Imagine you're a sales operations analyst and your team is drowning in a familiar problem: every time a deal closes in Salesforce, someone has to manually copy that data into a SharePoint list, fire off a congratulatory message in Microsoft Teams, and update a row in an Excel spreadsheet. It's tedious, error-prone, and it eats up 20 minutes of someone's day, every single time. The solution — a Power Automate flow that connects all three systems automatically — sounds elegant. But before you can write a single trigger or action, you need to answer one foundational question: how does Power Automate actually talk to Salesforce, SharePoint, Teams, and Excel in the first place?
The answer is connectors. Connectors are the bridges that Power Automate uses to communicate with external services. They're pre-built packages that handle the complex technical plumbing — API calls, authentication handshakes, data formatting — so you can focus on building logic instead of writing HTTP requests from scratch. Understanding how connectors work, how to find the right one, and how to authenticate with a service properly is the single most important foundational skill in Power Automate. Get it right and the rest of the platform opens up naturally. Get it wrong and you'll spend hours confused about why your flow won't connect to anything.
By the end of this lesson, you'll have a solid working understanding of what connectors are and how they're structured, and you'll be able to find, add, and authenticate with both Microsoft and third-party connectors in a real flow.
What you'll learn:
Let's start from scratch. When you use an app — say, Outlook — and you send an email, the app is talking to Microsoft's mail servers through something called an API (Application Programming Interface). An API is essentially a set of rules and endpoints that defines how two pieces of software can communicate. "Send an email" is one operation. "Get the messages in my inbox" is another. Every modern web service — Salesforce, Slack, Dropbox, Twitter — exposes an API that allows other software to interact with it programmatically.
The problem is that working with APIs directly requires technical knowledge. You need to know the correct URL to call, the right format for your request, how to handle authentication tokens, and how to parse the response data. Power Automate is built for a much broader audience than just developers, so Microsoft created connectors as an abstraction layer. A connector wraps up all that API complexity into a clean, point-and-click interface.
Think of a connector like an electrical adapter. The underlying electricity (the API) is there, but the adapter converts it into a plug shape you can actually use. The SharePoint connector, for example, wraps dozens of SharePoint API operations — "Get item," "Create item," "Delete file" — into named actions you can drag into a flow without writing a line of code.
Each connector is made up of two core building blocks:
Some connectors have both triggers and actions. Some have only actions (you can't, for instance, have a Gmail trigger that monitors your inbox if you're using the standard connector — you'd use an action to send mail). Understanding this distinction will save you a lot of confusion when you're searching for the right connector.
Not all connectors are created equal. Power Automate organizes them into three tiers, and the tier matters for both functionality and cost.
Standard connectors are included with most Microsoft 365 and Power Platform licenses. These are the connectors you'll use most often as a beginner, and they cover the core Microsoft ecosystem plus some widely-used third-party tools. Examples include:
Premium connectors require a standalone Power Automate license (or a per-flow plan) beyond the basic Microsoft 365 entitlements. These typically connect to third-party enterprise systems or provide more sophisticated capabilities. Examples include:
Important: If you try to use a Premium connector without the right license, Power Automate will let you build the flow but will prevent you from enabling or running it. You'll see a lock icon next to the connector name during the design phase. Don't spend an hour building a flow around a Premium connector before confirming your license covers it.
Custom connectors are ones that you or your organization build from scratch to connect to an internal system or a third-party API that Microsoft hasn't packaged yet. For example, if your company has an internal HR portal with an API, a developer can build a custom connector so that non-technical colleagues can use it in their flows just like any built-in connector. Custom connectors are an advanced topic beyond the scope of this lesson, but it's useful to know they exist.
Now let's get practical. Microsoft maintains a library of over 1,000 connectors, and the first skill you need is knowing how to find the right one for a given task.
When you're inside the Power Automate flow designer (make.powerautomate.com → click "Create" → choose "Instant cloud flow" or any other flow type), you add connectors by adding steps to your flow. Here's how to browse:
In the flow designer, click the blue "+" button that appears between steps (or at the start if you're adding a trigger). This opens a panel on the right side labeled "Add an action" (or "Add a trigger" for the first step).
You'll see a search bar at the top of this panel along with a grid of connector icons underneath. The icons showing here are your recently used connectors plus a curated set of popular ones.
