Power Platform Command Line: New Updates (April Refresh) v1.15.x

It is that time of the month again, where we come out with our monthly refresh of the Power Platform Command line. We are really excited about the features that we have packed into this update.

Solution command updates

In this release pac solution unpack and pack will also unpack Canvas apps using the parameter –processCanvasApps. This is still a preview capability, but from this point on, users will not have to first unpack the solution and then issue a separate command for unpack Canvas Apps. The canvas library to unpack the canvas app has been upgraded to 0.45-preview version.

Publish customizations asynchronously. Before when users published their changes, in cases where solutions were too big, users had to wait, now we have changed this functionality to asynchronous, which improves the overall performance of this capability

This capability I am really excited about, solution upgrades until recently, there was no way to verify that the solution in the target environment was upgradeable. Now pac solution upgrade does a check in the target environment before proceeding with the upgrade. No more the situation where you realize you can’t upgrade the solution in the target environment only after the upgrade fails.

Packaging updates

The packaging construct within Power Platform allows a user to bundle multiple solutions into a package and can be deployed all together as one unit. This is particularly useful when you are making your application available via AppSource. Now we have updated the command to support applications that you develop for Teams and One Dynamics and One Platform.

The pac package init capability now defaults package project as an SDK style project that can be used from within Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code

You can also add pre-built solution.zip files to the package, instead of having to build from source.

Administration improvements

For the administration commands, you can now create, update, and delete Microsoft Teams environments.

The pac admin backup command –notes parameter has been deprecated in both the command line and the service endpoint. You can still use your old automation scripts but, please start working on migrating to this capability. If you do provide the –notes the command will emit a warning and it will be ignored.

As always we are excited to bring these capabilities to you. If you have additional feedback please reach out to us via the following forums ISVFeedback@Microsoft.com or The PowerUsers community. Raise the issue and bugs at the following location in GitHub https://aka.ms/powerplatform-vscode