In another universe we did talk about Tip #545: Create non-interactive user like a boss. Since then, the product name has changed at least 27 times, Marketing Pilot and Parature came and went, Dataflex and CDS left their mark but, most importantly, we’ve got ourselves app users based on service principals.

It’s been quite a painful manual process creating those users: in Azure portal create an app registration, create a secret, add API permissions – NO, STOP DOING IT PEOPLE, IT’S NOT NEEDED, forget to copy the secret, go back 2 steps, generate new secret, switch to Dataverse admin, create an app user, assign appropriate roles (“appropriate” != “system administrator”). Switching between admin centers, tedious is the word to describe the experience.

But tedious it is no more and there is no PowerShell in sight! Behold, administrators!

The result:

That’s it! Read Microsoft Power Platform CLI admin command group – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn as the official source of truth.

I got a bit excited and didn’t check the references before writing the above. Awesome Carl de Souza got their first. Creating Service Principals Really Easily Using Pac Cli. Unlike me, Carl has patience to produce screenshots and detailed instructions, go check it out.