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Create and manage environments in the Power Platform admin center

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An environment is a space to store, manage, and share your organization's business data, apps, and flows. It also serves as a container to separate apps that may have different roles, security requirements, or target audiences. Power Apps automatically creates a single default environment for each tenant, which is shared by all users in that tenant.

Who can create environments?

Your license determines whether you can create environments.

License Trial Production Developer
Microsoft 365 Plans No No Yes
Dynamics 365 Teams Plans No No Yes
Power Apps Developer Plan No No Yes
Dynamics 365 trial Yes (one) No Yes
Dynamics 365 Plans Yes (one) Yes Yes
Power Apps plan Yes (one) Yes Yes
Power Automate plan Yes (one) Yes Yes
Power Automate trial Yes (one) Yes Yes
Power Apps trial Yes (one) Yes Yes
Power Virtual Agents trial plan Yes No Yes
Power Virtual Agents plan No Yes Yes

To determine which license a user has, sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center and follow the steps in Assign licenses to multiple users on the Active users page.

To create an environment, all the following must be true:

  1. The user has a license (Yes below) that allows environment creation. This requirement is waived for Global admins and Power Platform admins except for trial (standard) environments; see #2.c later.

    License Trial Production Developer
    Microsoft 365 Plans No No Yes
    Dynamics 365 Teams Plans No No Yes
    Power Apps Developer Plan No No Yes
    Dynamics 365 trial Yes (one) No Yes
    Dynamics 365 Plans Yes (one) Yes Yes
    Power Apps plan Yes (one) Yes Yes
    Power Apps trial Yes (one) Yes Yes
    Power Automate plan Yes (one) Yes Yes
    Power Automate trial Yes (one) Yes Yes
    Power Virtual Agents trial plan Yes No Yes
    Power Virtual Agents plan No Yes Yes

    To determine which license a user has, sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center and follow the steps in Assign licenses to multiple users on the Active users page.

  2. The tenant (or user in the case of email trials) must have the following:

    1. For production and sandbox environments, the tenant must have at least 1GB of database storage capacity available.
    2. For trial (subscription-based) environments, each offer-based trial (also known as "admin trial") subscription entitles the tenant to three subscription-based trial environments. Only tenant-level admins are able to provision trial (subscription-based) environments.
    3. For trial (standard) environments, the user needs a license providing per-user entitlement for trial environments (refer to the table above). This applies to tenant-level admins as well.

    Users wanting to create a standard trial can get the necessary license for free by signing up for a Power Apps trial via one of these paths:

    For a trial with Dynamics 365 apps

    For a trial with no apps

  3. Tenant policy must allow environment creation. See Control who can create and manage environments in the Power Platform admin center

Create an environment in the Power Platform admin center

An environment provides storage for apps, flows, data, and various other resources. When users create an app in an environment, that app can connect to any data source, including connections, gateways, and flows. How you choose to leverage environments depends on your organization and the apps you're trying to build. For more information, see Environments overview.

You can store the app/business data in a database with Microsoft Dataverse. You can create a database with Dataverse with any environment.

You have multiple options when creating an environment:

Some important considerations when creating a new environment

  • Why create an environment with a database: When you create a production or sandbox environment with a Dataverse database, you have the option to add Dynamics 365 apps such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Field Service during the creation process (by selecting Yes for Enable Dynamics 365 apps). Currently, if you don't select Yes for Enable Dynamics 365 apps at the time of database provisioning, you won't be able to make this change later nor be able to install Dynamics 365 apps on this environment. You must have an appropriate Dynamics 365 license to select Yes for Enable Dynamics 365 apps.
    More information about Dataverse: What is Dataverse? and Why choose Dataverse?
  • Why create an environment without a database: If you don't need Dynamics 365 apps or don't need to use Dataverse, and you are creating canvas apps using Power Apps or flows using Power Automate using other data sources, create the environment without the Dataverse database.
  • The Enable Dynamics 365 apps decision is not reversible: Once you create an environment, if you don't select Enable Dynamics 365 apps at the time of database provisioning, you won't be able to make this change later nor be able to install Dynamics 365 apps on this environment.
  • Dynamics 365 apps and trial type environments: Currently, Dynamics 365 apps can't be enabled for environments that are trial type environments. For more information about Power Platform environment types, go to Type of environments.
  • The URL can't be that of an environment that's been deleted or changed until at least 24 hours have passed since an environment deletion or change.

