MicrosoftHi 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.
This is a good place to start to understand environments. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/adoption/environment-strategy
Thanks Brian that link is one of the many posts I've read and for sure, I don't trust AI blindly: I also used CoPilot forgot to mention 😂. The GenAI also reference that post.
Project Accelerator is another thing I'd avoid. Microsoft created it because of missing functionality in their core product but they don't actively support it. You have to go with partners ($$). The GitHub files haven't changed in many years.
By using the APIs you are mostly shielded from changes. You can use the APIs via Power nApps if lacking true Developers. If you have Developers, you could create some of the missing functions and then you know what you built.
Microsoft will eventually (?) add the missing functionality and break Accelerator. Fingers crossed you can migrate your data with the exception of customizations made on top of Accelerator.
