Fetching connectors through the dataverse webapi

[bilal684]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to automate the setup of connection references through DevOps so we can easily deploy our Cloud Processes (Flows) from an environment to another. I plan to do it through powershell.

For that, I believe I need need to fetch the connector entity but when I do so through postman, I receive an empty json list although I do have plenty of connectors on powerapps. Am I missing something? Perhaps I'm looking for the wrong entity?

I want to search for the connection so I can update a connection reference through the api to automate my deployment process.

Thank you 🙂

[EricRegnier]

Hi @bilal684,

Are you using the new Connection Reference? This should simplify your deployments. I simply include the connection references in my solution to automate that process. More info: 

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-new-solution-import-experience-with-connec... 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/data-platform/create-connection-reference

If you're using the CDS (current environment) connector then it's even simpler as you don't need to setup any connection in the target environment, but for others all you'll need is to set them up once prior import.

Hope this helps...

[bilal684]

Hello Eric,

Thank you for your reply. I am using connection references and the CDS (current environment) connector. The issue I am facing is that I would like to automatically import my cloud flows solution into an environment through DevOps release pipelines. For that, I've added all my flows in one solution along with a connection reference (by the way, my connection reference also used CDS (current environment) connector).

The challenge I'm facing is that right now, the connection reference is setup right before importing the solution, through the UI in PowerApps and I did not find a way, through API calls, to set that connection reference. I was wondering if there was a way to do that using API calls so we would configure that within our release pipeline in DevOps. 

Did anyone ever face this challenge before? I'm curious to see if there's a way of doing this through API calls.

Thank you,

[EricRegnier]

Yes, CDS (current environment) do use connections in the backend but there's actually no manually setup steps to perform. If you look at the flow, it's actually not tagged to any connection...

I have a similar setup as you with auto-deployments via Azure DevOps for solutions containing cloud flows and there's no manually steps for CDS (current environment) connector. That said, I'm confused by what is meant by  "the connection reference is setup right before importing the solution". It should import the 1st time to any target environment. What build tools are you using (I'm using Power Platform build tools)? What error message/log are you getting?

Cheers

[bilal684]

Hello Eric,

Thank you for your reply. I am currently using the Dynamics 365 Build Tools. I was not aware that there was Power Platform build tools. I will check these out.

Basically what I mean by "the connection reference is setup right before importing the solution" is that when you manually import a managed solution that contains a connection reference, the only way to set that connection reference is when you import the managed solution in power apps, you will be prompted to set it. I wanted to import the flows using DevOps but couldn't figure out how that connection reference would be setup.

Thank you, I'll check the power platform build tools to see if something can be done with that and reply back here.

[EricRegnier]

Cool, check it out. With the Power Platform build tools, there’s no manually step and won’t be prompt for connection references to “Common Data Service (current environment)” connector.