PL-100 study guide
PL-100 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Microsoft Certified: Power Platform App Maker Associate is a beginner-level certification for developers who build low-code business apps with Microsoft Power Platform. It targets self-directed problem solvers who may lack formal IT training but are comfortable using technology to simplify and automate tasks for themselves and their team. Candidates understand their data, the issues to resolve, and the required processes and app experiences, and may connect to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 apps and services, and third-party solutions. The exam is proctored and lasts 100 minutes; interactive components may be included. Topics on this exam: Design and manage business solutions, Analyze and visualize data, and Create business solutions. The PL-100 study guide has 3 sections and about 1,194 words.
01Design and manage business solutions
The Design and manage business solutions domain tests planning before building: environments, solutions, the Dataverse data model, security, and governance. Most marks come from choosing the right container and the right security boundary rather than from formulas. A tenant usually separates development, test, and production environments. Build in an unmanaged solution in development, export it as managed, and import it into test and production; a managed solution cannot be edited in the target environment, so changes ship as a new version from development.
388 words, about 2 min02Analyze and visualize data
Analyze and visualize data tests how you surface information: Dataverse views and charts inside model-driven apps, chart controls inside canvas apps, and Power BI for cross-source analytics - plus the delegation rules that decide whether a number is actually correct. Dataverse views, charts, and model-driven dashboards give users operational lists and simple aggregates on the app's own data. Canvas apps have basic chart controls bound to collections or tables. Power BI is the right tool once data spans sources or needs modelling: a semantic model holds tables and DAX measures, reports visualise it, and dashboards pin tiles from one or more reports.
394 words, about 2 min03Create business solutions
Create business solutions is the most hands-on domain: canvas apps, model-driven apps, and cloud flows, plus the Power Fx and Dataverse behaviours that decide whether they work at scale. Typical pattern: a gallery with Items = Filter(...) , a form with Item = Gallery1.Selected , and buttons calling SubmitForm or ResetForm. Use NewForm and EditForm to switch form modes, and Defaults(Table) when creating a record with Patch. Patch updates or creates a single record; Collect only appends to a collection and duplicates rows if pointed at a data source.
412 words, about 2 min