PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer

The Exam PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer is designed to measure the ability to accomplish the technical tasks include – creating a technical design; configuring Common Data Service; creating and configuring Power Apps; configuring business process automation; extending the user experience; extending the platform; and developing integrations. Furthermore, this certification will be a great addition in your career. It will help you grow in your already existing job and it will help you get better job opportunities.

Knowledge Required

• Candidates appearing for the PL-400 exam should have development experience that includes Power Platform services, JavaScript, JSON, TypeScript, C#, HTML, .NET, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, RESTful web services, ASP.NET, and Microsoft Power BI.
• Candidates must have strong applied knowledge of Power Platform services, including an in-depth understanding of capabilities, boundaries, and constraints.
• Candidates should have a basic understanding of DevOps practices for Power Platform.

Exam Overview

The PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer examination consists primarily of multiple-choice questions. However, the Microsoft PL-400 exam questions can be of type build a tree, reorder, or simulation questions. Furthermore, the cost of the examination is $165 and you need to get at least a score of  700/1000 to clear the examination. You are approximately given 120 minutes to complete the examination but Microsoft does not disclose the exam’s time limit. Furthermore, it is available in the English language only.

Exam Registration

For Registering yourself for the Exam PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer, follow the following steps:

• Go to the official website and click on the schedule now option.
• You will be redirected to the Certiport registration page.
• Follow the steps and complete your registration.
• Furthermore, you will be receiving a confirmation mail once you have made your payment.

Exam Policies

The candidate is recommended to read these policies so as to avoid any kind of confusion in the future.These policies contain information about registration options, learning credits, etc.

Exam Retake Policy

If the candidate failed to achieve the passing score, then he/she has to wait for 24 hours before reapplying to the examination. The candidate can go to their certificate dashboard and reschedule the exam themselves. The candidate can reappear for the examination only five times. Failure in the second attempt will result in a waiting time of 14 days before rescheduling your third attempt. The waiting period for the fourth and the fifth attempts will also be 14 days. 

Exam Cancellation Policy

Microsoft offers candidates to cancel or reschedule their exams within a minimum of 24 hours prior to the exam date. However, to prevent any cancellation fee, you must cancel or reschedule your exam, at least 6 business days prior to the date scheduled for your exam. Also, if you fail to appear in the exam, then you will not receive any refund of the exam fee.

Recertification Policy

Microsoft certification is expected to expire when the products are out of mainstream support although the person`s certification will be recognized. Officially, the certification will never expire.

You can read the full policies on the official website of Microsoft.

PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer Interview questions

Start preparing for your interview with PL:400 Interview Questions

For more information, click on PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer FAQ.

Course Outline

The Microsoft PL-400 exam topics include:

Create a technical design (10-15%)

Design technical architecture

• Design the technical architecture for a solution (Microsoft Documentation: Design a solution architecture that works for you)
• Design the authentication and authorization strategy
• Determine whether requirements can be met with out-of-the-box functionality
• Determine where to run business logic including cloud computing, client-side processing, business rules, plug-ins, and Power Automate (Microsoft Documentation: Business process flows overview)
• Determine when to use standard tables, virtual tables, elastic tables, or connectors (Microsoft Documentation: Types of tables, Get started with virtual tables (entities))
• Determine the impact of security features of the Microsoft Power Platform including data loss prevention (DLP) policies, security roles, teams, business units, and row sharing on your business solution (Microsoft Documentation: Data policies, Security concepts in Microsoft Dataverse)

Design solution components

• Design Power Apps reusable components including canvas components, code components, and client scripting (Microsoft Documentation: Canvas component overview)
• Design custom connectors (Microsoft Documentation: Create a custom connector from scratch)
• Design Dataverse code components including plug-ins and Custom APIs (Microsoft Documentation: Create and use custom APIs)
• Design automations including Power Automate cloud flows
• Design inbound and outbound integrations using Dataverse and Azure

Build Power Platform solutions (10–15%)

Configure and troubleshoot Microsoft Power Platform

• Troubleshoot operational security issues found in testing (Microsoft Documentation: Troubleshoot Microsoft Defender for Endpoint onboarding issues)
• Configure Dataverse security roles to support code components (Microsoft Documentation: Configure user security in an environment)
• Manage Microsoft Power Platform environments for development (Microsoft Documentation: Create and manage environments in the Power Platform admin center)

