D365 – Canvas App Sharing with Security Groups

Introduction

When using canvas apps in a project, in addition to assigning licenses, configuring business units, and security roles for new users, you also need to explicitly share the canvas app with those users. Otherwise, they will not be able to see the app in Power Apps.

If you manually share the app with each user one by one, Power Apps will eventually display a warning when there are many users:

Try security groups. For best results, we recommend using security groups to share your app with more than 100 users.

In addition, this manual process is cumbersome.

Typically, during project implementation, there are at least three environments (development, testing, and production). If the project uses canvas apps, you would need to repeat this process in every environment. On the other hand, by sharing the canvas app with a security group, and then adding new users into the group when needed, the whole process becomes far more efficient.

If you haven’t tried both methods before, it may be hard to appreciate just how much more efficient the latter is.

The following are the detailed steps for reference.

Detailed Steps

Step 1. Create a Security Group

1. Open Microsoft 365 admin center
2. Go to Teams & groups → Active teams & groups → Security → Add a group
3. Select Security as the group type
4. Fill in Name and Description according to your requirements, then click Next
5. Click Create group

P.S: Microsoft 365 admin center addresses:

1. portal.partner.microsoftonline.com (Global)
2. portal.partner.microsoftonline.cn (21Vianet)

Step 2. Add Users to the Security Group

1. Search for the user(s) as needed
2. Select the checkbox for the user(s)
3. Click Manage groups in the menu bar
4. Search for the Security group, select it, then click Save changes

Step 3. Share the Canvas App with the Security Group

1. Open Power Apps (make.powerapps.cn or make.powerapps.com)
2. Navigate to Apps
3. switch to the All apps tab
4. select the canvas app
5. click Share in the toolbar Search for the security group
6. select the group
7. click Share