Install and set up the Awards and Recognition template

Enterprise templates for Power Platform are enterprise-ready solutions that are designed to be installed, customized, deployed, and managed by a centralized team at your organization to support common governance and security practices.

Establish a centralized team that consists of key stakeholders, product owners, and Power Platform administrators and developers. Be sure to review Power Platform best-practices and administration resource links and to develop plans that suit your organization's needs.

More information:

• Power Platform adoption best practices
• Administer Microsoft Power Platform
• Working with enterprise systems

As a Microsoft Power Platform admin, follow the steps outlined in this article to install and set up the Awards and Recognition template.

Step 1: Review prerequisites

Review the requirements, identify opportunities and develop a plan of action that suits your organization's needs.

Confirm licensing

Confirm your organization has the necessary licensing to use enterprise templates. You need:

• One of the following Power Apps plans:

  • Power Apps Premium
  • Power Apps per app
  • Power Apps per app pay-as-you-go-meter
  • Power Apps use rights included with Dynamics 365 licenses

More license details are available in the Microsoft Power Platform Licensing Guide

Note

Power Apps use rights included with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses will not suffice to install the template.

Tip

A free Developer Plan is a great way to install the template for evaluation purposes. More information: Power Apps Developer Plan

Set up environments and data policies

It's important to have a cohesive environment and data policy strategy for enterprise templates. To successfully install and manage the Awards and Recognition template, confirm these resources and practices are in place.

• Administrators - Be sure admins with the necessary privileges are available to coordinate to assign licensing and create environments.

  • Microsoft Entra ID Global or tenant User Administrator to assign Power Apps or Power BI licensing
  • Power Platform Administrator to create environments

  More information: Microsoft Power Platform admin

• Environments - Follow application lifecycle management (ALM) best practices in creating and managing environments. Also consider:

  • A Power Platform environment is set up with a Dataverse database
  • Environment maker security role privileges, at a minimum, are assigned to the user who installs the solutions in that environment

  More information: Environments overview

• Data loss prevention policies - Ensure the environment has access to the Dataverse connector used by the template.

  More information: Data loss prevention policies

Step 2: Create connections

Cloud flows need specific connection references to work correctly. Connection references are included in the solution, but connectors often need to be manually set up.

The installation requires a Microsoft Dataverse connection. It's best to create connections before you install the template to avoid having to jump back and forth between browser windows.

Create a new connection with the Microsoft Dataverse connector.

To create connections in advance, take these steps:

1. Go to Power Apps
2. Go to Connections and select + New Connection for the Microsoft Dataverse connector and create a connection.

More information: Manage connections in canvas apps

Step 3: Install solution files

There are two solution installation options available for you to consider:

• You can select the Get it now button on the template's AppSource offer page and it automatically takes you to an install window in the Power Platform admin center.
• You can download either a managed or an unmanaged version of the solution files and manually import them into your environment according to your organization's requirements.

Tip

Go to the Templates-for-Power-Platform GitHub project site to log your questions or issues and get support for the Awards and Recognition template.

Install from AppSource

You can easily access and install the Awards and Recognition template from AppSource, a Microsoft digital storefront. Take these steps to go through the AppSource install process:

1. Go to the Awards and Recognition solution template on AppSource and select Get it now. This takes you to the Install Awards and Recognition Template window in the Power Platform admin center.
2. Select the environment that you prepared for the template.
3. Agree to the Terms and Privacy statements by checking the boxes.
4. Select Install. You're taken to a screen where you can view the installation status. Once the installation is complete, the status shows as Installed.

Important

Two solutions are always installed in your environment:

• Employee Experience Base. Contains common foundational components that all human resource (HR) solutions use. For now, this is limited to components that enable localization capabilities. By sharing this across solutions, common strings can be localized once in the base solution and all dependent solutions get the benefit.
• Awards and Recognition. Contains all the components needed to set up the Awards and Recognition program within an organization.

Download and manually install solution files

You also have the option to download managed or unmanaged solution files to manually install into your prepared environment according to your organization's requirements:

1. Download the following managed or unmanaged solution files:

   • Managed
     • mpa_EmployeeExperienceBase_managed.zip
     • mpa_AwardsAndRecognition_managed.zip
   • Unmanaged
     • mpa_EmployeeExperienceBase_unmanaged.zip
     • mpa_AwardsAndRecognition_unmanaged.zip

2. Go to Power Apps and select the environment you prepared for the solution.

3. Select Solutions on the left pane.

4. Select Import solution.

5. Browse for and select either the managed or unmanaged version of the mpa_ITBase file downloaded in previous step.

6. Select Next.

7. Select Import. This starts the import process of the Employee Experience Base solution.

8. Select Import to start the import process of the Employee Experience Base solution. Once the import is complete, you're notified with a Success message.

9. Browse for and select either the managed or unmanaged version of the mpa_AwardsAndRecognition file downloaded in previous step.

10. Select Next and Next again.

11. For each of the connections listed, select the existing connection that was created in the previous step.

12. Select Next.

13. Ignore entering values for the environment variables as that will be completed in an additional step later. Since the apps have not been imported into the environment yet, we are unable to capture what their URL values are at the moment.

