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.