Implement application lifecycle management (ALM)

• Manage solution dependencies (Microsoft Documentation: Dependency tracking for solution components)
• Create and use environment variables
• Determine when to use unmanaged and managed solutions
• Manage solution layers (Microsoft Documentation: Solution layers)

Implement Power Apps improvements (5–10%)

Implement advanced canvas apps features

• Implement complex Power Fx formulas (Microsoft Documentation: Microsoft Power Fx overview)
• Build reusable component libraries Component library)
• Utilize Power Automate cloud flows to implement business logic from a canvas app (Microsoft Documentation: Create a canvas app that can trigger a Power Automate flow)

Optimize and troubleshoot apps

• Troubleshoot canvas and model-driven app issues by using Monitor and other browser-based debugging tools (Microsoft Documentation: Debug a model-driven app with Monitor, Debugging canvas apps with Monitor)
• Optimize canvas app performance including pre-loading data and query delegation (Microsoft Documentation: Overview of creating performant apps)
• Optimize model-driven app performance including forms and views (Microsoft Documentation: Design forms for performance in model-driven apps)

Extend the user experience (10–15%)

Apply business logic in model-driven apps using client scripting

• Build JavaScript code that targets the Client API object model (Microsoft Documentation: Understand the Client API object model, Client API form context)
• Determine event handler registration approach
• Create client scripting that targets the Dataverse Web API (Microsoft Documentation: Client-side JavaScript using Web API in model-driven apps)
• Configure commands and buttons using Power Fx (Microsoft Documentation: Using Power Fx with commands)
• Configure commands and buttons using JavaScript (Microsoft Documentation: Customize the command bar using command designer)

Create a Power Apps component framework (PCF) code component

• Demonstrate the use of the different code component lifecycle events (Microsoft Documentation: Code components application lifecycle management (ALM))
• Initialize a new code component (Microsoft Documentation: Create your first component)
• Configure a code component manifest (Microsoft Documentation: Code components)
• Implement component interfaces
• Package, deploy, and consume a component (Microsoft Documentation: Package a code component)
• Configure and use Device, Utility, and Web API features in component logic (Microsoft Documentation: Power Apps component framework overview)

Extend the platform (40–45%)

Create a Dataverse plug-in

• Demonstrate the use of the different event execution pipeline stages (Microsoft Documentation: Event framework)
• Develop a plug-in that uses the execution context (Microsoft Documentation: Understand the execution context)
• Develop a plug-in that implements business logic
• Implement Pre Images and Post Images to support plug-in logic
• Perform operations in plug-ins by using the Organization service (Microsoft Documentation: Use the SDK for .NET)
• Optimize plug-in performance (Microsoft Documentation: Analyze plug-in performance)
• Configure a Dataverse custom API message (Microsoft Documentation: Create and use custom APIs)
• Register plug-in components by using the Plug-in Registration Tool (Microsoft Documentation: Register a plug-in)
• Develop a plug-in that implements a custom API
• Configure Dataverse business events (Microsoft Documentation: Microsoft Dataverse business events)

Create custom connectors

• Create an Open API definition for an existing REST API (Microsoft Documentation: Create a custom connector from an OpenAPI definition)
• Implement authentication for custom connectors (Microsoft Documentation: Custom connectors)
• Configure policy templates to modify connector behavior at runtime
• Import definitions from existing APIs including Open API definitions, Azure services, and GitHub (Microsoft Documentation: Import an OpenAPI specification)
• Create a custom connector for an Azure service (Microsoft Documentation: Create a custom connector from scratch)
• Develop an Azure Function to be used in a custom connector
• Extend the Open API definition for a custom connector (Microsoft Documentation: Extend an OpenAPI definition for a custom connector)
• Develop code for a custom connector to transform data

Use platform APIs

• Perform operations with the Dataverse Web API (Microsoft Documentation: Perform operations using the Web API)
• Perform operations with the Organization service (Microsoft Documentation: Use the SDK for .NET)
• Implement API limit retry policies (Microsoft Documentation: Service protection API limits)
• Optimize for performance, concurrency, transactions, and bulk operations (Microsoft Documentation: Optimize performance for bulk operations)
• Perform authentication by using OAuth (Microsoft Documentation: Authenticate an EWS application by using OAuth)

