Security and Governance: Building Systems That Won’t Collapse Under Pressure

Central Planning doesn’t tolerate production failures. Neither should your Power Platform solutions.

Over the past two days, we’ve been implementing proper security and governance for the CCCP Factory Portal. Not because we’re checking boxes, but because production systems need real foundations.

Environment Strategy: Dev, Test, Prod

Yesterday we set up dedicated environments with automated pipelines between them. Dev for experiments. Test for validation. Production for what users actually depend on.

No more manual exports. No more “copy this config.” Everything flows through automated gates. If it breaks in test, it stops there.

Source Control: Every Change Tracked

Today we integrate GitHub into the workflow. Before anything hits UAT, test, or production, it gets extracted to source control. Every component. Every configuration. Everything versioned.

When something changes in production, we know exactly what, who, when, and why. We can diff versions. We can roll back. We can branch for experiments without risking the main line. The solution’s history lives in Git, not just in someone’s head.

Governance Team: Humans in the Loop

Every commit should trigger Teams notifications. The governance channel gets direct links to pull requests. Maker admins review before approving the next promotion.

DLP Policies: Controlling Data Flows

We implemented Data Loss Prevention to prevent mixing production data with unclassified external services. If you try connecting harvester data to something unsecure, the policy blocks it. Hard stop.

This protects against accidental leakage. A well-intentioned maker shouldn’t be able to expose operational metrics without proper security review. The DLP policy makes that mistake impossible.

Portal Security: Defense in Depth

Security roles control portal access. Anonymous visitors see public resource displays. But the admin dashboard with harvester assignments, production metrics, and operational data? Locked behind authentication and proper table permissions.

This matters when you’re coordinating real operations. The data affects real decisions. It needs real protection.

The table permission model gives granular control. Field supervisors get read access without full admin rights. Teams access only their resources. The security flexes with organizational needs.

Why This Matters

  • Without environment management, you fight fires constantly. With it, you deploy with confidence.
  • Without source control, you guess at what broke. With it, you know exactly what happened.
  • Without governance, you hope everyone makes good decisions. With it, you ensure alignment.
  • Without DLP, you trust every maker to understand every security risk. With it, secure choices become the default
  • Without portal security, you expose sensitive data. With it, you protect what matters while staying accessible.
  • The CCCP Factory Portal is a production system. We treat it that way from the infrastructure up.

acdc-badge-sniper / SKILL.md : An AI agent skill for Hackathon Strategy

We built an AI agent skill that helps ACDC teams identify their best badge targets and create action plans. It works with Claude Code, VS Code Copilot, and ChatGPT.

What it does

  • Fetches live ACDC data (badges, teams, claims, rankings)
  • Matches your project to optimal badge targets
  • Creates time-boxed checklists with evidence requirements
  • Generates 30-60 second judge pitch scripts

    Installation and usage

    Claude Code
    Drop the `acdc-badge-sniper` folder into your skills directory and invoke it.

    VS Code Copilot
    Copy `copilot-instructions.md` to `.github/copilot-instructions.md` in your project, or paste it directly into Copilot Chat.

    ChatGPT / OpenAI
    Use openai-system-prompt.md as your system prompt or Custom GPT instructions.

    Data sources
    The skill uses live ACDC data and updates regularly to reflect new badges and team standings!

    Quick start

    Tell your AI assistant:
    1. Your team name
    2. What you’ve built (2-6 bullets)
    3. Your stack (M365, Azure, Power Platform, etc.)
    4. Time remaining
    5. Constraints (no admin, no external APIs, shorthanded, etc.)

    It will return your top 5 badge targets with checklists, evidence requirements, and judge pitches.

    Get the skill
    https://github.com/Puzzlepart/ACDC-26/blob/main/skills/acdc-badge-sniper/SKILL.md

Screenshots!

META: creating the acdc-badge-sniper to snipe badges

By sharing this skill we aim for the following badges:

  • Sharing is Caring We made the badge-sniper available for other teams to use; it’s literally a shared tool.
  • Community Champion We didn’t just publish it; we’ll help teams set it up and use it, which is direct community support.
  • Hipster Agent skills + Claude Code / Copilot / ChatGPT workflows are bleeding‑edge dev tooling
  • Dataminer The skill fetches live ACDC blob data and converts raw JSON into ranked, actionable strategy.
  • Power User Love Tiny YAML + markdown config drives complex AI output: low‑code definition with pro‑code impact.
  • Plug N’ Play It plugs into VS Code Copilot via copilot-instructions.md, meeting “plugin/app” intent.

The Right Tool for the Right Comrade: Model-Driven Apps comes to play!

Central Planning doesn’t choose ideology. It chooses what works.

The CCCP Factory Portal started with Power Pages, combining low code blocks with pro-code templates, custom Liquid, FetchXML dashboards. Perfect for our public-facing production tracking. But our internal operations team needed something different.

