Understanding Environment Variables in solutions

The environment variables help to unplug the configuration from the power automation & power apps and help us to port the solution across different tenants or environments with minimal/no changes to the solutions

Creation of Environment variables

Navigate to the solution where the environment variables are needed and the steps are as shown in the screenshot below.

Environmentvariable

Types of Environment variables

Type	use
Decimal	Used for numeric configuration
Text	Used for text configuration , can be used for scenarios where you need to give customized errors
Yes/No	A boolean value , may be a switch to determine if production
JSON	A complete settings can be implemented in json and can be further used
Data source	Currently it just supports SharePoint, the data source can be either SharePoint Site or library/list

Types of Environment variables:

JSON

The JSON settings help to reduce if the solution is flooded with an environment variable, for eg: if you have a field that needs to be validated in the flow for mandatory fields, against API values and a value to which it needs to be validated, instead of it being in 3 different variables, it can go as a single JSON configuration.

{
    "Field":"SSN",
    "Settings":{
        "API":"https://dummyvalue.com/api",
        "Required":true,
        "Editable":false
    }
}

Data Source

Dats source can now be configured with only two connectors

SharePoint
SAP ERP - preview mode

The available sources are

SharePoint Site	URL of the site ( not GUID of the site)
SharePoint List	GUID of the list and can only be configured if the data source is configured as a list
SAP ERP	Need to define the parameters that can be connected to the ERP system.

Note: SharePoint List chosen would be a GUID, not the title or URL of the list.

Secret

This helps to choose keys from the vault store, currently, only the azure key vault can be specified. The azure key vaults need a configuration that will be out of scope for this article and will update soon with a link for it.