Create an environment with a database

You create a database to use Dataverse as a data store. The Dataverse is a cloud scale database used to securely store data for business applications built on Power Apps. Dataverse provides not just data storage, but a way to implement business logic that enforces business rules and automation against the data. For more information, see Why use Dataverse?

Prerequisites

To create an environment with a database, you need 1GB available database capacity.

Steps

  1. Sign in to the Power Platform admin center at https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com as an admin (Dynamics 365 admin, Global admin, or Microsoft Power Platform admin).

  2. In the navigation pane, select Environments, and then select New.

  3. Enter the following, and then select Next.

    Setting Description
    Name The name of your environment.
    Region Choose a region for the environment.
    Type Choose production, trial, or sandbox.
    Purpose A description of the environment.
    Add a Dataverse data store Select Yes.
    Pay-as-you-go with Azure Select Yes to link this environment to an Azure subscription to pay for select Power Platform services such as Dataverse and Power Apps.

  4. Enter the following, and then select Save.

    Setting Description
    Language The default language for this environment. More information: Dataverse language collations
    URL Enter your organization name. Organization URLs must be unique. If your organization name has already been reserved in the destination datacenter, it won't be available.
    Currency The base currency used for reporting.
    Enable Dynamics 365 apps Select Yes and make a selection to automatically deploy apps such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service. You must have an appropriate Dynamics 365 license to select Yes. If you don't select Yes at the time of database provisioning, you won’t be able to make this change later nor be able to install Dynamics 365 apps on this environment.
    Deploy sample apps and data Select Yes to include sample apps and data. Sample data gives you something to experiment with as you learn. You must select No for Enable Dynamics 365 apps for this setting to appear.
    Security group Select a security group to restrict access to this environment. For open access, select None.

    This field is now required.

Create an environment without a database

You can create an environment without a database and use your own data store.

Prerequisites

You need 1GB available database capacity.

Steps

  1. Sign in to the Power Platform admin center at https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com as an admin (Dynamics 365 admin, Global admin, or Power Platform admin).

  2. In the navigation pane, select Environments, and then select New.

  3. Enter the following, and then select Save.

    Setting Description
    Name The name of your environment.
    Region Choose a region for the environment.
    Type You can choose production or trial.
    Purpose A description of the environment.
    Add a Dataverse data store Select No.
    Pay-as-you-go with Azure Select Yes to link this environment to an Azure subscription to pay for select Power Platform services such as Dataverse and Power Apps.

Setting an environment refresh cadence

You can indicate how often you would prefer an environment to receive updates and features to certain Microsoft Power Platform services. You have two options to choose from after creating an environment.

Service Setting Description
Canvas app authoring Frequent Get access the latest updates and newest features multiple times a month.
Moderate Get access to updates and features at least once a month.

To set refresh cadence:

  1. Sign in to the Power Platform admin center at https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com as an admin (Dynamics 365 admin, Global admin, or Power Platform admin).

  2. From the left-side menu, select Environments, and then select an environment.

  3. Select Edit

  4. Under Refresh cadence, choose the cadence type.

  5. Select Save.

The refresh cadence does not change when you will receive updates for:

  • Microsoft Power Platform
  • Dynamics 365 Sales
  • Dynamics 365 Customer Service
  • Dynamics 365 Marketing

Note

  • By default, environments are automatically in the frequent cadence; creating and editing canvas apps will receive updates once a week. When apps are published, they will receive the corresponding runtime version.
  • If you’ve chosen the moderate cadence for the environment, all creating and editing of canvas apps will receive updates once a month. When apps are published, they will receive the corresponding runtime version.

FAQ

Who can access environments?

Users are able to access resources in an environment when they have:

  • a license granting use rights for the resource being accessed in an environment. For example, a user with a Power Apps per user plan can access premium apps shared with them in any environment.

AND

  • permissions to access a resource. For example, a user can only access Power Apps that are shared with them. The following documentation outlines how to share some Power Platform resources:

What are the new trial limits for Power Apps customers?

The new trial limits are one per user.

Can an Microsoft 365 licensed user manage and create environments?

No, Microsoft 365 licensed users will not be able to manage environments.

If I create an environment in the Dynamics 365 admin center, will it appear in the Power Platform admin center?

Yes, it will appear in both admin centers.

What is the Power Apps production environment limit?

Provisioning environments is based on database capacity. Previously, it was two environments per Power Apps Plan 2 license. Now all you need is 1GB of available capacity to provision. All environments with or without Dataverse will consume at least 1GB capacity.

See also

Dataverse storage capacity
Control user access to environments: security groups and licenses