Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform Connectors, 28 Apr 2022

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From YouTube: Updates on Independent Publisher Connectors & GitLab Connector Demo

Description

In this 11-minute developer focused demo, Natalie Pienkowska celebrates the milestone - there are 113 Independent Publisher Connectors in production, 31 in the pipeline delivered by 41 outstanding publishers. Roy Paar shows using GitLab Dev Ops for Power Platform projects leveraging the GitLab connector to access GitLabs APIs for actions. Step through creating a project in newly provisioned sandbox. Move through Dev, Text, Deploy. Canvas app leverages ALM accelerator (Power CAT team-built tool), Azure VM and Power Automate flows. This PnP Community demo is taken from the General Microsoft 365 Developer community call recorded on April 28, 2022.

Demo Presenters
• Natalie Pienkowska (Microsoft) | @NataliePienkow1
• Roy Paar (Microsoft) | @RoyPaar

Supporting materials
• Documentation - GitLab (Independent Publisher) (Preview) | https://docs.microsoft.com/connectors/gitlabip/
• Connector Repo – GitLab | https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors/tree/dev/independent-publisher-connectors/GitLab
• Requested connector - Top Connector Asks | https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors/wiki/Top-Connector-Asks
• Documentation - Independent publisher certification process | https://docs.microsoft.com/connectors/custom-connectors/certification-submission-ip
• Documentation - Create a custom connector from scratch | https://docs.microsoft.com/connectors/custom-connectors/define-blank

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/m365/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - http://aka.ms/m365pnp

A

Hi, everyone hope you're all doing good today, um so for independent publisher connectors, those are power platform connectors that are submitted and published by anyone. All you have to do is build the connector and submit it to github, and the entire certification process happens in there. So I have a super awesome announcement. We have over 113 connectors in production. So last time I was here, I believe two two weeks ago or no a month ago.

A

Sorry, we had around 676, um so we've published so many more and we've had our 100 milestone before our anniversary, which is incredible. So thank you so much to all the 41 outstanding publishers, some folks, including roy who's, on the call today and who will be demoing. I've published more than one connector, which is so awesome and we've had. We have four new independent publishers this month, uh landon nandeep, robin and timo.

A

So it's super awesome to to see this community growing a new people joining and also with just the amount of connectors that we have in production. It's incredible and we also have 31 more to go uh 31 more that are in our pipeline currently and still haven't been published.

A

So keep a look out for many more to come in the next few months. Today's demo will be on the get lab, connector and roy will be giving that demo today so roy over to you.

B

Thanks natalie and good morning, good evening, good afternoon, everybody, so my latest connector for the independent publisher program was a git lab connector for those of you who don't know about git lab it's an alternative to github or azure devops um just wanted to see. If I could use this connector to set up a devops pipeline for some power platform work, I've been doing the connectors out there on the connector site.

B

If you take a look in the connector itself, I've got a handful of actions in here that leverage the get lab api.

B

Some of them are just getting basic version information, but also some of them can do things like creating a project in gitlab, four keying, creating a branch in your repo a commit, I'm creating a what's called a merge request in gitlab, which is a pull request in github.

B

I can do things like merge my merge request or update my merge request. I can get files out of my repo, and I can also do things like trigger a ci cd pipeline in git lab create a trigger token for my pipeline and then use that to trigger it. I can also enable, what's called a gitlab runner for my project, so you know where, where azure devops uses uh agent pools and things like that, gitlab has a gitlab runner.

B

So what I wanted to do with this was see if I could leverage what's called the alm accelerator for makers, which is a, I think, one of the first versions of a tool that the powercat team here at microsoft, built for power platform uh was with github. In the back end, I wanted to take out github and and replace it with git lab.

B

So uh what I'm showing here is in my coe environment. I've got the you know, alm accelerator, for maker solution by the power cat team, but then I've also got my solution here with my get lab connector.

B

If I open up that solution, we can see all the components that came with the accelerator for the power guide team, but also I've got my my gitlab connector and then I've replaced all the actions in the flows.

B

With my get lab actions, the solution also has sort of an admin, app canvas app, and then it's also got a a maker app where I can request a new project.

