Solutions- multiple deployments per environment and keeping sharepoint lists in sync

[n1112997NX]

Hello

We've been using power platform for a while now and it's starting to get some traction in the business.  We're as yet unable to afford dataverse and premium licences so we're stuck with lists.

I'm looking to start using solutions on a Risk Management app I'm creating as it looks like each department wants their own risk register on their own SP site.  This would obviously require massive duplication of flows, apps, sites and lists.

I understand how solutions can manage changes to the flows and apps but my questions would be.

    1) is there an elegent solution to keep SP list structuire in sync?  I.e. site 1 needs a new column adding do I have to carefully add the same column to each list to ensure the internal names are identical and then hope for the best.

    2) Can I have multiple instances of the same solution on the same environment? I.e. IT and Finance share an environment but have different sites configured in environment variables?

Hope that makes sense.  Thanks.

[Pstork1 · Accepted solution]

1) Unfortunately, the way the Power Platform works with lists through connections it tends to take a snapshot of the schema when the list is added to the App or flow.  Power apps has a manual way to update the schema using Refresh. The same functionality doesn't exist for Power Automate. So usually you have to delete the entire connection and recreate it. This can lead to a lot of work. The Power Platform wasn't really designed to work well with data sources where the schema changes. 

2) To the best of my knowledge there is no way to import the same Solution into a single environment more than once.

[n1112997NX]

Thanks for your response- very helpful.

It's a bit of a shame.  It's so close to being the perfect product but things like these just make things slightly harder.  Additionally if the licences for 'doing things properly' could be slightly cheaper then that would probably solve many issues.

Thanks again 

[ReinerKnudsen67]

I somewhat agree with you, but it is not the Power Platform making things harder, it is your chosen architecture. Although I see the attraction of using SharePoint, it simply isn’t a proper datasource to use with Power Apps. After two years in a project with a client doing just the same thing, let me promise you that SharePoint will give you sleepless nights especially when used with business critical use cases.