This is a fun one… I’m (probably?) late to the party on this one but I recently discovered that ‘managed environments’ are not the same thing as an environment that has managed solutions (as opposed to unmanaged solutions) in it. Colour me curious…
So it turns out that ‘Managed Environments is a suite of capabilities that allows admins to manage Power Platform at scale with more control, less effort, and more insights‘ – this definition is a bit vague so here’s a bit more information as to why ‘managed environments’ is not the same as environments that are managed (as in that have managed solutions). Enjoy…?
Environments that are Managed
Ok lets start with the easy stuff – before the whole ‘managed environments’ concept popped up, I would have referred to an environment that only contains managed solutions (E.g. Test/Production environments) as a ‘managed environment’ – as opposed to the Dev environment which only has unmanaged (editable) solutions in it so we can make changes, convert the unmanaged solution to managed (read only) and deploy the managed solution to the upward environments so no changes can be made to that solution’s components #changecontrol. Lovely. But then Microsoft decided to create the concept of ‘managed environments’ that is NOT that because… life just wasn’t complicated enough?
Managed Environments
So what are ‘managed environments’ then? In simple terms, you can ‘enable’ any environment to be ‘managed’ which will allow you to do the following for it (for more details see the official Microsoft documentation here):
- Limit (i.e. introduce restrictions) on how canvas apps can be shared
- Get Weekly usage insights (number of apps used, top makers, most popular apps/flows etc)
- View Data policies (which data policies are applied to the environment)
- Set up Power Platform pipelines (in preview)
For more indepth information on this check out the following links:
Power Platform Managed Environments – Dynamics 365 FastTrack Architecture Insights
Managed Environments For Easier Governance – Power CAT Live
So in summary…
If someone says ‘it is a managed environment’ you now have to clarify which of the two they mean. Yeeeeeey.
Areti Iles 
This article Rocks, thanks for the explanation.
LikeLike
Glad you found it useful! #keeprocking
LikeLike
Now the bonus answer would be:
Why would you let an Enviornment Unmanaged? What are arguments to NOT turn an Environment into a managed Environment?All I can find and read is arguments what the advantages are to turn an Environment into a Managed Environment. But there must be a reason why there are unmanaged Environments and why you would want to keep it that way….? Or?
LikeLike
What about the advantage of Unmanged Environments. Nowhere you read arguments why you would prefer Unmanged. I think it is in the corder of cash…
When I try to enable some features. For example Grouping I get this kind of warnings, But a clear explenation is nowhere to find..,
“Adding environments that aren’t managed will prompt you to turn on the Managed Environment setting, and turning that on may impact premium licensing requirements and billing. Learn more;
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/environment-groups
Turn on Managed Environments
To add all (1) selected environments, turn on Managed Environments for (1) of them first.
My unmanged Environment
I understand that managed environments require premium licenses and an auto-claim policy, which might affect my billing. Learn more”
LikeLike