Best practices for Power Automate connection references

What are connection references?

Connection References are used in Power Automate Flows to read, update, create, or delete data in other platforms and services, such as the Dataverse, SharePoint, Excel, Outlook and even non-Microsoft services such as Twilio. Each Connection reference stores metadata, which define which connector and connection is needed, but do not contain credentials. The same connection can have multiple connection references and one flow can have several connection references for one connector.

Here are some quick facts about connection references:

• Connection References don’t contain any credentials, just a reference to them (the Connection).
• Admins and Developers can create a Connection Reference and tie it to a specific Connection.
• A Connection Reference can be re-used in multiple Power Automate Flows.
• Several Connection References can use the same Connection.
• If you need to update the Connection tied to a Connection Reference, it updates all Flows that are utilizing the same Connection Reference.
• Each Flow can use several Connection References for different Connectors.

Best practices for managing Connection References

Here are some best practices for managing connection references:

• Create a common solution with all the Connection References
• Create a new Connection Reference for each developer that share the same service principal Connection or have a process in place to check for consistent use of a Connection Reference (when a service principal Connection is not possible). This is due to the fact that you cannot share Connection References with multiple developers.
• Share ALL Connections with your DevOps Service Principal(s), so that your… (read full article on www.beringer.net)

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