Power Automate (formerly called Microsoft Flow) is the automation tool for the M365 suite of products.  Like many of you, I grew accustomed to using Workflows and the SharePoint Designer tool to create and edit workflows in previous versions of SharePoint.  Now with Power Automate, there are several ways to connect with other systems.  I’ll cover these briefly:

• Connector:  Microsoft provides many for you to choose from.  A connector is used to connect to a data source, such as a SharePoint list, the Dataverse, a Google calendar, OneDrive, or a SQL server, to name but a few.
• Connection:  The stored authentication details and access tokens used to connect to an external data source.  Basically, a stored Connector with your stored credentials.
• Connection Reference: A reusable reference object which acts as a proxy for a Connection.  This allows you to use a single connection for multiple solutions.  When you have to edit, modify, or update the Connection, all your flows will continue to work without having to be each updated.

For more on this subject, I recommend this article from the Global SharePoint Diary website.

This entry was posted on February 4, 2024 at 9:59 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Office 365 by Doug Comments Off on Connector, Connection, or Connection Reference in Power Automate