PL-900 cheat sheet

Core products: Power Apps (apps), Power Automate (process automation), Power Pages (external sites), Copilot Studio (agents), plus Dataverse as the shared data service.

Dataverse stores business data in tables (entities) with columns, relationships, business rules, and row/column-level security; it is provisioned per environment.

Connectors are grouped as standard or premium; premium connectors such as SQL Server, HTTP with Azure AD, and Dataverse require premium licensing.

Licensing options include Power Apps per user, Power Apps per app (one app plus its flows), Power Automate per user, Power Automate per flow (up to 5 flows), and pay-as-you-go.

AI Builder supplies prebuilt and custom models (form processing, object detection, prediction, text classification) usable inside apps and flows.

Power Pages builds external-facing low-code websites where anonymous or authenticated users can view and submit Dataverse data.

Fusion development: makers build low-code assets while pro developers extend them with code components, custom connectors, and Azure services.

The Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit provides admin and governance tools such as environment inventory, DLP auditing, app catalog, and compliance dashboards.

Environments are containers that isolate apps, flows, data, and permissions; every tenant has exactly one default environment that cannot be deleted.

Environment types include Default, Production, Sandbox, Developer, and Trial; sandboxes support copy, reset, and point-in-time restore.

Data loss prevention (DLP) policies classify connectors as Business, Non-Business, or Blocked; connectors from different groups cannot be combined in the same app or flow.

Dataverse security is layered: environment roles, business units, security roles, teams, hierarchy security, and column-level security.

Default environment roles include Environment Admin (full administration) and Environment Maker (create resources, cannot administer the environment).

Solutions are the packaging unit: unmanaged solutions are editable and used in development; managed solutions are locked and deployed to downstream environments.

System backups run approximately every 24 hours and are retained about 7 days; manual backups can be restored into sandboxes or production.

Deployment pipelines promote solutions automatically through configured stages such as development, test, and production.

The Power Platform admin center manages environments, DLP policies, capacity, analytics, and support requests at tenant level.

Canvas apps give pixel-level control over layout using screens and controls, and connect to data through connectors; they run in browsers and the Power Apps mobile app.

Model-driven apps are generated from Dataverse tables and use forms, views, charts, dashboards, and business process flows; the shell is responsive and security comes from Dataverse roles.

Power Fx is the formula language of canvas apps; common functions include Filter, LookUp, Patch, Collect, Set, If, Navigate, and SubmitForm.

Delegation pushes query processing to the data source; queries using non-delegable functions return at most 500 records by default, configurable up to 2,000.

A Gallery control repeats a template per record, Edit and Display form controls bind to a record, and Navigation is performed with the Navigate function or screen transitions.

Business process flows guide users through stages and steps and can be embedded in model-driven and canvas apps.

Canvas components and component libraries make controls reusable across apps with custom input and output properties.

Canvas apps can use offline mode for mobile scenarios, saving data locally and syncing when connectivity returns.

Sharing an app grants run permission; co-ownership allows editing and re-sharing, while data access is governed by the underlying data source permissions.

Cloud flow types: automated (one event trigger, no user action), instant (manual or button trigger), and scheduled (recurrence trigger).

Desktop flows provide robotic process automation for Windows applications by recording UI actions and run attended or unattended via a machine or gateway.

Every cloud flow has exactly one trigger and one or more actions; common actions include Condition, Switch, Apply to each, Do until, Compose, and Approvals.

Configure run after controls whether a step runs when the previous step succeeded, failed, was skipped, or timed out; this is the basis of flow error handling.

Expressions use the Workflow Definition Language, for example utcNow(), formatDateTime(), triggerBody(), outputs(), and coalesce().

Instant flows can be called from Power Apps with the PowerApps trigger, and results are returned to the app through the Respond to a PowerApp action.

Run history is retained for 28 days, and flows can be resubmitted from history using the same or new inputs.

Power Automate has both cloud and desktop approvals, and approval responses can branch the flow using Condition or Switch actions.

Templates provide prebuilt flows for common connectors; sharing a cloud flow requires the recipient to have access to every connection used.

Copilot Studio builds agents (formerly Power Virtual Agents bots) using a no-code authoring canvas of topics and nodes.

A topic begins with trigger phrases and contains nodes such as Message, Question, Condition, Set a variable, Redirect, and Call an action.

Entities extract data from user input: prebuilt entities (number, datetime, email, money) and custom entities (closed list or regular expression).

Variables are topic-scoped or global; global variables persist for the whole conversation and can be mapped to Power Automate inputs and outputs.

Knowledge sources such as public websites, uploaded documents, SharePoint, and Dataverse enable generative answers for questions not covered by authored topics.

Publishing channels include Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, custom websites, and mobile apps through Direct Line.

Authentication options include no authentication, authenticate with Microsoft, and manual OAuth/ADAL configurations for custom identity providers.

A topic can call a Power Automate flow to perform actions and return results to agent variables.

Analytics report sessions, engagement and resolution rates, escalation rates, abandonment, and customer satisfaction scores.