Connections in Power Platform

A while ago, I was helping a colleague with Power Automate flow when asked:

Wait, why is this flow sending emails as me instead of our shared mailbox?

Many people build flows every day without really understanding how connections work behind the scenes. So in this post, I'm going to explain everything you need to know about connections in Power Platform.

But first: What are connectors in Power Platform?

Before we jump into connections, I believe it's important to briefly explain what connectors are and how they function within the Power Platform.

One of the biggest superpowers of the Power Platform is how well it integrates with other systems. Microsoft gives us access to over 1000 connectors like SharePoint, Outlook, Teams etc and that number is growing constantly.
List of all Power Platform connectors

No matter what service you’re trying to automate or pull data from, there's probably a connector for it.

Every connector needs a connection.

That connection is like the "key" that unlocks access to that service and it’s almost always tied to a specific user account.

What is connection in Power Platform?

In Power Platform, a connection is how, for example, your flow talks to another service, like: SharePoint, Outlook, Dataverse or even external systems like Salesforce, SAP or custom API. It’s like giving Power Automate a permission to act on your behalf in those systems.

By default, it picks your own account.

That’s fine when the flow is personal. But in shared or business critical (when it supports essential operations within an organization), it can be a problem.

Connections are tied to a user or a account

When you add a connector, let's say SharePoint, Power Platform will ask for the user account. If you pick your own account, everything works great until YOU:

• Leave the company,
• change your password,
• you go on vacation and someone else needs to fix the resource in Power Platform,
• you share the resource and now other users are running actions under your identity.

Not great huh

When connections cause issues

• When flows stop working: If a flow uses your personal account and your password expires or you leave the company, the flow breaks.

• When flows run with the wrong identity: If you're sending emails, creating items or modifying data and it's done using your name users might get confused, specially if you are an external consultant.

• When you need traceability: You can’t track ownership properly when everything’s tied to individual users.

Sharing connections

Power Automate makes it way too easy to accidentally share something that shouldn’t be shared.

Scenario

You create a flow that sends emails from Outlook using your account. You later share the flow with someone else... but forget to update the connection.

Now you’ve got someone else triggering a flow and emails are being sent under your name and mailbox.

That's awkward at best and a data privacy risk at worst.

Shared Connections ≠ Shared Responsibility

Nope.
If you’re managing shared resources in Power Platform, make sure connections are reviewed and either replaced with service accounts or managed using solutions and environment variables.

Personal productivity ≠ Business resources

If you're automating your own tasks and maybe just trying to save yourself time, that’s personal productivity. The moment your automation starts handling shared data, emailing customers, writing to shared systems or being used by others, then you're no longer in the “personal productivity” space. You're in the “business resource” space.

The difference

Personal Productivity	Business Resource
Built by and for one user	Shared across teams or part of a business process
Runs under your identity	Needs a consistent, auditable identity (like a service account)
Failure affects just you	Failure can affect teams, customers, or compliance
No risk if you leave the company	Serious risk if you're the only one who owns the connection

Using a service account means the flow will keep running, even if you’re on vacation or change teams. It also makes ownership crystal clear.

How to manage connections in Power Platform

Connections exist across the entire Power Platform, and how you manage them depends a bit on which tool you’re using. But the core idea is the same:

1. View the existing connections: Power Automate

• Edit your flow
• Select each action and view or change the connection
• Or to manage globally: go to “Connections”

2. View the existing connections: Power Apps (Canvas)

• Edit your app
• Go to “Data”, you’ll see all connected data sources then you can remove, refresh, or replace each connection.

3. You also can manage these in the solution

Conclusion

Educate you team, connection management is something people don’t know they don’t know. Spread the knowledge.
...and document everything!