MicrosoftWhy do people even want to use named environments? Seems like a hack and you end up with negative side effects like the above. Maybe I should've made this a discussion topic instead of a comment 🤔
Hi. the default environment is the one available to anyone on the organization. As such it's difficult to put any real security controls around it. Folks setup named environments to meet specific organizational purposes they have - just like in traditional IT environments, where you may want an instance of the system for the IT group, another one for Product development, etc. Having the ability to setup multiple environments is an enterprise strategy and capability that Microsoft provides. That way each instance could have its own security, customizations, reporting, etc. It could certainly be it's own topic, you are right! In a smaller organization this may not be relevant, but b/c Microsoft builds these solutions to be 'enterprise scalable and ready', this kind of functionality is pretty critical.
Hi The PHM - Maybe you want to have some governance? Take backups? Have the ability to extend the size of the environment if it fills up? Practice good deployment of changes in non-production environments? Plenty of VERY good reasons. Best regards, Brian.
Thanks Brian, the default environment must have backups? Microsoft wouldn't be able to sell the service if it wasn't being backed up by them. Maybe I misunderstand. When mentioning Governance do you mean controlling what people can do in the environment? That's not governance that's restricting tool functions and my preference would be to set useful guidelines. What I heard is that custom environments means you don't get all the features that you're actually paying for but that could be incorrect. Deployment changes of? This is off the shelf software and really shouldn't customize COTS IMHO. That means lots of money for consultants and third parties. I would rather extend using standard APIs than customize a tool.
Here's some things I was pulling together when my org was talking about using custom environments. A bunch of this comes from Claude.ai and ChatGPT and I haven't verified it so feel free to correct it!
https://github.com/thephm/microsoft_tech/blob/main/planner%2Fposts%2FMS%20Project%20for%20the%20web%20in%20custom%20environments.md
Microsoft will be doing backups for distaster recovery purposes and you can request a restore but the option to backup and recover environments under your control is limited to non-default environments. If the off the shelf software is ok for you then sure, the deployment of additional packages, including the 'Accelerator' delivered by the product group to close some gaps between Planner and Project Online for example, wouldn't matter to you. If you use a custom environment then currently you could miss out on some features - as assigned tasks in those environments would not be shown in My Tasks, even though the plans are in My Plans. I'm not sure I understand your 'extend using standard APIs rather than customizze a tool. I'd say any extension of Dataverse is really using standard APIs, but agree that this can drive costs up. I'd suggest reviewing the Dataverse docs rather than trusing what AI might pull together from who knows where.