To browse everything, type a keyword into the search bar. For example, type "Salesforce" to find the Salesforce connector, or type "email" to see every connector that deals with email in some way — Outlook, Gmail, SendGrid, and others.
Once you find a connector, click on it. The panel will expand to show all the available triggers (if you're adding a trigger step) or actions (if you're adding an action step) for that connector. Read through the names — they're usually descriptive enough that you can identify what you need. "Get item" in SharePoint retrieves a single list item by its ID, while "Get items" retrieves multiple items with optional filtering.
You can also explore connectors before you start building a flow:
From the left navigation panel in Power Automate, look for "Data" and then click "Connections." This shows all the connections you've already established.
Microsoft also maintains a public connector reference page at docs.microsoft.com. Search for "Power Automate connectors reference" and you'll find a filterable table of every connector with documentation on each trigger and action. This is invaluable when you're planning a flow and need to verify that a connector supports a specific operation before you commit to building around it.
Here's a distinction that trips up nearly every beginner: a connector is the template or class, while a connection is a specific authenticated instance of that connector tied to a particular account.
The SharePoint connector is one thing. Your connection to SharePoint as your specific work account (you@yourcompany.com) is another. Your colleague's connection to SharePoint as their account is yet another. Both of you are using the same connector, but different connections.
This matters because:
When you add a connector to a flow for the first time, Power Automate needs to prove to the external service that it has permission to act on your behalf. This process is called authentication, and different connectors use different methods. Understanding the method matters because it affects what credentials you'll need to have ready.
OAuth (Open Authorization) is the industry-standard protocol used by most modern web services. When you authenticate via OAuth, you don't give Power Automate your username and password directly. Instead, the service issues a special token — think of it as a temporary, limited-scope key card — that Power Automate stores and uses to make API calls on your behalf.
Here's what the experience actually looks like in Power Automate:
Tip: OAuth tokens can expire or be revoked. If your flow suddenly starts failing with an authentication error after weeks of working fine, the first thing to check is whether the connection token needs to be refreshed. In Power Automate, go to Data → Connections, find the relevant connection, and click the three-dot menu → "Fix connection."
Some services — particularly developer-oriented platforms and data services — use an API key for authentication. An API key is a long string of characters (something like sk-a8f3c2b9e10d4f5a) that the service generates for your account. It's like a password, but it's designed for machine-to-machine communication rather than human login.
Services that commonly use API key authentication in Power Automate include SendGrid (email delivery), OpenAI, various weather and financial data APIs, and many smaller SaaS platforms.
The experience in Power Automate looks like this:
Warning: Treat API keys like passwords. Don't paste them into a shared document, don't email them around, and if a key is ever exposed accidentally, go revoke it immediately in the originating service and generate a new one.
Some older systems and on-premises services use simple username and password authentication, often called Basic Auth. When you add a connector that uses Basic Auth, Power Automate will show fields for a username and password directly in the connection setup form.
SQL Server (when connecting to an on-premises instance), some FTP connectors, and certain legacy enterprise systems fall into this category. Basic Auth is less secure than OAuth because your actual credentials are being stored (encrypted) in Power Automate rather than an abstracted token, so Microsoft is gradually moving away from it where alternatives exist.
Let's walk through a concrete, end-to-end example. We'll create a simple triggered flow that runs when a new item is added to a SharePoint list, just to practice the connection process.
Go to make.powerautomate.com and sign in with your Microsoft 365 account.
In the left navigation, click "Create," then select "Automated cloud flow." Give your flow a name like "SharePoint New Item Test."
In the "Choose your flow's trigger" dialog, type "SharePoint" in the search box. Select the trigger called "When an item is created" from the SharePoint connector. Click "Create."
You'll land in the flow designer with the SharePoint trigger as your first step. Click on the trigger card to expand it. You'll see two required fields: Site Address and List Name.
But before you can fill those in, Power Automate needs to know which SharePoint account to use. Click the "Sign in" button that appears in the connection area. A Microsoft login popup will appear.
Sign in with your Microsoft 365 account. If your account has MFA (multi-factor authentication), complete that process. Once authenticated, the popup closes and Power Automate saves the connection.
Now the Site Address and List Name fields are populated with dropdowns. Select your SharePoint site from the dropdown, then select a list name. Power Automate is now able to query your SharePoint environment to offer you those choices — that's the connection working.
Click "Save" in the top right. Your flow won't do anything useful yet (there's no action step), but the trigger is configured with a working authenticated connection.