Process workloads by using Azure Functions

• Process long-running operations by using Azure Functions
• Configure scheduled and event-driven triggers in Azure Functions (Microsoft Documentation: Create a function in the Azure portal that runs on a schedule)
• Authenticate to Microsoft Power Platform by using managed identities (Microsoft Documentation: Authenticate access and connections to Azure resources with managed identities in Azure Logic Apps)

Configure Power Automate cloud flows

• Implement flow steps to use Dataverse connector actions and triggers (Microsoft Documentation: Overview of how to integrate Power Automate flows with Dataverse)
• Implement complex expressions in flow steps (Microsoft Documentation: Use expressions in conditions to check multiple values)
• Manage sensitive input and output parameters
• Implement Azure Key Vault and Microsoft Entra ID service principals
• Implement flow control actions including error handling
• Configure trigger filter and retry policies (Microsoft Documentation: Handle errors and exceptions in Azure Logic Apps)
• Develop reuseable logic by using child flows

Develop integrations (5–10%)

Publish and consume Dataverse events

• Publish a Dataverse event by using the IServiceEndpointNotificationService (Microsoft Documentation: Azure integration)
• Publish a Dataverse event by using the Plug-in Registration Tool (Microsoft Documentation: Register a plug-in)
• Register service endpoints including webhooks, Azure Service Bus, and Azure Event Hub (Microsoft Documentation: Use Webhooks to create external handlers for server events)
• Recommend options for listening to Dataverse events (Microsoft Documentation: Work with Microsoft Dataverse event data in your Azure Event Hub solution)

Implement data synchronization with Dataverse

• Perform data synchronization by using change tracking (Microsoft Documentation: Use change tracking to synchronize data with external systems)
• Develop code that utilizes alternate keys (Microsoft Documentation: Work with alternate keys)
• Utilize the UpsertRequest message to synchronize data (Microsoft Documentation: Use Upsert to Create or Update a record)

Preparatory Guide for PL-400: Microsoft Power Platform Developer

To help you in your preparation, we have prepared a guide to which you can refer to. Furthermore, following this Microsoft PL-400 study guide will help you learn and understand every exam’s objectives. Here we are providing you with the best learning resources to qualify for the exam. Moreover, here we are going to illustrate a detailed description to help you prepare for the exam. Let’s start with expert learning resources and a study guide.

Refer the PL-400 Exam Guide

It is important to know the topics beforehand. Significantly, this is the most important step in the preparation guide. Furthermore, exam objectives are very important when it comes to preparing the exam strategy. So, let’s take a quick look at the Microsoft PL-500 exam tops:

• Create a technical design (10-15%)
• Configure Microsoft Dataverse (15-20%)
• Create and configure Power Apps (15-20%)
• Configure business process automation (5-10%)
• Extend the user experience (10-15%)
• Extend the platform (15-20%)
• Develop Integrations (5-10%)

Microsoft Books

Microsoft provides reference books that can be helpful while studying for the exam. Furthermore, these books contain various useful resources that can be used while studying. Visit Microsoft Press books, to find relevant books to get a deeper insight into the exam objectives, and hence crack the test, and earn your certification. You can also buy these books from Amazon. These PL-400 exam books will help you prepare for the examination in a structural way.

Join Microsoft Community

A healthy discussion is always beneficial, no matter where it is done. The prospects of getting resolutions to an issue increase steeply when a greater number of people are involved. These discussions make the studies more comprehensive. Forums work really well to build a community that is essential for understanding others. Interacting with people with the same goal puts you one step forward in achieving those goals. Furthermore, it is suggested that you should join Microsoft Community.

Evaluate yourself with Practice Test

It is very important to practice what you have learned so that you are in a position to analyze your practice. Furthermore, by practicing you will be able to improve your answering skills that will result in saving a lot of time. Furthermore, practicing you will be able to improve your answering skills that will result in saving a lot of time. Moreover, the best way to start doing Microsoft PL-400 practice tests is after completing one full topic as this will work as a revision part for you.  Start practicing now!