Low-Code Platform Vocabulary

A business professional who builds applications using low-code or no-code tools without formal software engineering training — typically operating within an IT governance framework to automate departmental workflows.

"After the Centre of Excellence trained 80 citizen developers on Power Apps, the HR, Finance, and Operations teams automated 40% of their manual data-entry workflows without raising a single IT ticket."

A type of low-code app (particularly in Microsoft Power Apps) where the developer designs the UI pixel-by-pixel, connecting data sources via connectors. Offers maximum layout flexibility for custom user experiences.

"The field service canvas app uses a custom card-based layout optimised for tablets, with offline capability using local collections and a sync flow that runs when connectivity is restored."

A low-code app where the UI is automatically generated from a data model (entity definitions, relationships, forms, and views). Less UI flexibility than canvas apps but faster to build for data-centric workflows.

"We chose a model-driven app for the contract management system — the UI is derived from the Dataverse entity model, and the built-in audit log, business process flows, and role-based access controls are all automatically available."

A pre-built integration component in a low-code platform providing authenticated, strongly-typed access to an external service's API. Enables drag-and-drop integration between the platform and hundreds of SaaS services.

"The purchase order approval flow uses five connectors: SharePoint (document storage), Outlook (approval email), Teams (notifications), Finance ERP (budget check), and a custom connector to the legacy procurement system."

An automated workflow in Microsoft Power Automate, consisting of a trigger and a sequence of actions and conditions. Can be automated (event- or schedule-triggered) or instant (user-triggered).

"The onboarding flow is triggered by a new employee record in HR Dataverse: it creates an Active Directory account, assigns a Teams licence, sends a welcome email, and posts on the team channel — all within 3 minutes of the HR record being saved."

A cross-functional governance team responsible for setting standards, providing training, monitoring platform usage, enforcing policies, and managing the low-code platform lifecycle within an enterprise.

"The Power Platform CoE reviews all apps before production deployment, enforces naming conventions and environment strategy, runs monthly citizen developer clinics, and owns the DLP policy configuration at the tenant level."

A governance control in Power Platform that restricts which connectors can be used together within a flow or app, preventing data from business systems from flowing to unauthorised external services.

"The DLP policy classifies SharePoint, Teams, and the Finance ERP as 'Business' connectors and personal email, social media, and file-sharing services as 'Non-Business'. A flow cannot mix connectors from both categories, preventing inadvertent data exfiltration."

Application Lifecycle Management practices applied to low-code development: using solutions as deployment units, environment strategy (dev/test/production), source control via the Power Platform CLI, and automated deployment pipelines.

"Low-code ALM uses Power Platform solutions as the deployment unit. Development happens in an individual developer environment, tested in a shared test environment, and promoted to production via a GitHub Actions pipeline using the Power Platform CLI."

The design of Power Platform environments (organisational containers for apps, flows, and data) across development, test, and production stages — a key CoE responsibility that prevents untested apps from reaching production.

"Our environment strategy: each developer has a personal sandbox environment for building; a shared consolidation environment for team testing; and a Production environment with strict DLP, managed solutions only, and change control required for any deployment."

A developer-built connector definition that exposes a REST API (typically defined via an OpenAPI specification) as a reusable, governable connector within Power Platform — enabling citizen developers to use internal APIs without writing code.

"We built a custom connector for our internal product catalogue API and published it to the CoE-managed connector library. Now citizen developers in Marketing and Sales can query product data in their apps without any code — just the same drag-and-drop experience as any standard connector."

A framework allowing professional developers to build reusable UI components using TypeScript/React that can be used inside canvas or model-driven apps — the pro-code extension point for Power Apps.

"The default date-picker didn't meet our accessibility requirements, so a developer built a custom PCF component using the Power Apps Component Framework. It's published to the org-level component library and available to all citizen developer teams."