Meet The Harvester!

We built a Dynamics 365 model-driven app for our back-office comrades. Same Dataverse foundation. Different interface. Different purpose.

What It Manages:

Orders: Production orders from procurement to fulfillment
Order Lines: Individual line items, quantities, status tracking
Resources: Wheat, potatoes, carrots, inventory levels and thresholds
Alerts: Automated notifications when quotas drop below targets
Harvesters: Equipment tracking, maintenance schedules, field assignments

The operations team doesn’t need flashy dashboards or Soviet aesthetics. They need forms. They need views. They need business process flows. They need to work with data efficiently without friction.

Model-driven apps give them exactly that, automatically generated interfaces based on our Dataverse schema. No custom UI code required. Point, click, configure. Low-code where low-code makes sense.

Internal workers operate in peace with the tools built for data management. External users experience the crafted interface designed for engagement. Both solutions leverage the Power Platform fully: low-code and pro-code working in harmony.

We didn’t pick a side. We picked both. That’s how you build comprehensive solutions.

Pro-code you ask?

Don’t think that we haven’t forgot about it, the whole portal has a bunch of templates build in with pro code. Have you seen our amazing dashboard? With custom fetch templates, bootstrapped to look sleek and implemented as a modern high-end webpage, we make sure that it has the highest of standards which can be a bit though when you don’t go a bit out of the low-code environment!

Remember that everything is responsive and works on all platforms!

Still not convinced we are pro-coding? We are going all inn inmplementing API calls!

As we speak, we have implemented API calls and lines on lines with javascript to make sure users will be able to speak to the dataverse backend apps we have designed with low code. Talk about smashing together the best of both world!

Above is just a snippet from one of the javascript files, here we do api call to dataverse to make sure order records are made in our order table.

Chameleon: Adapting the CCCP Experience to Every Screen

The Five-Year Plan doesn’t ask whether your workers use desktops or phones. It demands results regardless.

So we’re making sure to build the CCCP Factory Portal to adapt like a chameleon to every device. Desktop monitors at Central Planning? Full glory with detailed dashboards. Field supervisors checking quotas on tablets? Optimized layouts. Comrades reviewing production targets on phones? Clean, focused mobile experience.

Responsive by Design, Not by Accident

We’re implemented proper responsive design from foundation to finish:

Smart Layout Adaption: CSS Grid and Flexbox layouts that reorganize based on viewport. Our quota cards stack elegantly on mobile. Navigation collapses into a hamburger menu. Dashboard panels reflow intelligently.

Breakpoint Strategy: Media queries ensure smooth transitions across device classes. Nothing breaks. Nothing squishes. Everything adapts.

Mobile-First Header: We solved the hardest problem, complex navigation with logo, search, and menu items. Z-index layering keeps elements properly stacked. Flexbox ensures space distribution. The logo hides on small screens, leaving just the bold “CCCP” text with the hamburger menu.

Progressive Enhancement: The base experience works everywhere. Enhanced features layer on for larger screens. Classic Soviet efficiency, maximum utility with minimal waste.

Resize the browser. Open it on your phone. Pull it up on a tablet. The CCCP Factory Portal adapts seamlessly to every form factor while maintaining the aesthetic and functionality that makes it uniquely ours.

A solution that doesn’t adapt is a solution that fails half its users. We adapted. We delivered.

#ResponsivenessisKing

Thieving Bastards? You Better Believe It, Comrade

TL;DR: We stole everything. Seventeen AI providers, Bootstrap 5, Font Awesome, fifty open-source libraries, three cloud platforms. Zero reinvented wheels. Maximum strategic theft.

We don’t rebuild the wheel. We steal the best wheels already invented, bolt them onto our Soviet production machine, and get back to building features that matter.

Seventeen AI providers powering our Minecraft bots. OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek. Why pick one when you can leverage them all? The entire PrismarineJS suite handling pathfinding, combat, and 3D rendering. Fifteen specialized libraries doing the heavy lifting.

The CCCP Factory Portal? Bootstrap 5 for the responsive grid, components, and utilities. Font Awesome 6 giving us 10,000+ icons out of the box. React, Vite, TypeScript, Tailwind. Cloudflare for hosting, AWS for storage, Docker for containers. Power Platform, Dataverse, Microsoft Graph holding it together.

Eighty-plus dependencies. Why write custom CSS for modals when Bootstrap solved it? Why draw icons when Font Awesome ships production-ready SVGs? Why build authentication when Prismarine handles it?

The result: faster development, smaller bundles, and a UI that works everywhere. We focus energy on the business problem—automated resource management, real-time dashboards, intelligent harvesting agents—not on rebuilding grid systems or protocol handlers.

This is smart engineering. Use what exists. Steal relentlessly. The Thieving Bastards badge is ours.