B

uh What I added to the admin app was a few new fields to capture things like my gitlab group number, so this is kind of my account within get lab where all my repos will live a runner id, which is what I pass in when I trigger a pipeline and uh connect it to a specific gitlab runner.

B

And then I also tell the pipeline where my yaml template is to run the different actions in my pipeline, so where this starts and I'll kind of keep this quickly, because there's a lot to show here, I request a new project as a maker. So let's call this my thursday demo. That creates a a project record for me in dataverse, and then it sends a an approvals request to my system, admin and, while that's coming through I'll, show you on the on the gitlab side.

B

So with github, there's, what's called github actions for power platform and those leverage, the power platform command line. Gitlab doesn't have anything like that, so I had to spin up an azure vm, install uh gitlab runner and then, as I trigger pipelines in gitlab it'll start to leverage this. This azure vm with gitlab runner to run that the power platform command line just like it would in github, so go here and I'll approve. My my new project request and what happens now is that'll trigger some power automate flows.

B

The background to let's see here create project is my flow and, as that runs it'll leverage, the the new gitlab connector and the actions in that connector to.

B

To create a sandbox environment for me, uh it's going to assign some security roles to my maker. It'll create a repo in gitlab. For me, it'll set up my sandbox environment with uh you know, solutions from production and then it'll create a blank solution for me in my new sandbox, where I can build my canvas app or my flow or whatever, whatever it is, I'm working on.

B

So if I look at this uh create environment here, uh if I, if I go into the admin center I'll see, if I hit refresh, I should have my new sandbox environment now, there's my thursday demo environment.

B

If I go back to my my flow here, it should have created a repo for me and git lab. So if I go to my git lab um tenant and hit refresh there's my thursday demo get lab repo. Here's my ci cd test uh repo, where I've got my uh yaml template that uh specifies all the steps in my pipelines for me. So as I run pipelines in my thursday demo, repo it'll look to this repo for the actual steps to run and looks like this completed.

B

So if I go back to my maker app here, it says: okay, your project has been approved and it's all set up for you. uh You can go ahead and open your project solution that pops me right into uh our new sandbox environment into my new solution. My blank solution, where I'll just create just a basic canvas app. Let's call it uh thursday, app and I'll just do something simple and create an app with a button here.

B

That looks good, save that to the cloud and then close. My app.

B

So now I've got a solution in my sandbox, with an app and as a maker. I want to go ahead and deploy that to my test environment. So I go back to my alm accelerator app and I click deploy, choose my environment and confirm and what that does. Is it kicks off some other power automatic flows in the background, uh one of which is deploy the stage here and this one will.

B

Let me just open this one up.

B

So it'll create a build environment for me. It'll push my solution into the build environment and then it'll eventually push it into the test environment. If the build is successful, so I go to the admin center I can see now. I should have a new build environment being provisioned.

B

Once that's done, it's going to actually trigger my ci cd pipeline in git lab, which will do the rest of the work to extract my solution, unpack it check it into source control and then push it into the environments. So if I look at this, this step here trigger cicd pipeline. If I go into my thursday demo, repo here in gitlab and I go to cicd, so this is pending it's waiting for resources, but once this kicks off, this will look to my other.

B

I guess template repo for my yaml file. This is where it pulled in the steps for my deployment. uh You can see it's going to blow my repo to my vm here. So if I look at my local copy now, I've got my thursday demo files here in in my azure vm, I'm going to export my solution from the sandbox it'll unpack.

B

It check it into source control, push it to the build environment, push the test environment and then, at the end, it will trigger a web hook to update my my project status in my maker, app as successfully deployed.

B

So this takes some time to complete. I don't know how much time we have for the demo here, but I'm happy to finish it up or pass it off. If, uh if we need someone else to to get going.

C

We believe you, roy it'll it'll finish. We have a couple minutes left in the demo slot, but uh was uh was there anything else you want to show or was.

B

This is it: that's awesome: okay, there's a new version of the get lab connector that I built uh that I'll push out later this week or early next week with some additional features so.

C

Thank you, yeah excellent stuff, really, really cool stuff. Thank you and natalie both for uh coming on today, and these are really great segments to show off the power of uh the independent publisher, connectors and and how far reaching they are.