Unleashing Efficiency: The Role of CI/CD in Power Platform Development

Low-code platforms like Microsoft’s Power Platform are rewriting the rules of innovation—empowering citizen developers to build apps at a faster pace. But with speed comes the challenge of managing code quality, seamless updates, and efficient deployments. That’s where CI/CD steps in. It’s revolutionized traditional software delivery and now it’s unlocking new levels of reliability, scalability, and speed for low-code creators. Ready to see how CI/CD transforms the Power Platform? Let’s dive in and uncover the future of streamlined development.

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD). CI/CD automates the integration, testing, versioning, building, deployment, and quality control within software development. It ensures smoother workflows, faster issue resolution, and higher-quality applications. In addition to this, it negates the need for manual intervention, thus user feedback can therefore be incorporated on a more frequent basis and at a much quicker pace ensuring that end users and customers are satisfied. Though, this was traditionally aimed towards developers, CI/CD is becoming increasingly significant in the low code space given the rise in adoption of low code platforms.

How does CI/CD work?

The CI in CI/CD refers to continuous integration, a process by which developers are able to merge code changes to a shared repository more frequently. Each time these updates are made, automated testing steps are triggered to ensure that the code committed back is reliable.

CI when done successfully allows for a developers’ changes to an application to be merged, validated automatically through the build of the application and enables for different level of automated tests to be run to ensure changes haven’t broken the app. Typical tests include unit tests, integration tests and the benefit of this can be realized through the discovery of conflicts between new and existing codes, enabled bug fixes to be delivered at a quick pace. In addition to this, static code analysis using tools such as SonarQube are utilized to inspect code quality and detect bugs. It is important to ensure that these low-level tests don’t exceed a runtime of 5 minutes, so that there is a fast feedback loop.

The CD in CI/CD refers to continuous delivery and / or continuous deployment. Both of these terms are used interchangeably but sometimes used separately to illustrate how much automation is happening. CI is a prerequisite for continuous delivery/deployment as it deploys all code changes to a testing environment and ensures that later steps can utilize stable, quality assured artifacts.

Continuous delivery can be interpreted as an extension of continuous integration as it deploys all code changes to a testing or pre-production environment after the build stage.

Continuous deployment builds on continuous delivery as it automatically releases all stages of the production pipeline (provided they have passed all stages of the production pipeline) to customers. Ultimately the choice between continuous delivery and continuous deployments hinges on the risk tolerance and needs of the development and operations teams.

The final stage of a mature CI/CD pipeline is continuous deployment. This refers to the automatic release of a developers changes from the repository to production, whereby customers can then use it. This ensures a quicker feedback loop and this combined makes the deployment process less risky.

Figure 1 – What is CI/CD?

Why is CI/CD important?

Though CI/CD may initially appear to add complexity for Citizen Developers, it provides a scalable, automated development framework that accommodates new features and swift bug fixes. Over time, this process allows developers to work more confidently and efficiently, with reduced risk due to continuous feedback and testing. Furthermore, C-Suite stakeholders achieve high-level benefits such as faster time to market, innovation enablement and risk mitigation.

Thus, while developers reap the benefits through improved workflows, quality, and collaboration, C-suite stakeholders gain strategic advantages such as faster innovation, cost savings, and alignment with business goals. Both groups benefit from Power Platform CI/CD, but in distinctly different ways tailored to their roles and priorities.

What are the CI/CD options available in the Power Platform?

While CI/CD may be common in most software delivery options, it’s rare with low-code platforms such as the Power Platform. Considering the benefits that CI/CD provides, we believe that the Power Platform should also leverage these. There are two CI/CD options that we will explore within this blogpost series, which are as follows:

• Pipelines in Power Platform
• Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools for Azure DevOps

Let’s begin by discussing the pipelines in Power Platform.

Pipelines in Power Platform

While the Power Platform has always had a ‘build is in prod’ mindset, with time, it witnessed the introduction of solutions, and more recently, pipelines. Pipelines in Power Platform aim to enable application lifecycle management (ALM) by providing ALM automation and CI/CD capabilities into the service in a way that is much more accessible for makers, admins and developers.

Prerequisites for the pipelines in Power Platform approach

• One or more pipelines must be created and associated with the environment that was used for development
• The development environment must have Microsoft Dataverse
• The developer must have access to run a pipeline
• Elevated privileges are required to import solutions to the target environment
• The Power Platform pipelines application must be installed in your pipeline host environment.
  
  

How do the pipelines in Power Platform approach work?

Well, it’s very simple and easy to use but that also means it is limited in functionality. The pipelines in Power Platform approach will only move the unmanaged solution to another environment as a managed solution. Therefore, if you want to make further improvements or changes this will not be possible with a managed solution. It will save the solution as a ZIP file for versioning and that’s pretty much it. So that means if you want to add test automation, complex branching or admin approval before pushing it to another environment then this isn’t possible.

Pipelines in Power Platform

As can be seen from the image above, updating is done by the click of a button and the maintenance is very minimal.

Limitations to the pipelines in Power Platform Approach

Though the pipelines in Power Platform appear at first glance to be simple and easy to use, it is apparent that the functionality within is limited. The first limitation is that the functionality only applies to managed environments. Thus, unmanaged solution packages must be changed to managed solutions before using pipelines. Secondly, there is no ability to restore the environment to the previously installed version. Thirdly, the release pipeline cannot be connected to version control hence the need for solution packages to be managed solutions so that no further changes are made. Finally, there is no ability to add self-made workflows to the release process (e.g. approval receipts from testers, then automatic release to production).

Conclusion

In summary, Power Platform pipelines provide a vital entry point for bringing CI/CD capabilities into low-code environments, allowing Citizen Developers to manage deployments with ease and efficiency. By reducing the need for manual solution imports and exports, these pipelines make it easier to push changes through to production, which is particularly valuable for small to medium-sized teams. This accessible approach empowers non-technical users to participate in application lifecycle management, facilitating faster feedback loops and more rapid feature deployment. However, for more complex organizational needs, the limitations of Power Platform pipelines—such as lack of version control integration, rollback options, and approval workflows—may require organizations to seek additional tools or advanced configurations.

As low-code adoption grows and applications become increasingly integral to business operations, the demand for more robust CI/CD solutions within the Power Platform will likely increase. Future enhancements to Power Platform pipelines and the addition of tools like the ALM Accelerator signal Microsoft’s commitment to supporting more sophisticated ALM processes on the platform. These advancements promise to address current gaps and enable a broader range of development scenarios, ensuring that both Citizen Developers and enterprise teams can build, deploy, and maintain applications with greater reliability and scalability.

In the next part of this blogpost, we will explore the Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools for Azure DevOps and how this could address the shortcomings of Power Platform pipelines. Stay tuned …