Preface

Welcome to this guide to the Microsoft Power Platform Functional Consultant Exam, PL-200.

This guide will help you understand and prepare for the PL-200 exam; probably the most important exam for those involved in implementing solutions in the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 solutions. By reading this book, you will become familiar with the most important elements of the low-code aspects of the Power Platform and you will be well placed to take—and pass—this exam.

Passing the exam demonstrates that you have the skills required to customize solutions based on Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and the Power Platform.

As I have been writing this book, the Power Platform has seen many changes, reflecting the investment Microsoft is making in business applications and the importance of the Power Platform to Microsoft. The impact of the Power Platform is making itself felt across the whole of the Microsoft product portfolio, with Power Apps now embedded in Microsoft Teams.

At the time of publishing, Microsoft Dataverse (formerly known as the Common Data Service) was undergoing a branding change. This branding change has not been completed and some screenshots in this book may reflect the former branding. Along with the name change, there are several changes to terminology such as tables (formerly entities), columns (formerly fields), rows (formerly records), choices (formerly option sets), and yes/no (formerly two options). These terminology changes will be applied to the user interface, documentation, and exam over time. You should be aware that the terms used in the book may not match the tools and documentation.

The book starts off with Dataverse (formerly known as the Common Data Service), where you create the data model that you will build your apps on. You will learn about business logic, security, automation, and other features that make Dataverse a great platform for building apps. Next, you will learn about creating and deploying apps, how to automate flows, and to build your own chatbots. The book then looks at using the Power Platform with other tools such as Power BI and Microsoft 365 services.

Each chapter concludes with a Further reading section, which is a very important part of the book because it will give you extra and sometimes crucial information for passing the PL-200 exam. As the questions of the exam will change slightly over time and this book will eventually become outdated, the Further reading sections will be the place that provides access to all the updates.