CoE Starter Kit - May 2021

Included in this release are the following enhancements/fixes:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/coe/release-notes

First Time Setup Instructions

Get started with the CoE Starter Kit Setup: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/coe/setup

Upgrade Instructions

Upgrading from the latest version: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/coe/setup#installing-updates

ALM Accelerator For Advanced Makers 1.0.20210510.5

Public preview release of the ALM Accelerator For Advanced Makers. Included in this release are the following enhancements/fixes.

The major update in this release is a change to the pipelines to remove the reliance on build completion triggers to simplify setup and provide a better experience when applying branch policies. In the previous release we had a build pipeline and seperate deployment pipelines for each environment. This made setup cumbersome and also didn't address several issues including:

• Ensuring that both the build and deployment to validation succeeded when running the validation build via the branch policy. Instead the previous version would only validate the build and then a user would have to go to the deployment pipeline to determine if the deployment succeeded.
• Allow for deployment without build. In the previous version a build was kicked off for every deployment. The feedback we've gotten is that in some cases (e.g. when deploying to prod) organizations want to be able to deploy the most recent build that was deployed to test.

Both of the above issues have been handled in the latest release pipelines and the setup instructions have been updated to demonstrate how to handle both scenarios by using a single pipeline per environment to which a solution is being deployed.

First Time Setup Instructions

To get started with the ALM Accelerator For Advanced Makers check out the ReadMe )https://github.com/microsoft/coe-starter-kit/blob/main/PowerPlatformDevOpsALM/README.md) and Setup Guide (https://github.com/microsoft/coe-starter-kit/blob/main/PowerPlatformDevOpsALM/SETUPGUIDE.md)

Upgrade Instructions

If you are upgrading to the latest public preview you will need to perform the following steps.

• Upgrade to the latest AA4AM Solution https://github.com/microsoft/coe-starter-kit/releases/download/ALMAcceleratorForAdvancedMakers-1.0.20210510.5/PowerPlatformDevOpsALM_1.0.20210510.5.zip
• Update your pipeline templates repo with the latest from https://github.com/microsoft/coe-alm-accelerator-templates
• Delete or deactivate your build pipeline (e.g. build-MySolution).
• Update your Branch policy to point to the pipeline deploy-validation-MySolution
• Follow the instructions in the SETUPGUIDE.md to create / update your solution deployment pipelines (e.g. deploy-validation-MySolution, deploy-test-MySolution and deploy-prod-MySolution) found here https://github.com/microsoft/coe-starter-kit/blob/main/PowerPlatformDevOpsALM/SETUPGUIDE.md#setting-deployment-pipeline-variables

Issues Addressed in this Release:

1. Pipelines: Update CoE Starter Kit Pipelines to Deploy without Build to Prod #238
2. Pipelines: Non-namespaced Build Task #219
3. AA4AM Docs: Updates #185
4. ALM Accelerator Sample Solution: No longer operable #228
5. AA4AM: Readme Doc #213
6. Service connection related permission issue while running the pipelines #177
7. Pipelines: Update build pipeline for PRs to not use build completion triggers #160
8. Add required connectors to documentation #191
9. AA4AM App: Add hover tooltip for long solution names #112
10. AA4AM App: Sort Solutions Alphabetically #116
11. Pipelines: Spaces in projects / repos cause errors in pipelines #180
12. Improve readability of GETTINGSTARTED.md #182
13. AA4AM App: Update Custom Connector Description #167
14. Pipelines: Sync GitHub to AzDO #234
15. Documentation: Create HowTo For Deploying ALM Sample Solution #236

ALM Accelerator For Advanced Makers 1.0.20210415.2

First public preview release of the ALM Accelerator For Advanced Makers. Included in this release are the following enhancements/fixes.

1. Add Granularity to which environment to push to when running pipelines manually.
2. Handle Release branches other than refs/head/releases (This has been fixed to handle any release branch)
3. Fix for using double quotes vs. single quotes in pipeline variables (This is a breaking change. You'll need to update your connection reference json to use double quotes as well as all other variables going forward)
4. Fix for activating flows with no connection references (NOTE: Enabling flows with no connection references will be handled by the Component Ownership variable. All other flows are activated by the creator of their connection).
5. Docs: Setup doc states that 2 pipeline ids are required when only 1 is required.
6. Decouple build and deploy (This has been implemented. Deploy pipelines trigger off of successful builds. This will allow a configurable number of environments where the previous pipelines targeted only validation, test and prod)
7. Update pipelines to use latest version of PA Language Tooling (https://github.com/microsoft/PowerApps-Language-Tooling/releases/tag/0.2.2-preview)
8. Add support for targeting GitHub repos for source control (This functionality exists in the CoE pipelines now, but have not yet been surfaced in the AA4AM app.
9. Various updates to Getting Started Guide based on pipeline and app updates.

PRIVATE PREVIEW MEMBER NOTE: There are breaking changes in this release for members of the private preview. Please read through the new configuration of the Pipelines in the Getting Started Guide.