Common Terms, Entities, and Acronyms to understand the Microsoft Power Platform ecosystem and its main components.
The Microsoft Power Platform glossary gathers key definitions to help you understand how the various services and components interact within the Microsoft ecosystem. The goal is to provide a clear guide for students, consultants, developers, and architects who want to deepen their knowledge of core concepts like Dataverse, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, based on technical documentation and architectural best practices.
Each term is described concisely yet thoroughly, with links to official Microsoft resources and other sections of the Esamatic semantic map, allowing for progressive and coherent learning.
An integrated suite of low-code and no-code technologies developed by Microsoft to enable the creation of custom business solutions. It includes Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages, and AI Builder. All of these components rely on Microsoft Dataverse as a common data platform.
The cloud-native relational database at the core of Power Platform. It stores data in tables (entities) with columns and relationships. It supports extensibility both server-side with plug-ins and client-side with scripts and web resources. Dataverse is fully integrated with Azure Active Directory for security and with Power Automate for process automation.
This component of Power Platform allows the creation of custom business applications. It includes two main types: Canvas Apps, focused on user experience, and Model-driven Apps, based on Dataverse data and logic. Apps can be extended with Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) or embedded into Teams and websites.
An automation tool for creating workflows (both cloud and desktop) that connect applications and services. It supports triggers, actions, and conditions, as well as RPA (Robotic Process Automation) flows. It is often used to orchestrate processes across Dataverse, SharePoint, Dynamics 365, and external systems.
A business intelligence service for creating interactive reports and dashboards. It integrates with Dataverse and Power Platform to visualize real-time business data. The main tools include Power BI Desktop, Service, and Dataflows. It supports security models such as Row-Level Security (RLS).
A technology for creating public web portals integrated with Dataverse. It evolved from Power Apps Portals and runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. It supports languages such as Liquid and the Portals Web API to interact with Dataverse data. It allows authentication through Azure AD B2C and other external providers.
A Power Platform module that enables the creation of artificial intelligence models for classification, prediction, and text or image recognition scenarios, without requiring programming expertise. Models can be embedded into apps or automated flows.
Files uploaded to Dataverse used to extend the user interface. They can be HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, or images (SVG, PNG). They allow embedding custom controls or client-side business logic. The main types include:
For more information, consult the Microsoft documentation.
A framework for building custom controls usable in both model-driven and canvas apps. PCF components are developed in TypeScript and managed via Power Apps CLI. They offer optimized performance and direct interaction with the Dataverse API.
Deployment packages containing all Dataverse customization components. There are two main types: Managed and Unmanaged. Managed solutions are closed and cannot be modified in the target environment, while unmanaged ones are open and editable. Solution versions follow numeric conventions for ALM and DevOps versioning.
A tool used to manage PCF components, solutions, and automations via command line. The Power Apps CLI is essential for developers using Visual Studio Code to create custom controls.
Dataverse environments with advanced governance policies and sharing restrictions. They allow centralized security controls and weekly usage reports. Recommended for enterprise organizations.
Microsoft’s tool for application lifecycle management (ALM). Integrated with Power Platform Build Tools to automate solution export, import, and versioning. Used for continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
Web Resources are static files uploaded to Dataverse to extend the UI with HTML or JavaScript, while PCF provides dynamic and more performant controls developed in TypeScript and natively integrated into the Power Apps rendering engine.
Unmanaged Solutions are ideal for development environments, while Managed Solutions are recommended for production deployment. The former allow direct modifications; the latter ensure stability and controlled versioning.
You can consult the official Microsoft Power Platform documentation to explore each component in depth.
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