Center of Excellence (COE) Starter Kit – Advantages, Do’s, and Don’ts and, Troubleshooting

What and why? 

In the past few years, Spyglass has helped many clients with installing the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence (COE) Starter Kit in their environments. In this blog, I am putting together some of the main advantages of the kit, some of the do’s and don’ts, some common errors, and troubleshooting steps that we have learned from past experiences. Let’s begin with some basic definitions around the Microsoft Power Platform and COE starter kit.

Microsoft Power Platform is a powerful suite of tools that enables businesses to create custom applications, automate workflows, create websites, chatbots, and analyze data without extensive coding knowledge. However, implementing Power Platform across an entire organization can be challenging without proper planning and governance.

This is where the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence (COE) Starter Kit comes in. The Starter Kit is designed to help organizations establish a COE for Power Platform implementation. It is a collection of resources, templates, and best practices that can help organizations get started with the Power Platform quickly and efficiently.

Advantages of using the Power Platform COE Starter Kit

1. Standardized governance and best practices-

The Starter Kit provides guidance on establishing a standardized governance framework and best practices for Power Platform implementation. This helps ensure that all users are following the same guidelines and using the tools in a consistent manner.

2. Accelerated implementation-

The COE Starter Kit includes pre-built templates for governance, change management, and other processes critical to the success of a Power Platform implementation. These templates can save organizations a lot of time and effort in setting up their own processes from scratch. Some of the examples of pre-built templates are Admin | Sync Templates, Admin Cleanup Templates etc. For example, the “CLEANUP - Admin | Sync Template v3 (Orphaned Makers)” flow runs weekly and checks if any makers have left the organization - if maker information cannot be found in Azure AD/Office 365 Users, any resources created by the maker (apps, cloud and desktop flows, environments, chatbots) are marked as orphaned.

3. Increased efficiency and productivity-

With a COE in place, organizations can streamline their Power Platform implementation process, reducing the time and effort required to deploy new applications and workflows. This helps to increase efficiency and productivity across the entire organization.

4. Improved collaboration and communication-

The Starter Kit includes templates for creating a Power Platform governance team and communication plan. This helps to improve collaboration and communication between stakeholders, including IT, business users, and executives. These tools can help organizations share knowledge, ask questions, and collaborate on projects.

5. Reduced risk and increased security-

The COE Starter Kit provides guidance on security and compliance best practices, helping to reduce the risk of data breaches or other security issues. It also provides recommendations for monitoring and managing user access to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to sensitive data.

6. Greater flexibility and scalability-

The Power Platform COE Starter Kit is designed to be flexible and scalable, allowing organizations to adapt their implementation approach as needed based on changing business requirements. This ensures that the organization can continue to benefit from Power Platform as its needs evolve over time.

7. Ongoing Support-

Microsoft provides ongoing support for the COE Starter Kit, including regular updates and new resources. This means that organizations can continue to benefit from the latest best practices and tools for implementing the Power Platform.

What is the COE starter kit not good for?

While the Power Platform COE Starter Kit provides a wealth of resources and best practices to help organizations implement the Power Platform, it may not be suitable for everyone. Here are some cases where the COE Starter Kit may not be a good fit:

• Small organizations: The COE Starter Kit may be too comprehensive for small organizations that do not have enough IT staff or complex processes to manage. In such cases, a simpler implementation approach may be more appropriate.

• Customization needs: The COE Starter Kit provides pre-built templates and best practices that are designed to work for most organizations. However, if an organization has unique customization needs, they may need to create their own processes and templates, which may not be covered in the COE Starter Kit.

• Limited resources: Implementing the Power Platform at enterprise scale requires significant resources, including time, money, and personnel. If an organization has limited resources, they may struggle to implement the COE Starter Kit effectively.

• Existing processes: If an organization has well-established processes for managing governance, change management, and other aspects of their IT environment, they may not need to use the COE Starter Kit. In such cases, they may be better off adapting their existing processes to work with the Power Platform.

What’s new in the latest version of the COE starter kit?

Recently, Microsoft has introduced some new tools in the kit including the “Center of Excellence Setup Wizard” (in Preview) which would guide you through the setup instructions and highlight the gaps and errors. In the example below, the wizard scanned the pre-requisites for the service account that is used for COE installation and it would report whether or not the account has all the required licenses and permissions.

Here are a couple of snapshots from the setup wizard…

Common errors the installation might face

A quite common error that some beginner administrators might face is that they try to upload the downloaded parent zip file to the solutions. The error seen is as follows.

The COE installation instructions from Microsoft clearly say to extract the content of the main zip file and then install the components from there. So, make sure you extract content from the parent zip file and the folder containing all the packages and solutions should look like the below.

In some recent installations, we have faced the following issues, and I am sharing the possible cause and remedies.

While installing the Audit Log solutions, its easy to skip setting up the “run only users” settings. If that’s the case, when you turned on the child flow and parent flow, the parent flow will fail on the ‘run child flow’ activity with the following error:

“Failed to parse impersonation invoker connections from trigger 'manual' outputs. Details: 'Could not find 'x-ms-user-id' header in the trigger request. Workflow has connection references '["shared_commondataserviceforapps_1"]' with 'invoker' as impersonation runtime source.'”

For the same reason of not setting up the “run only users” connections, users would face the same issue on the “CLEANUP - Admin | Sync Template v3” flow as well. The error would look something like this:

"Request to XRM API failed with error: 'Message: Flow client error returned with status code "BadRequest" and details "{"error":{"code":"MultipleErrorsOccurred","message":"Multiple errors occurred: 'BadRequest,BadRequest,BadRequest,BadRequest'. Please see details.","details":[{"code":"ChildFlowNeverPublished","message":"The workflow with id…”

To fix these issues, open the flow and click on “edit” next to “run only users”

Make sure you have selected your service account as “user this connection” in the “connection used” section.

In conclusion, the Microsoft Power Platform COE Starter Kit provides a comprehensive set of tools and resources for establishing a Center of Excellence for Power Platform implementation. By following the guidance and best practices provided, organizations can ensure that they are maximizing the value of the Power Platform across the enterprise while minimizing risk and improving efficiency. Also, by providing pre-built templates, training resources, collaboration tools, and ongoing support, the COE Starter Kit can help organizations get the most out of the Power Platform. Do you want help implementing a COE Starter Kit? Contact us today!