Power Platform Glossary

Power Platform services support an increasing number of features, the understanding of which is vital to ensure proper licensing and service rollouts. Some of those terms are defined here:

Canvas apps are built in Power Apps by dragging and dropping elements onto a design canvas and connecting the elements with little or no code.

Model-driven apps use Dataverse, which provides business applications with the ability to perform data operations on data stored in units called entities. Entities are sets of records that are used to store data in a set format, such as Contract or Purchase Order. Model-driven applications base data entry and processing layout around Dataverse entities and other components rather than relying on the user for initial layout design.

Power pages are an extension of model-driven apps that expose the apps through a Web interface and are billed based on monthly user sessions (including anonymous, public access).

Standard connectors wrap the APIs of a Web-based service with a common interface, allowing Power Platform services to access these services in a standard manner. Standard connectors are generally simpler services that do not require a separate account for the target service, although there is some overlap between which services are on which tiers.