14. Select Import to start the import process of the Awards and Recognition solution. Once the import is complete, you're notified with a Success message.

More information: Solution concepts

Step 4: Assign security roles

Set up security roles in your solutions so admins can manage access to and the experiences in the app. Take these steps to get started:

1. Go to Power Platform admin center.
2. Select Environment and then select the environment where the solution was installed.
3. Select Users, then select See all.
4. Choose the users who will be using the app and then select Manage security roles to assign Basic User and any other appropriate roles to each user.
5. Select Save.

Awards and Recognition

Program Admin: Assign the admin role to people who will be configuring award programs and reviewing and finalizing nominations.

• Program admins can see and update all the data
• Admins can configure awards, award assessment ratings, nomination periods, groups, and group membership
• Admins can approve, reject, withdraw, or cancelling nominations
• Admins can create, update, or delete language localization data

User: Assign the user role to everyone who will potentially nominate others for awards.

• Users can nominate people and see their own data
• Users can read the localized data

Employee Experiences Base

Localizer: You can grant the localizer role independently of the Awards and Recognition security roles so someone can create localized text strings without the ability to administer the awards program.

• Localizers can create localized text strings
• Localizers can nominate people and see their own data

Important

All users must be assigned the Basic User role in addition to any other roles assigned to them.

Step 5: Set cloud flows to on

Open the newly installed Awards and Recognition solution and verify that the cloud flow is set to the on status. If not, turn it on.

1. Select Solutions on left pane.
2. Select the Awards and Recognition solution from the list.
3. Select Cloud flows (1) on the left pane.
4. Select the flow.
5. Select Turn on on the command bar if the flow is not already set to on.

Step 6: Share the app

Once the app admin configurations are complete you are ready to share the app with people in your organization. First share the app with the Awards and Recognition program manager(s) and then with the wider organization once the program manager's setup is complete.

Share the app with the program manager

Set the Awards and Recognition program manager up first so they can configure awards, award assessment ratings, nomination periods, groups, and group memberships. Take these steps:

1. Go to Power Apps and select the environment you installed the solution in.
2. Select Solutions on the left pane and select the Awards and Recognition solution from the list.
3. Select Apps.
4. Go to the Awards and Recognition app in the list and select the three dots to the right to see a list of actions.
5. Select Share.
6. Search for and add the user who is the Awards and Recognition program manager.
7. Check the Co-owner checkbox so the program manager has edit access to the app.
8. Select roles from a drop-down list in the Data permission area. It's next to the Microsoft Dataverse tables that the Awards and Recognition app uses. Be sure to assign these two roles:
   1. Select Basic User
   2. Select Awards and Recognition - Program Admin
9. Add an email message to let the program manager know the app program is ready to be set up.
10. Select Share.

Share the app with the program participants

When the program manager is done configuring the Awards and Recognition program for your organization, it is ready to be deployed to the program participants in your organization. Take these steps:

1. Go to Power Apps and select the environment you installed the solution in.

2. Select Solutions on the left pane and select the Awards and Recognition solution from the list.

3. Select Apps.

4. Go to the Awards and Recognition canvas app in the list and select the three dots to the right to see a list of actions.

5. Select Share.

6. Search for and add the users you want to share the app with. Select Everyone from the Enter a name field's drop-down if everyone in the organization should be able to use the app.

7. Leave the Co-owner checkbox empty for regular users of the app. Check the Co-owner checkbox for all users who should have edit access to the app. There could people in addition to the program manager who need this access.

8. Select roles from a drop-down list in the Data permission area. It's next to the Microsoft Dataverse tables that the Awards and Recognition app uses. Be sure to assign two roles to each user:

   • Select Basic User
   • Select Awards and Recognition - User

9. Add an optional email message.

10. Select Share.

More information: Share a canvas app with your organization

Note

If Awards and Recognition apps aren't shared with you and you cannot access them directly from Power Apps, please contact your admin.

Step 7: Enable Copilot (optional)

Microsoft Copilot for Power Apps model-driven apps is a next-generation AI assistant for app admins to get insights about the data through conversation in natural language. As an Awards and Recognition admin, you can leverage Copilot to help you get insights on data. As a Power Platform admin, take these steps to enable Copilot and manage behavior settings for all users in the selected environment:

1. Go to the Power Platform admin center.
2. Select Environments on the left pane and then select the environment where you want to enable Copilot for model-driven app users.
3. Select Settings.
4. Expand the Product section and select Features to turn on Copilot.
5. In the Copilot section, set the value for Allow users to analyze data using an AI-powered chat experience in canvas and model-driven apps to On.
6. Select Save.
7. Next, go back to Settings.
8. Expand the Product section and select Behavior to manage behavior settings.
9. In the Release channel section, select Monthly channel from the dropdown.
10. Select Save.

Step 8: Turn on auditing (optional)

While this isn't required, we recommend enabling the audit setting on the system, so it's easy to see who created and updated records in the future. To do this:

1. Go to Power Platform admin center.
2. Select Environment on the left pane then select the environment that contains the solution.
3. Select Audit settings.
4. Select Start auditing.

Next step

Manage the Awards and Recognition app