment's Default Solution by default unless you create it using "Add New" within a solution
used to move things between environments
data in Dataverse doesn't get ex/imported, this is just configuration
typical use case is putting in all the components that relate to a specific project, usually 1 app and everything that is necessary for the app (this is the big point I am unsure about)

I am interested in understanding these fully because my team wants to describe the use case for creating solutions (specifically for developing Power Virtual Agents components such as chatbots): why would they create a solution, what does creating a solution do for them, and can they set user editing/viewing permissions for solutions (or is that what an environment is for)? Thank you for your time.

Categories:

General

For the most part your statements are all correct. Its a little different if using the PVA client inside Teams instead of the regular Web PVA client. When in Teams a special environment is created in the Team when you create a new bot the first time. Everything created in that Team using either the PVA or Power Apps client will then go into a specific solution in that environment. In a regular environment bots you create are added to a default solution in that environment. So it depends on what the environment picker is set to where a new bot goes. But you can always create it in a specific solution by using the New Button in the solution.

Solutions are simply packages of items and dependencies that can be moved by exporting/importing them between environments. Its the best way to move things from a Dev to Test to Production environment. But there is no explicit way to set permissions at the solution level on the things inside the environment. Instead you set the permissions as you normally would on the Bot or database. There are permission settings that apply to what you can do with a solution, like import and export it.

In general then environments are a place where you can have a segregated space to control apps, flows, bots, etc. If the data source is Dataverse that will be specific to the environment also. If its something like SharePoint then its independent of the environment.

Solutions are a way to package up related components and move them from one environment to another. This is important because dependencies between components can become lost or broken if they aren't moved together. For example, if you have a bot that calls a flow and you don't move them with a solution you may need to re-add the flow to the bot after importing both in the new solution.

I hope that helps. Let me know if anything is still unclear or you have more questions.

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