Power Platform | Manage „standalone“ license requests

Today´s article is proudly sponsored by Power Platform Admins. Those managing license requests in their organizations and thoughtfully considered an easy onboarding process for their Makers during an ideation & clearing process prior to creating artifacts. Jokes aside folks, today´s article is a walk through in terms of this recent announcement.

What was the first reactions, I got during recent customer conversations with IT teams? Right, where to block or deactivate this. But hey, this isn´t an evil thing that causes a lot of headaches or trouble! This is for you Admins making the process a lot smoother and tailored to your needs. But let´s take a closer look so it becomes clearer for everyone.

What is it good for?

To simplify and customize the process of Makers in your organization requesting a license that is enforced by the artifact created using premium capabilities (the app or flow tagged as „premium“ inside the Details section – License designation).

For whom is it good for?

It addresses the requirement of admins being in need for a customizable dialog everytime a user is enforced to have a standalone license for the run-time experience of a created artifact by a Maker inside your organization. Furthermore, it simplifies Makers life as everyone now can be pointed to a customized or tailored documentation instead of using the in-built experience.

A closer look

Let´s start from the M365 Admin Center user interface and see where license requests without this new feature being enabled would normally end-up in.

Let´s assume you haven´t activated this new feature and a Maker created an artifact which enforces having a standalone or premium license. The artifact in my test cases being a canvas app that is using a premium connector (Dataverse) and a Power Automate flow that is also using a premium trigger (Dataverse) and even a premium action (AI Builder).

The Maker experience – Power Automate

A Maker has created a premium tagged flow in above example and was able to save it. For a run-time experience of the flow, the Maker is enforced to have a valid license. As in my case the Maker is only assigned an M365 E5 license with Power Automate and Power Apps seeded capabilities, this flow needs a standalone license.

The Maker therefore receives and error message or notification that requests to use the flow checker to troubleshoot.

The Maker in my case can either sign-up for a trial, buy their own license or perform a license request.

The license request

In this case – or for testing purposes – let´s click on license request link above and see what´s happening.

As shared in visual above, a dialog is presented and I can enter a message for my admin as well as select a license type that I think would best be suitable to fit my needs. I then press Submit request and this initiates a request.

The Admin Center experience

Switching heads and shoes now and stepping into the role of a Power Platform Admin again, I am opening my M365 Admin Center and take a look into pending license requests.

I can see that in my case Amy made a request to be assigned a license and from here I could immediately work on resolving this.

As you can see from the visual above, if I would have licenses available in my tenant, I would have been able to select a license. In my case, I am requested to buy a per user Power Automate license as I don´t have any remaining licenses in my tenant. You can also see that I would be able to send an additional message to the requester and then hit either Approve or Don´t approve.

Well, that´s the standard if you don´t setup to use your own existing request process instead. And this is what has been introduced with the latest announcement following the documentation.

What´s the deal then?

As an Administrator you can now activate to use your existing request process instead. And that allows you to customize the message provided to the Maker and also allows for further guidance on the company license request process in general. Let´s take a look.

Me being an Admin and knowing that I´ve created a tailored company-wide process of requesting such licenses, I am customizing the request process in above dialog. I am therefore providing a Message and I could also add a link to a documentation.

The Maker experience – Power Automate

After this request process has been customized by an Admin, I am receiving the same notification inside my created Power Automate flow. So I initiate the request process again.

But this time, I am receiving the customized dialog with the message from my admins and a URL that either forwards me to a landing page where I can follow instructions.

Maker experience – Power Apps

So how does it look instead from a Power Apps studio being a Maker where I´ve created a canvas app using Dataverse and therefore enforcing to have a standalone run-time license?

In this case I am also receiving a notification or message from my Admins and I am provided a URL that I can click on.

Okay, got it! What´s in there for me?

Well, the beauty of using the customized license request experience instead of the built-in experience is to consider a broader guidance of Makers creating artifacts which causes standalone licenses in your organization. I didn´t shared everything with you so far. As the URL that is optional can not only point to a landing page where Makers follow instructions on how to request standalone licenses in your company.

It could be the URL of a Power Apps app that guides the Maker via a Q&A clearing process to request licenses needed for the run-time experience of their created artifacts. You could use Microsoft Power Automate Approvals for instance within your application that allows for the same capabilities of approving or denying the request. You could extend it to include requesting more detailed information prior approval. You could also create both an individual Maker and Admin user interface that allows for easy management and monitoring of these requests. The limit is just your imagination.

So instead of immediately asking for: Where can I block or deactivate this? You may better check out the flexibility and options provided by this „little“ announcement by the Power Apps team. As always, let me know your thoughts and questions via the comments or social media. Until then,…