Overview of canvas-app connectors for PowerApps

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  • Contributors
    • lancedMicrosoft
    • Nick Schonning
    • Anne Frances Owen
    • VSC-Service-Account
    • Michael Blythe

Data is at the core of most apps, including those you build in PowerApps. Data is stored in a data source, and you bring that data into your app by creating a connection. The connection uses a specific connector to talk to the data source. PowerApps has connectors for many popular services and on-premises data sources, including SharePoint, SQL Server, Office 365, Salesforce, and Twitter. To get started adding data to a canvas app, see Add a data connection in PowerApps.

A connector may provide tables of data or actions. Some connectors provide only tables, some provide only actions, and some provide both. Also your connector may be either a standard or custom connector.

Tables

If your connector provides tables, you add your data source and then select the table in the data source that you want to manage. PowerApps both retrieves table data into your app and updates data in your data source for you. For example, you can add a data source that contains a table named Lessons and then set the Items property of a control, such as a gallery or a form, to this value in the formula bar:

Plain data source Items property

You can specify the data that your app retrieves by customing the Items property of the control that shows your data. Continuing the previous example, you can sort or filter the data in the Lessons table by using that name as an argument for the Search and SortByColumn functions. In this graphic, the formula to which the Items property is set specifies that the data is sorted and filtered based on the text in TextSearchBox1.

Expanded data source Items property

For more information about how to customize your formula with tables, see these topics:

Understand data sources in PowerApps
Generate an app from Excel data
Create an app from scratch
Understand tables and records in PowerApps

Note

To connect to data in an Excel workbook, it must be hosted in a cloud-storage service such as OneDrive. For more information, see Connect to cloud-storage from PowerApps.

Actions

If your connector provides actions, you must still select your data source as you did before. Instead of selecting a table as the next step, however, you manually connect a control to an action by editing the Items property of the control that will show your data. The formula to which you set the Items property specifies the action that retrieves data. For example, the app won't retrieve any data if you connect to Yammer and then set the Items property to the name of the data source. To populate a control with data, specify an action such as GetMessagesInGroup(5033622).messages.

Action data source Items property

If you need to handle custom data updates for action connectors, build a formula that includes the Patch function. In the formula, identify the action and the fields that you'll bind to the action.

For more information about how to customize your formula for custom updates, see these topics:

Patch
Collect
Update

Note

PowerApps doesn't work with dynamic schema. The phrase dynamic schema refers to the possibility that the same action may return a different table with different columns. Conditions that may cause the columns in the tables to differ include the action input parameters, the user or role that's executing the action, and the group in which the user is working, among others. For example, SQL Server stored procedures may return different columns if run with different inputs. For actions with dynamic schema, the connector documentation shows The outputs of this operation are dynamic. as the return value. In contrast, Microsoft Flow works with dynamic schema and might provide a work-around for your scenario.

This table has links to more information about our most popular connectors. For a complete list of connectors, see All connectors.

         
Common Data Service Common Data Service   Office 365 Outlook Office 365 Outlook
SharePoint SharePoint   Excel Excel
SQL Server SQL Server   OneDrive for Business OneDrive for Business
Dynamics 365 Dynamics 365   OneDrive OneDrive
Office 365 Users Office 365 Users   Dropbox Dropbox

Standard and custom connectors

PowerApps provides standard connectors for many commonly used data sources, such as those listed above. If PowerApps has a standard connector for the type of data source that you want to use, you should use that connector. If you want to connect to other types of data sources, such as a service that you've built, see Register and use custom connectors.

All standard connectors

See the Microsoft Connector Reference for a list of all the standard connectors. Premium connectors require PowerApps Plan 1 or Plan 2. For more information, see PowerApps Plans.

You can ask questions about a specific connector in the PowerApps forums, and you can suggest connectors to add or other improvements to make in PowerApps Ideas.