Congratulations — you've created and authenticated a connector connection.
As you build more flows, you'll accumulate connections. Here's how to manage them effectively.
Navigate to Data → Connections in the left sidebar. You'll see a list of all your established connections, the connector they belong to, the account/credential used, and a status indicator. A green checkmark means the connection is healthy. A warning icon means it needs attention — usually a re-authentication.
To fix a broken connection, click the three-dot menu next to the connection and choose "Fix connection." This triggers a re-authentication flow and generates a fresh token.
When you add a connector to a new flow that you've already authenticated with before, Power Automate will automatically offer to reuse the existing connection. You'll see a dropdown listing your saved connections for that service along with an option to "Add new connection." This is a significant time-saver. You authenticate with Salesforce once, and every subsequent flow you build can use that same connection.
When flows are shared across a team or run as part of a departmental process, it's best practice to use a service account — a dedicated Microsoft 365 account created specifically for automation purposes (e.g., automation@yourcompany.com) rather than an individual person's account. This prevents the flow from breaking when someone leaves the company or changes their password. Setting up service accounts is typically handled by an IT administrator.
Here's an exercise you can complete in approximately 30 minutes using tools available in a standard Microsoft 365 subscription.
Scenario: You want to automate a notification to yourself via email whenever someone submits a Microsoft Form.
Step 1 — Create a form. Go to forms.microsoft.com and create a simple form called "Team Feedback" with one short-text question: "What's one thing we should improve this week?"
Step 2 — Start a new flow. In Power Automate, click Create → Automated cloud flow. Name it "Notify on Form Submission."
Step 3 — Set up the trigger. Search for the "Forms" connector and select the trigger "When a new response is submitted." Authenticate with your Microsoft account when prompted, then select your "Team Feedback" form from the dropdown.
Step 4 — Add an action to get the response details. Click the "+" button below the trigger. Search for "Forms" again and add the action "Get response details." In the Form ID field, select your "Team Feedback" form. In the Response ID field, click inside the input box and select "Response Id" from the dynamic content panel that appears. This connects the trigger output to the action input.
Step 5 — Add an email notification. Click the "+" button again. Search for "Outlook" and add the action "Send an email (V2)." Authenticate with your Microsoft account. Fill in:
Step 6 — Save and test. Save the flow, then open your form in forms.microsoft.com and submit a test response. Within a minute or two, you should receive the email notification. If you don't, check the flow's Run History (visible on the flow detail page) to see if it triggered and where it may have failed.
"I can't find the connector I need." Try searching by the name of the underlying service, not the task. Search "Salesforce" not "CRM." Also check whether you're looking for a trigger vs. an action — they appear in different contexts in the designer.
"The connector has a lock icon and I can't use it." You're looking at a Premium connector that your current license doesn't cover. Check your Power Automate license tier or talk to your administrator about upgrading.
"My flow worked for a week and then started failing with an authentication error." OAuth tokens expire. Go to Data → Connections, find the relevant connection, and choose "Fix connection" to re-authenticate.
"I added a connector but the dropdowns are empty." The connection authenticated successfully, but Power Automate can't retrieve data (like a list of SharePoint sites) because of a permissions issue. Verify that the account you authenticated with actually has access to the resource you're trying to use.
"I shared my flow with a colleague and it stopped working." Connections are personal by default. Your colleague needs to add their own connections in the flow. When they open the shared flow, they'll be prompted to configure connections for each step. Alternatively, have them re-authenticate each connector step with their own credentials.
"I'm seeing duplicate connections for the same service." This happens when you accidentally create a new connection instead of reusing an existing one. Go to Data → Connections and delete the duplicates, keeping only the valid one. Then update any flows using the old connection.
Connectors are the foundation of everything you build in Power Automate. Today you learned that a connector is a pre-built bridge to an external service that exposes triggers and actions, that the three tiers — Standard, Premium, and Custom — reflect both feature scope and licensing requirements, and that a connection is a specific authenticated instance of a connector tied to your account. You now know how to browse the connector library, understand the three authentication methods (OAuth, API key, and Basic Auth), create and fix connections, and manage them across multiple flows.
The most important habit to build from here: before you start designing any flow, spend five minutes verifying that the connectors you need exist, that your license covers them, and that the specific operations you require (the right trigger, the right action) are available. This five minutes of planning will save you hours of re-architecting later.
Where to go next:
Learning Path: Flow Automation Basics