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🚀 Prerequisites

✅ No credit card required to get started!

Step 1: Create an Azure Free Trial Subscription​

To use the Variant Development Platform, you'll need an active Azure subscription. We recommend creating a free trial account, which provides $200 in free credits for the first month.

  • Visit Azure Free Trial

  • Sign up using a Microsoft account

  • Choose Pay-As-You-Go with Owner permissions

    This is required to allow role assignments during service registration.

Step 2: Register for a Variant Subscription Account​

  1. Go to the Variant Development Platform application form

  2. Fill out the form with your details (Use JK for the invitation code)

Registration Form

  1. If successful, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to register your Azure subscription.

Registration Success

  1. Within a few minutes, you'll also receive a second email (check your junk/spam folder if not).

Step 3: Register Your Azure Subscription​

Click on the link in the email to access the Azure subscription registration form.

Subscription Form

  1. Open the Start Menu and launch Windows PowerShell ISE.

Open PowerShell

  1. Copy the provided PowerShell script from the form into PowerShell and run it.

    ✅ Make sure you're logged in to the correct Azure subscription.

If successful, you’ll see output like this:

PowerShell Output

  1. Copy the generated output back into the form and click Submit.

Form Details

  1. After a few minutes You should see a confirmation dialog.

⏱️ If you encounter a timeout error, just click Submit again.

Confirmation Dialog

Step 4: Log In and Access the Dashboard​

After submitting the subscription form, you'll receive an email with a login link.

  • Click the link and sign in

You should see the Variant dashboard:

Home Page

Step 5: Create the Variant. Devops service​

For security and governance this service will perform all deployment and environment changes in your subscription and is the only service that the UI will manage the deployment of. Once this service is up and running permissions on the service principal permissions should updated to a contributor at maximum.

  1. Navigate to Applications > Services

  2. Click Create New Service

  3. Fill out the form exactly as shown below.

Create Service Form

💡 The template you choose determines the hosting plan:

  • Consumption (free tier): Suitable for basic testing

  • Workflow (recommended): Always-on, production-ready

⚠️ Note for free Azure trial accounts: Always select the Workflow template. Azure imposes limits on the number of free Consumption-based App Service plans.

Step 6: Deploy Your DevOps Service​

After creating the service:

  1. Click into your service

  2. Click Deploy Application

You will see deployment notifications:

Deployment Notifications

After deployment finishes, click Refresh. You should now see your service details:

Service Overview

Step 7: Set the DevOps Service URL​

The DevOps service manages all future service deployments and environment updates — but it needs to know where it lives.

  1. Copy the DevOps Service URL (e.g., https://dev-mymusic-devops-cb9lp6m3-fa.azurewebsites.net)

  2. Go to Subscriptions > Environments

  3. Paste the URL in the DevOps URL field and click Update.

Set DevOps URL

✅ No other fields need to be changed.

🎉 Your environment is now fully registered and ready to use!

✅ What’s Next?​

Get ready to create and deploy your first real application using Variant! 🚀