alm

Skill: Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

When to Use

Trigger when designing deployment pipelines, managing solutions, promoting across environments, or setting up CI/CD for Power Platform.

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ALM Golden Rules

1. Never import unmanaged solutions to Test or Production
2. Every environment needs a dedicated service principal — no human accounts in pipelines
3. Environment variables must be set per environment — never hardcoded
4. Connection references must be pre-created before solution import
5. Solution version must increment on every build (major.minor.build.revision)
6. Always run Solution Checker before promoting to Test/Prod

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⚠️ REQUIRED: Load Sub-Files Before Implementation

SKILL.md is a summary only — it is NOT sufficient for implementation.

The detailed content (complete payloads, XML templates, working examples, edge-case handling) lives in sub-files in the same directory as this SKILL.md. Before writing any code, you MUST use read_file on the sub-files relevant to your task:

• Developer Inner Loop — Three development loops (Web API direct, pac code push, pac solution sync), when to use each, day-to-day workflows
• Git Integration — Native Git integration in maker portal, deploy from Git (2026 wave 1), branch strategies for Power Platform, Azure DevOps Boards integration
• Azure DevOps Pipelines — ADO pipeline YAML templates, service connections, multi-stage deployment, variable groups

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Solution Lifecycle

Developer writes code / configures in Dev (unmanaged)
  ↓
Export solution from Dev → Unpack to source control
  ↓
CI pipeline: Pack → Solution Checker → Build managed artifact
  ↓
CD pipeline: Import managed solution to Test → Smoke test
  ↓
CD pipeline: Import managed solution to UAT → User acceptance
  ↓
CD pipeline: Import managed solution to Production → Go live

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Code Apps ALM

Development Workflow

# Local development (no environment needed for initial dev)
npx degit microsoft/PowerAppsCodeApps/templates/starter my-app
cd my-app && npm install
npm run dev                    # http://localhost:5173

# Connect to Power Platform
pac code init --displayname "My App"
pac code add-data-source -a dataverse -t contact

# Deploy to Dev environment
npm run build
pac code push                                     # Preferred solution
pac code push --solutionName "ContosoCodeApp"     # Named solution