ALM: Unified Publisher, Component Libraries and Reuse

The role of a Unified Publisher in Power Platform Solutions

In the context of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) in Microsoft Power Platform, the concept of a unified publisher represents one of the most important best practices to ensure consistency and traceability among developed solutions. A publisher defines essential parameters such as the prefix and choice prefix, which are used to name and uniquely identify all entities, columns, and components created within a Dataverse solution.

This approach prevents naming collisions, dependency conflicts, and ensures that all artifacts developed in a project share a consistent identity. As recommended in Microsoft’s ALM frameworks, all development teams should use a single publisher for a project, regardless of how many solutions or modules it contains.

Practical Example of Publisher Definition

• Publisher Name: Contoso
• Prefix: contoso
• Choice Prefix: 12345
• Publisher Contacts: IT Governance Office, contoso.com

These data points are then used as prefixes for all project artifacts, ensuring a uniform naming convention such as contoso_salesorder or contoso_customersegment.

Component Libraries and Solution Reuse

The creation and use of component libraries represent a key strategy for reuse and standardization within Power Platform. These libraries can include:

• Custom Controls (PCF) developed in TypeScript to extend the user interface.
• JavaScript scripts for client-side event handling in Dataverse forms.
• Canvas app templates and Power Pages modules for rapid solution creation.
• Preconfigured business rules and Power Automate flows to automate common processes.

Component libraries improve team productivity and reduce the risk of code duplication. They can also be published as managed solutions and deployed across multiple environments through DevOps pipelines.

Main Benefits of Reuse

• Reduced development and testing time.
• Consistency of user experience and business logic.
• Lower maintenance and update costs.
• Improved governance and version traceability.

Version Management and Automated ALM

Each Power Platform solution must include a version composed of four numbers (for example, 1.0.10.125). This numbering is essential for managing patches and incremental updates. In modern ALM processes, these versions are automatically managed through Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions, using Power Platform Build Tools.

DevOps pipelines allow exporting, packaging, and importing solutions between development, testing, and production environments, maintaining alignment with the defined publisher and component libraries. It is a best practice to keep all solutions and libraries versioned in the source code repository in unpacked format, allowing for precise comparisons and reviews.

This diagram illustrates the typical Power Platform solution flow: development in unmanaged mode, conversion to managed for testing, and release into production. All elements — including component libraries and publisher — must remain consistent throughout the entire cycle.

Best Practices for Publishers and Libraries

1. Unify the publisher across all project solutions, avoiding multiple prefixes.
2. Version your component libraries consistently with main solutions.
3. Use managed solutions for distribution in non-development environments.
4. Archive component libraries in centralized repositories to facilitate reuse.
5. Use Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions to automate deployment and quality checks.

By following these practices, organizations achieve greater stability, fewer deployment errors, and improved collaboration across technical teams.