Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

I am reading through the documentation, and it says:

"When you create an app in an environment, that app is only permitted to connect to the data sources that are also deployed in that same environment, including connections, gateways, flows, and Common Data Service databases."

My understanding is that you can share the app with anyone in the organization, so everyone will have permissions to the app, and when creating the app, you can define data sources in the app itself and provide permissions in it to those data sources. So what's the role of environments in this? How can an environment control connections if am defining the connection in my app itself? It's not clear what's controlled by the app itself when creating it and what's created by the environment.

when I go to the Powerapps admin center, choose an environment and go to Resources, I can see Apps and Flows, I don't see a way to control connections from environments. Any clarification on this would be helpful.

Categories:

Building Power Apps

Hi @BrittanyR ,

I think maybe you want to know more about environment.

You could see environment as a space that stored many apps, data and connections.

Every environment has one CDS. You could see it as the database belongs to this environment.

All the apps,data in CDS,connections in one environment can not be used in the other environments.

It means that you separate apps,data,connections in many containers(environments).

Separating data,apps,connections in different environments has many effect.

For example, many people will create an environment for developing, one for product. (permission)

Only develop engineers could have access to develop environment, others could only have access to product environment.

What's more, in different environments you could create different data loss policies.

Creating data loss policies could prevent data leakage.

I believe that you need to create many kinds of data loss policies, so you need to create many environment.

Here's a doc about environment for your reference:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/environments-overview

About connections:

1)You could create connections both in environment management page and in app's editing page.

2)When you create connection in environment management page, the connection could be used in all the apps in the environment.

3)When you create connection in app's editing page, this connection could only be used in this app.

To sum up, you could see the connections in environment management page as a connection control center.

4)If you want to connect with this connection, you need to have permission of this data source.

If you share this app to others, others need to have permission to this data source too.

You do not need to share connections. When others use this app, they need to create connections again.

Here's a doc about sharing for your reference;

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/canvas-apps/share-app

Best regards,

Community site session details

Connections in environments vs connections in the app itself

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