Catalog in Power Platform

The Power Platform Catalog is a feature within Microsoft's Power Platform that helps organizations optimize their use of the platform. It is especially beneficial in organizations where developers and makers build and share components and templates, as it encourages the growth of communities and support groups that can unlock value from a diverse set of personnel.

The catalog consists of components and templates. Components can include items such as custom connectors, Power Apps component framework controls, Power Automate flows, Canvas apps, and Model-driven apps. Templates, on the other hand, represent advanced starting points for components, which connect to enterprise systems and resources, and use the organization's themes.

Developers and makers can use the catalog to easily find and install Power Platform templates and code components within their organization. They can find and install the latest and authoritative version of a component, and get started with templates that provide immediate value.

For administrators and line of business approvers, the catalog offers a central location to store and maintain power platform artifacts. It enables approval workflows for the use of sanctioned components and templates, especially where a high degree of care is required due to sensitive regulatory and statutory scenarios. The catalog also provides management capabilities with settings and metadata.

The process of using the catalog involves creating, submitting, approving, discovering, and acquiring solutions and templates. Makers and developers create and submit these solutions to the catalog, administrators and line of business approvers review and approve these solutions to be shared with the organization, and then makers and developers can discover and acquire these solutions from the catalog.

Finally, it's important to understand the terminology associated with the catalog: 

• A Catalog Item is what is submitted to or installed from the catalog.
• A Catalog Publisher is the entity that owns the application.
• Submission is the act of sharing an item, which creates a submission request.
• Discovery is the act of finding items within the catalog by authorized users.
• Acquisition is the act of installing the item to a target environment by a developer.

Please note that as of my last training cut-off in September 2021, this feature was in preview and may not have been fully functional or ready for production use.

Discovering the Benefits of Power Platform Catalog

The Power Platform Catalog is an essential tool for organizations looking to streamline their management and distribution of components. By serving as a single source of truth, the catalog helps to ensure consistency and improve collaboration among team members. Furthermore, it simplifies the approval process, enabling organizations to maintain proper governance and control over their solutions. By harnessing the power of Power Platform CLI, teams can efficiently manage, deploy, and consume components, enhancing productivity and driving innovation.

 

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Learn about Catalog in Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform Catalog is a centralized location for storing Power Platform components, a single source of truth for an organization. This video will cover the steps to get started with Power Platform Catalog, such as the approval process, facts about Catalog, open App Source, install Catalog Manager App, open Visual Studio Code, install Power Platform CLI, create Power Platform connections, show the created connections, use the Pac Catalog command, export the solution, change the file path, modify the submission file, and submit. All these steps will help someone understand the end-to-end process for setting up and using Power Platform Catalog.

More links on about Catalog in Power Platform

Abey Abraham - Power Platform Architect

Catalog in Power Platform - publish and manage reusable solution components in power platform. Well explained! https://lnkd.in/gZvdm-TV.

GitHub - microsoft/PowerPlatform-Catalog: Power Platform ...

Catalog in Power Platform. This is a discussion forum for reporting issues, requesting features and providing feedback for the Power Platform.

Power Platform Centre of Excellence - Microsoft 365 advocates

The app catalog can be a great entry point to launch apps for end users and makers can explore to see if an application already exists before they create ...

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May 25, 2023 — Learn how to accelerate development with the Catalog in Power Platform in both green field (creating a new app from scratch) and enhancement ...

Keywords

Power Platform Catalog, Catalog Manager App, Power Platform CLI, Open App Source, Open Visual Studio Code