What is Examine Power Platform connectors
Microsoft Power Platform is made powerful by its ability to use data across many platforms. To work across multiple data platforms, components of Microsoft Power Platform use connectors. You can think of connectors as a bridge from your data source to your app or workflow. This bridge allows information to be conveyed back and forth. Connectors allow you to extend your business solutions across platforms and add functionality for your users.
Data Sources
To understand the types of connectors and their capabilities, you must first understand the types of data sources to which they connect. The two types of data sources are tabular, and function based.
Tabular data – A tabular data source is one that returns data in a structured table format. Power Apps can directly read and display these tables through galleries, forms, and other controls. Additionally, if the data source supports it, Power Apps can create, edit, and delete data from these data sources. Examples include Microsoft Dataverse, SharePoint, and SQL Server.
Function-based data – A function-based data source is one that uses functions to interact with the data source. These functions can be used to return a table of data but offer more extensive action such as the ability to send an email, update permissions, or create a calendar event. Examples include Office 365 Users, Project Online, and Azure Blob Storage.
Both data source types are commonly used to bring data and incremental functionality to your solutions. As you can see, connecting to data sources allows you to integrate disparate parts of your business solutions to build them out cohesively. Now that you understand more about data sources, you’re ready to learn about connectors.
Connectors are the bridges from your data source to your app, workflow, or dashboard. Microsoft Power Platform has more than 1,000 connectors available to common data sources. Connectors are divided into standard and premium. Some popular standard connectors are SharePoint, Outlook, and YouTube. Premium connectors require added licensing for your app and/or users. A few premium connectors are SQL Server, Survey Monkey, and Mail Chimp. The connector reference in the summary and resources unit lists all connectors and whether they’re considered standard or premium. You can also use AppSource to source and install apps and use the connectors to non-Microsoft services.
Connectors can provide input and output between the data source and Power Platform, which can accelerate the delivery of Microsoft Power Platform business solutions. For instance, using Dynamics 365 apps such as Customer Service, you can set up Power Automate to notify users when specific customer types are added. Or you can use a SharePoint document library to store files that are fed into Power Apps to manage and distribute. Microsoft also provides connectors to their Azure services, providing advanced AI techniques to do tasks such as reading text off images or cognitive services like recognizing faces in images.
All Microsoft Power Platform business solutions can be used and implemented into Microsoft 365 apps such as Teams. This integration allows users to play Power Apps within Teams or run Power Automate from actions and events within Teams.