Best Practices: Solutioning Part 1

The Power Platform maker experience can seem like the Wild West. At any moment you can create a component that relies on other components and can create a disaster quickly.

In this series I’d like to cover some best practices, that I’ve seen over the past 5 years of working with the Power Platform – some lessons learned – such as – ‘DON’T BUILD IN THE DEFAULT ENVIRONMENT’ and other.

Solutions explained in a not so Microsoft way…A.K.A. – my way.

Imagine you have a kid with a room bursting with toys. It’s like a treasure trove of fun waiting to be explored. But hold on, it’s also a minefield! Stepping on a Lego here, tripping over something there – it’s an adventure you never signed up for. Sound familiar?

One fine day, you, the heroic parent, decide to bring order to this chaos. You’re on a mission to save your head and your feet from more unexpected encounters with toy-related perils. So, what’s your grand plan? You buy a container—a magical vessel that can hold all the toys.

In essence, a solution is your trusty container. It’s like that superhero utility belt, but for organizing digital goodies. You can get as fancy as you want with how you organize your toys – perhaps all the trucks go in one, Legos have their VIP section, and stuffed animals chill in another. Each container’s job? To amp up the fun!

Now, you might be thinking, “Why not just cram them all into one mega-container?” Well, my friend, think about it this way: when a child wants to supercharge their fun, they focus on one toy at a time, right? Or maybe you swap out the old for something shiny and new—a fantastic upgrade! We divide our solutions because not everything needs an upgrade. Remember, the bigger the toybox, the heavier it is to move.

So, there you have it – solutions are like these nifty toy containers, but for the Power Platform. They house all the bits and bobs that make the digital world go ’round. You can move them around effortlessly, using pipelines or a little digital muscle. And how you put these solutions together? Well, that’s where your creativity kicks in.

In a nutshell, solutions are your secret sauce, your digital playroom organizers. They’ll make your life as a Power Platform Developer/Maker a breeze. So go ahead, dive into the world of solutions, and let the fun (and efficiency) begin! Toys sold separately… 🚀

Creating a Solution

First things first, head on over to the Power Platform environment. You can do this by simply going to either make.powerapps.com or make.powerautomate.com – choose the one that suits your needs.

Now, on the left-hand side, look for and click on the “Solutions” option in the navigation bar.

Here comes the fun part – hit the “+ New Solution” button. That’s the one that gets the ball rolling for creating your new solution.

In the form that pops up, give your solution a cool name. If you’re not cool with the default publisher for your solution, no worries – you can make a new one. It’s actually a good idea to give it a name that makes sense. We can cover the publisher in further posts until then click “The Link” to view “Solution Concepts”… The Link

Finally, just click “Create,” and there you have it – a solution.

Thank you for tuning in… until next time.