#ThievingBastards

Pro-Coded, Pixel-Perfect: The CCCP Portal’s Client-Side Stack

We do not drag-and-drop this portal! We pro-code it. Every template. Every style. Every animation. Bootstrap 5, modern CSS, PAC CLI workflow, version controlled like a real product (pulling it down locally for better control as well).

The front-end is built for performance and maintainability. CSS Variables for theming, change `–cccp-red` once, the whole site updates. BEM-style naming for scalable components. SVG data URIs for the golden star pattern and noise texture, so that we are not burning HTTP requests on background images. Responsive design from mobile using Bootstrap’s grid and custom Flexbox where it matters.

Dashboard quota cards pull live Dataverse data through Liquid templates, but the presentation is pure client-side Bootstrap. Progress bars. Badges. Color-coded top borders, amber for wheat, green for potatoes, orange for carrots. All styled with CSS variables for consistency. The search? Bootstrap modal with keyboard accessibility and proper focus management. No dropdown that overlaps the banner.

As mentioned, we used PAC CLI to download the portal, coded it locally in VS Code with all our extensions and dev tools, then pushed it back to Power Pages. That workflow gets you pixel-perfect layouts, semantic HTML, proper ARIA labels, and a UI that scales.

The result: a portal that looks clean at 2am, loads fast, and doesn’t make the committee squint to read production quotas. Modern client-side architecture. Maintainable code. Great UX.

#ClientSideSalsa

The image above showcases responsive design for mobile phones.

Early birds

If you know us, you know we dont give up easily. That does NOT only mean staying up late working, but also getting up before the sun rises and get the code flowing!

Let’s conquer the day and keep mining, making and lifting the good spirit!

Dashboard? More like Dash-DELIVERED: Real-time Dataverse-driven production metrics hit the CCCP Factory Portal

We just went from “dummy data for the demo” to “live Dataverse feeds driving every quota card” in the CCCP Factory Portal dashboard. No more hardcoded 2,450 wheat units that never change. Now it’s real: fetch the resource table, pull the actual quantities and thresholds, calculate percentages on the fly, and display it with proper color-coded progress bars and badges.

The Power Pages Liquid templating lets us use `{% fetchxml %}` to query Dataverse, loop through results with `{% for resource in resourceData.results.entities %}`, and map resource names to icons/colors. Clean. Efficient. Soviet-approved.

And the UI? CCCP-themed gradients, golden stars, muted colors that don’t burn your retinas at 2am. Cards with colored top borders (amber for wheat, green for potatoes, orange for carrots). Progress bars that actually mean something because they’re tied to real inventory levels. We made sure to let the user know by a quick glance how much the inventory carry right now, plus giving amazing visuals with progress bars and percentage numbers that represent the units.

We didn’t use the drag-and-drop builder for this. We pro-coded the entire dashboard as a custom web template in VS Code using Bootstrap 5, CSS Grid, and modern responsive design patterns. Downloaded the portal with PAC CLI, built it locally with proper version control, then pushed it back. That’s how you get pixel-perfect layouts and custom FetchXML integration that actually scales.

And if it is responsive you ask? Well..

We are claiming the “Dash it out” badge, because dashboards aren’t just for show, they’re for running a production facility where every unit counts and every threshold matters. But at the same time, let’s put some extra effort into making it looks nice! 🙂 Now back to work, Comrade. The village demands real-time analytics!

We’ve officially unlocked portal search mode in the CCCP Factory Portal

During the first night we turned on Dataverse Search in the environment and wired it straight into our Power Pages experience. Instead of hiding search away on a default page, we built a custom search entry point right in the UI, a proper “Search CCCP Portal” field that feels like part of the site, not a bolt-on feature. By refactoring and implementing a clean-looking modal with search entry, the user gets a modern search experience.

Now you can type something like “wheat” and instantly jump to a results page that scans across the portal and surfaces the relevant pages and content. It’s already useful for finding resources, dashboards, and anything mentioning current stock or production status, AND it sets us up nicely for the next step: narrowing results into actual resource cards and order-related data as we keep hooking more of the Minecraft facility into Dataverse.

Crawler badge? We’re taking it. Search that solves a real problem: finding what you need in the portal, fast.

Can it be automated? Why didn’t you say so!

We just wired up a Power Automate flow that keeps an eye on our facility inventory in Dataverse. The moment a resource drops below its threshold, the system automatically creates a Resource Alert and flags it for action, no manual checking, no “did anyone notice we’re out of carrots?” moments!

In the screenshots you can see it in action: Quantity < Threshold triggers the flow, the alert record is created, and the committee gets instant visibility. Next step is the fun part: those alerts become the signal for our Minecraft harvesters to shift focus and ramp production until stock levels are healthy again.

Go With The Flow badge? Claimed.
Now back to work, the village demands resources!