Your First Azure DevOps Pipeline for Power Platform – A Complete Beginner’s Guide

Have you ever wondered how to set up Azure DevOps pipelines for the Power Platform?
Ever wished you could export your solutions safely, run tests, add security checks, generate documentation, or deploy across tenants with confidence?

All of this becomes simple once you introduce Azure DevOps into your Power Platform ALM story — and in this guide (based on my YouTube walkthrough), I’ll show you exactly how to build your first Azure DevOps pipeline.

Whether you’re brand new to DevOps or just automating your Power Platform workflows, this guide will get you from nothing to a working pipeline step-by-step.

🎥 Watch the video tutorial

Introduction

In this walkthrough, we’re going to build a simple Azure DevOps pipeline that:

✔ Connects securely to your Dataverse environment
✔ Exports a Power Platform solution
✔ Unpacks it into source control
✔ Commits the changes to your repository

Later, you can extend this pipeline to build, deploy, test, create documentation, enforce ALM governance, and much more — but today we focus on getting your first working pipeline running.

Prerequisites

Before we touch DevOps, we need three things.

1. Dataverse System Administrator permissions

You need the ability to add/remove users (because we’ll add a service principal).

2. An Azure DevOps organisation (Basic licence)

The first five are free, so you’re almost certainly covered.

3. Parallelism Request (free)

Azure DevOps uses a hosted VM to run pipelines, but you must request free parallelism.
Submit it here:

https://aka.ms/azpipelines-parallelism-request

Approval normally takes a few minutes.

After that, install the Power Platform Build Tools extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Step 1 — Create an App Registration

We need a service principal so our pipeline can authenticate to Dataverse.

1. Open Entra Admin Center → App Registrations
2. Select New Registration
3. Add API permission Dynamic CRM → user_impersonation
4. No admin consent required
5. Copy:
   • Client ID
   • Tenant ID
   • Secret

Keep them safe — we’ll need them later.

Step 2 — Add the App User in Dataverse

In the Power Platform Admin Center:

1. Open your environment
2. Go to Settings → Users → Application Users
3. Click New App User
4. Choose your App Registration
5. Assign System Administrator (for demo purposes)

Step 3 — Create the DevOps Service Connection

In Azure DevOps:

1. Open Project Settings → Service Connections
2. Select New Service Connection → Power Platform
3. Enter:
   • Environment URL
   • Client ID
   • Tenant ID
   • Secret
4. Name it something like Dataverse - Backup

This will be the authentication method for your pipeline.

Step 4 — Structure Your Repository

A recommended structure:

MyPowerPlatformProject/
├── solutions/
│   ├── src/
│   │   └── MySolution/
│   └── MySolution.zip
├── pipelines/
│   ├── export-solution.yml
│   ├── build-and-deploy-solution.yml
├── documentation/
└── README.md

Step 5 — Create Your First Pipeline

Inside Pipelines → New Pipeline:

1. Choose Azure Repos Git
2. Select your repo
3. Choose Starter Pipeline
4. Save it under:
   /pipelines/export-solution.yml

Your first run will likely fail due to parallelism — this is normal.

Step 6 — Fix Parallelism (If Needed)

If you get an error about free parallelism not being enabled:

👉 Submit the form: https://aka.ms/azpipelines-parallelism-request

Once approved, rerun your pipeline — it should now work.

Step 7 — Build the Export Pipeline

Now we turn the basic boilerplate pipeline into something useful.

1. Add name + variables

name: $(TeamProject)_$(BuildDefinitionName)_$(Date:yyyyMMdd)$(Rev:.r)

variables:
  - name: varPowerPlatformSPN
    value: Dataverse - Backup
  - name: varSolutionName
    value: ExpenseReportManager1

2. Use Windows build agent

pool:
  vmImage: 'windows-latest'

4. Pipeline Steps

steps:
- checkout: self
  persistCredentials: true
  clean: true
- task: PowerPlatformToolInstaller@2
  inputs:
    DefaultVersion: true
    AddToolsToPath: true
- task: PowerPlatformSetSolutionVersion@2
  inputs:
    authenticationType: 'PowerPlatformSPN'
    PowerPlatformSPN: '$(varPowerPlatformSPN)'
    SolutionName: '$(varSolutionName)'
    SolutionVersionNumber: '1.0.0.$(Build.BuildID)'
- task: PowerPlatformExportSolution@2
  inputs:
    authenticationType: 'PowerPlatformSPN'
    PowerPlatformSPN: '$(varPowerPlatformSPN)'
    SolutionName: '$(varSolutionName)'
    SolutionOutputFile: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\solutions\$(varSolutionName)_1.0.0.$(Build.BuildID)_managed.zip'
    Managed: true
    AsyncOperation: true
    MaxAsyncWaitTime: '60'
- task: PowerPlatformExportSolution@2
  inputs:
    authenticationType: 'PowerPlatformSPN'
    PowerPlatformSPN: '$(varPowerPlatformSPN)'
    SolutionName: '$(varSolutionName)'
    SolutionOutputFile: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\solutions\$(varSolutionName)_1.0.0.$(Build.BuildID).zip'
    Managed: false
    AsyncOperation: true
    MaxAsyncWaitTime: '60'
- task: PowerPlatformUnpackSolution@2
  inputs:
    SolutionInputFile: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\solutions\$(varSolutionName)_1.0.0.$(Build.BuildID).zip'
    SolutionTargetFolder: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\solutions\src\$(varSolutionName)'
    SolutionType: 'Both'
- task: PowerShell@2
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    script: 'pac solution create-settings --solution-zip $(Build.SourcesDirectory)\solutions\$(varSolutionName)_1.0.0.$(Build.BuildID).zip --settings-file $(Build.SourcesDirectory)\solutions\$(varSolutionName)-settings.json'

3. Commit to the repository

- task: CmdLine@2
  inputs:
    script: |
      echo commit all changes
      git config user.email "$(Build.RequestedForEmail)"
      git config user.name "$(Build.RequestedFor)"
      git checkout -b main
      git add --all
      git commit -m "Latest solution changes."
      echo push code to new repo
      git -c http.extraheader="AUTHORIZATION: bearer $(System.AccessToken)" push origin main

Step 8 — Fix Build Service Permissions (If Needed)

If you see:

“Build Service does not have Contribute permissions”

Fix it here:

Project Settings → Repositories → {repo} → Security

Find:

ProjectName Build Service (ProjectName)
Set Contribute = Allow

Re-run — pipeline succeeds.

Step 9 — Review the Exported Solution

Your repo now contains:

✔ Managed ZIP

✔ Unmanaged ZIP

✔ Settings file

✔ Unpacked solution including:

• Entities
• Model-driven apps
• Canvas apps (if any)
• Workflows
• Security roles
• Choices
• Relationships
• Customizations
• Plans

Everything you need for full Git-based version control.

Conclusion

🎉 Congratulations — you now have a working Azure DevOps export pipeline!

This pipeline gives you:

✔ A safe, repeatable backup
✔ Git history of every solution change
✔ Managed + unmanaged builds
✔ A foundation for full ALM automation

From here, you can expand into:

• Deployment pipelines
• Automated versioning
• Power Pages / Portal pipelines
• Automated documentation
• Solution analysis & testing
• Cross-tenant deployments
• Pull request validation

If you’d like the next blog/video to cover solution deployment, unit testing, wiki documentation generation, or advanced ALM, just let me know!