Catch-22 on PowerApps Community Plan

[Jaldert_Maat]

Recently I was asked to look into the possibilities of using PowerApps, Flow and PowerBI to improve interconnectivity of data and reduce stand-alone tooling. Our company has a M365-2 plan, but PowerApps, powerBI and Flow have been disabled for users and we have no access to the apps or environment.

I found out that there was a Community Plan, where I might be able to learn how to use PowerApps, using its own environment so it would be a safe learning environment. However, you need to use your work account, and signing up with that I found out that the restriction on releasing those apps also applies to this. So there seems to be no way for me to experiment with the options of PowerApps until my company releases those apps to us. At which point we can start looking into whether we can actually do anything useful with it, but that's quite late in the cycle.

Is there any way to use these tools and learn/experiment on them, or am I simply stuck in a loop without escape?

[jlindstrom · Accepted solution]

You do not need to use your company credentials. You can create a new Azure AD credential outside of your company tenant and use the community plan there. That way if you leave your company you don't lose your stuff.

1. go to https://account.azure.com/organization in an in private browser session. and register a new Azure AD tenant using a non-work email. Write down the username and password

2. In another tab in the active browser session go to https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/communityplan/ and sign up using your ad credential created in step 1.

Now you can use the full community plan without your company's restrictions and test it out. If you build any apps or flows in the community plan you may export them out and import them into your company environment.

@Jaldert_Maat  if this answers your question, please mark it as a solution.

[Jaldert_Maat]

Thank you, I managed to set up an account and have access to the Community Plan now.

Downside: no access to corporate data sources, so I have to build it blind and connect the data sources later.

Upside: "Now you can use the full community plan without your company's restrictions and test it out. If you build any apps or flows in the community plan you may export them out and import them into your company environment."

[jlindstrom · Accepted solution]

Right, Microsoft isn't going to give you a back door to get around your company's security restrictions.