Upgrade CoE - Having changed multiple components

[LarsHem]

We have changed some of the flows in the CoE kit so fit our company needs.  Until now theese changes has been done directly in the "Center of Excellence - Core Components" solution.

When we now want to upgrade the CoE kit i assume that theese changes will be overwritten by the update.

I can see that form Microsoft documentation that you should do the neccessary changes in a new unmanaged solution etc (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/coe/setup#extending-the-starter-kit), but how are you guys doing this in real life - step-by-step. 

[HSheild]

Hi @LarsHem ,

First of all, your flows won't get overwritten if you upgrade the CoE solutions using the default import settings. However you will also not see the most recent updates from the release.  There is an option when you import a solution to override unmanaged customisations - this will overwrite your changes as you have essentially added a layer of unmanaged configuration to your environment.

How I tackle this is (at a very basic level) ...

1. Create a new solution in your CoE environment
2. Take a copy of the flows from the CoE Starter Kit that you want to edit and put them in the new solution
3. Make changes to the copied flows
4. Turn off the original flows 

I do all of this in a Dev environment and then promote the new solution (as managed) to Test and Prod environments.

I hope this is of some help, if you are new to Solutions then I understand that this is all very confusing!

 Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.

[LarsHem]

Hi @HSheild,

Thanks for your feedback. I have some follow-up questions, i hope you can answer (you are correct, im not that familiar with solutions).

1. When you say "copy" a flow from the coe solution into a new unmanaged solution - Do you mean export/import the flow or just adding it to the unmanaged solution?  
2. When you say that you promote the new solution with the changes to prod - Does this mean that in prod you have the CoE Core Solution installed in addition to your new solution? And that you in prod also needs to turn of the flows you changed in the CoE core solution or is there some kind of "merge" then you import your new solution to prod?

[HSheild]

Hi @LarsHem 

1. To copy a flow, open the flow and click Save As.  Then go to your new Solution and use the Add existing button to add the copied flow to the Solution

2. Yes, in the Prod environment I have the CoE Core solution installed as it has components that the modified flow depends on.  And yes, also turn off the original CoE flows in the Prod environment that you have made copies of.

[LarsHem]

Hi again @HSheild ,

We have looked more into this and i still cant get this to work as expected.

When i do a "Save as" on one of the CoE Core flows (Admin | Welcome Email v3 - trigger is Dataverse (when row is added)) it gets saved in "My flows" as expected and i can add it to my unmanaged solution.

So everything fine with this one.

But with other flows i run in to two different problems when using the "save as" function:

1 - I try the same with one of the flows in CoE Governance solution (Microsoft Teams Admin | Ask for Business Justification when Microsoft Teams environment is created - trigger is Dataverse (when recored is creaated, updated or deleted)).
I can "Save as" on the flow, but when trying to add this to the unmanaged solution this flow i saved is not appearing in the list of flows i can add to my solution.

2 - When trying to do a "Save as" on one of the flows in CoE Core - CLEANUP - Admin | Sync Template v3 (Check Deleted) i end up with an error message saying something about "sub flows is only supported for flows made in solutions"

Theese two issues are stopping us from configuring a good ALM for the CoE kit.

Any ideas?

[HSheild]

Hi @LarsHem 

Looks like you are running into some of the limitations of flows in Solutions - which you can find here Solutions in Power Apps - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

A lot of the flows have been updated recently to call child helper flows which is causing the issue you are experiencing in 2.  I'm not sure what the solution is other than manually recreate the flows, which won't be fun!

A good place to get support for the CoE is on GitHub where the Microsoft team manage the product development Issues · microsoft/coe-starter-kit · GitHub.  The team are really responsive on GitHub and might be able to give more insight on how they intend flows to be extended...  currently the documentation just says the following, but that doesn't work in all cases...

"It's currently not possible to extend canvas apps or flows. If you want to make customizations to apps and flows, create a copy add them to your unmanaged solution."

[LarsHem]

Thanks for you reply. We will try to open a "ticket "on GitHub to see if they can give us some more insights. Thanks again for your help!