Explore data connectors
Microsoft Power Platform leverages data across many platforms. To do this, the components of Microsoft Power Platform use connectors. You can think of connectors as a bridge from your data source to an app or workflow, which 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 different types of connectors and what you can do with them, you first need to understand the types of data sources to which they connect. The two types of data sources are tabular and function based.
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. The system can use different tabular data sources such as Microsoft Dataverse, SharePoint, or Business Central. Power Apps can create, edit, and delete data from these data sources.
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. An example of these functions in Business Central is approval processes.
Connecting to data sources allows you to integrate disparate parts of your business solutions to build them out cohesively.
Connectors
Now that you understand more about data sources, you are ready to learn about connectors. Connectors are the bridges from your data source to your app, workflow, or dashboard. Microsoft Power Platform currently has more than 320 connectors available to common data sources. There currently are standard and premium connectors. Some popular standard connectors are SharePoint, Outlook, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Premium connectors require additional licensing for your app and/or users. Examples of premium connectors are Business Central, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, Survey Monkey, and Mailchimp. Custom connectors are also considered as a premium feature.
Custom connectors
While Microsoft Power Platform offers more than 320 connectors, you can also build a custom connector. With a custom connector you can extend your app by calling a publicly available API, or any custom API that you are hosting in the cloud. An advantage of custom connectors is that once that they are created, they can be used in different platforms, such as Power Apps, Power Automate, and Azure Logic Apps.
If you want to use Microsoft Power Platform in more advanced scenarios with Business Central, you'll probably need to create some custom connectors.