Unmanaged developer environments are being retired: what to do before 15 December
Microsoft is retiring Power Platform developer environments that aren't Managed Environments. The dates are fixed, and the risk isn't the environments themselves. It's the work sitting in them that nobody else has seen.
The dates
- 15 November 2026: creation ends. Nobody can create a new unmanaged developer environment, from Power Apps, the admin centre, PowerShell or the PAC CLI. Signing up for the Power Apps Developer Plan no longer gives you one.
- 15 December 2026: suspension starts. Existing unmanaged developer environments are suspended. Their apps, flows, agents, Power Pages developer sites and data stop being available.
- 15 January 2027: deletion starts. Suspended environments start getting deleted.
Not affected: developer environments that are already Managed Environments (including the ones environment routing creates), and production, sandbox, trial and default environments. Going forward each person can create one managed developer environment.
Why this matters more than it looks
A developer environment is personal. Nobody else looks inside it. That's where you find:
- a half-finished solution someone meant to move to dev "next week"
- a flow that was never exported or added to a solution
- the only copy of a plugin change that never made it to source control
- a Power Pages prototype the business has been shown and now expects
Sometimes the owner left the organisation a year ago. If nobody checks before 15 December, that work goes with the environment.
Step 1: find them
- Open the Power Platform admin centre and go to Manage > Environments.
- Filter where Type is Developer and Managed is No.
- Use the Last activity column to split them into still in use and abandoned.
- Note the owner of each one. If the owner has left, it's now yours to decide.
Step 2: get the work out
For every environment with anything worth keeping, export the solutions before 15 December. Then check what isn't in a solution: flows built outside solutions, canvas apps sitting loose, data someone was using to test. If it isn't in a solution it won't come out with an export, so add it to one first.
Better still, get it into source control. The PAC CLI can export and unpack a solution so the files sit in your repo, which is where they should have been anyway.
Step 3: pick one of three options
Convert it to a Managed Environment
The least disruption for the person using it. Check licensing first: Managed Environments use rights aren't included in the Power Apps Developer Plan, and people need a premium licence to run apps and flows in a managed developer environment.
Move the work to a sandbox
Import the exported solutions into a shared dev or sandbox environment. Often the better answer for a team anyway, because the work becomes visible and goes through the same pipeline as everything else.
Let it go
For environments that are genuinely empty or abandoned, and you've checked. Write down that you checked and when.
While you're there
- Turn on environment routing if you want makers to get a personal managed developer environment automatically.
- Review the Developer environment assignments tenant setting so you know who can create them from now on.
- If your developers have been building in personal environments because there's no proper shared dev and pipeline, this is a good moment to fix that. That's the bigger risk, and it doesn't go away on 15 January.
Dates checked against Microsoft's deprecation notice on 2 November 2026. Microsoft does move dates sometimes, so check the link below before you plan around them.
If you'd like a hand
Checking environments against Microsoft's upcoming changes is part of every Dynamics 365 and Power Platform health check. Setting up a shared dev environment, solutions and a pipeline so work doesn't live in personal environments is the ALM side of what I do as a Power Platform consultant.