Elevate your Microsoft Power Platform development experience with Power CAT Tools 

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Power CAT Tools, a comprehensive suite of features designed to enhance your development experience within the Microsoft Power Platform. Whether you’re a seasoned Microsoft Power Platform maker, an administrator looking for ways to optimize development efficiency, or just getting started on the platform, the Power CAT Tools suite offers valuable resources to help you build robust and efficient solutions with greater ease. 

Upgrade your development pipeline quality 

Power CAT Tools feature suite is designed to streamline your development workflow with capabilities that automate essential tasks and provide insightful guidance based on real-world best practices. Read on to learn about the tools in this powerful suite of features.

Code Review Tool 

Automatically reviews your code to help to ensure adherence to best practices and standards, helping you identify and rectify potential issues early in the development process. 

This tool automatically reviews code to identify potential issues early in the development process, providing actionable insights and recommendations for optimization and improvement. It meticulously scans the codebase of various platform component types (canvas apps, cloud flows, bots, and more), highlighting areas that require attention and offering a standardized checklist of best practices curated by solution architects in Microsoft.  

This helps developers maintain high standards in their code, reducing the likelihood of errors and enhancing overall performance. Additionally, the tool includes features such as a code viewer with advanced search capabilities, allowing developers to quickly find and address specific issues within their code. 

Learn more about code review.

AI-generated solution documentation 

Using AI, solution documentation automates the generation of basic documentation details, significantly reducing the manual effort required. This AI-powered approach helps to ensure that documents are created efficiently and accurately, minimizing human errors and removes the burden of generating basic documentation details, allowing users to focus on more strategic activities and enhancing productivity and efficiency. Simply choose or upload an unmanaged solution, choose the desired document sections, and export to word for quick and easy documentation. 

Read more about AI solution documentation.

Risk assessment 

The Risk Assessment feature evaluates potential risks in solutions exposed by security roles and provides actionable mitigation strategies. This proactive approach helps makers and admins address risks collaboratively before and after deployment into production with real business data, helping to ensure the stability and security of their solutions and the system. 

It is imperative to establish a robust framework for managing security threat tolerance and reducing vulnerability surface area. Whether you’re using Microsoft Dataverse or any other data store, this principle remains crucial. Setting a standard for identifying risks appropriate for your business data’s context is a critical first step. Organizations should define clear guidelines and baseline policies that can systematically evaluate and address potential security threats. This proactive approach helps to ensure that all custom roles are assessed against predefined criteria, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches. Continuous monitoring and updating security configurations to adapt to evolving threats is essential for maintaining a strong security posture. 

The risk assessment tool offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities designed to enhance security and compliance specific to the Dataverse security model and Microsoft Power Platform solutions. This tool is particularly beneficial for both makers and administrators, as it provides automated scanning and compliance checks for custom security roles within Dataverse. By continuously monitoring and evaluating security roles, the tool helps identify potential weaknesses and helps to ensure that roles meet baseline access levels, which can be customized to reflect an organization’s specific security requirements.  

It flags noncompliant roles that do not meet baseline policies defined by administrators, preventing deployment of solutions with noncompliant roles and allowing app owners to take corrective action promptly. Detailed insights into the privileges and clear instructions help app owners understand the potential risks and take appropriate actions to mitigate them to achieve compliance. 

For administrators, the tool offers a unified view of security settings across different environments, making it easier to manage and monitor security roles. It also supports the evaluation of roles against configurable baseline risk ratings, helping administrators enforce compliance and maintain governance throughout the development lifecycle. 

Get more information on risk assessment.

API playground 

The API Playground, offering a Postman-like experience, allows developers to test and explore APIs seamlessly. This tool is a pre-authenticated software testing environment that helps makers quickly and conveniently interact with Dataverse web API. By eliminating the need for extensive setup or authentication processes, it simplifies the process of integrating and debugging APIs. 

Learn more information on API playground.

Plugin monitor 

The tool provides a convenient, modern interface to easily monitor and analyze plugin performance and behavior, providing insights into efficiency and helping plugin developers optimize their plugins for better performance. Use tracing to troubleshoot low-code and pro-code plug-ins. Tracing helps makers by recording run-time information as an aid in diagnosing the cause of failures, or for general validation of certain states during development. 

Learn more about plugin monitor.

Empowering makers with Power CAT Tools solutions

The Power CAT Tools solution is a distinctive community offering provided by the Microsoft Power CAT team, designed to elevate your development experience beyond what the native platform offers. Built on the low-code platform itself, this open-source repository helps to ensure transparency and offers unique insights into development best practices that are not available natively. The tools suite helps build robust and efficient solutions by making it easier for makers to adhere to best practices. 

Get started with Power CAT Tools today 

To get started with Power CAT Tools, simply download and install the app from the Microsoft App Source store. Configure your development environment to integrate with Power CAT Tools, explore the various features, and begin using the toolkit to enhance your development projects. 

Go to the GitHub repository to get started, or quickly install from AppSource.  

We hope you find Power CAT Tools valuable in your development journey. Thank you for your continued support and contributions. Happy building! 

Download Power CAT Tools today

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Source: Microsoft Power Platform