Combining Power Apps and Dynamics CRM in a single environment

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Posted on by gvc55

Our group has been asked to provide a solution that involves Dynamics CRM and Power Apps (specifically a Power Pages site). The question is whether a single environment should be used, or the solutions should be housed in their own environment. The client wants to minimize costs but wonder if a single environment is worse than spending a few bucks more. Any experience or thoughts on this matter will be appreciated.

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Fubar 8,361 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Due to the history of the product using Power Pages with Dynamics 365 is probably the most common usage. The Question you need to ask is are the Contacts that will be using the Portal the same as those in Dynamics 365, or is there data in your Dynamics 365 that you want to surface in the Portal if the answer is Yes then it should be in the same environment.

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,433 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I am going to extend a bit from the previous poster.

The question is, are the portals going to be using ANY of the data that you are using in the Dataverse Instance (that sits behind CRM) or not.

If not, then honestly I am not sure whats the point. Power Pages has to connect and pull data from somewhere, and it could be other sources...

But again the question is, what data and features and actions are you allowing people to do IN the Power Page Portal App... and does any of that

care about the environment that Dataverse is in, OTHER than it storing its configuration data?

Either way, its not a reason to have a different environment, but the data access and the volume of users using the portal, and how it impacts yours CRM workers trying to close deals.. well now that makes a big difference.

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CU13081304-0 2 on at

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Thank you for the responses. As far as I understand it, the implementation will use a Dynamics CRM installation as the base, and it is not going to be used as pure CRM so the question about clashing of Portal data and CRM data should not be an issue. The question about the Contact records is a legitimate one but these contacts are mainly those created by the portal which are, for the most part, internal users.

Thanks again for the responses. They do shed some light on the possibilities.

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aofosu 105 on at

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In addition to what has already been suggested, a single environment is an optimal solution if the data needs to be manipulated by both external users (Power Pages users) and internal users (model-driven app users).

Since Power Pages' configurations and components are stored in Dataverse, having separate environments for different user groups might not be feasible. You would need to migrate the data collected through Power Pages into the environment where, for example, CRM users are connected. This adds complexity and potential challenges.

A more practical approach is to have one environment with multiple solutions. This is what we currently implement in our development setup. We use the standard data model (which should also work with the enhanced data model) and have organized our environment into multiple solutions:

Transactional & Referential Data/Power Pages Configuration Tables & Components

Cloud Flows

Data Flows

CRM Apps and Security Roles

This compartmentalization arose from challenges we faced when deploying from the development environment to QA, UAT, and PROD environments. The process was time-consuming, and dependency issues were frequent. By breaking the environment down into these sections, we can deploy only the solutions that have changes, making the deployment process more efficient. It also allows for quicker turnaround times when fixing issues within smaller, more manageable solutions, rather than having to sift through a larger, more complex one.

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