Environment (Power Platform)

An environment in the Power Platform is the container for apps, flows, agents, and Dataverse — and the unit of isolation between projects, teams, and lifecycle stages (dev / test / prod). Each environment has its own Dataverse instance (optional), its own security model (environment roles plus Dataverse security roles), its own connections, its own DLP policies, and its own region (data residency). Types include default (every tenant has one, untouchable), production, sandbox (for dev/test), developer (free per-user), trial, and default-with-Teams (auto-created when apps are added to Teams teams). Designing environment strategy is the highest-leverage Power Platform governance decision.