Connection reference
A Power Platform solution component that abstracts a connector type from a specific connection instance — enabling solution portability across environments.
A connection reference in the Power Platform is a solution component that abstracts the kind of connection a flow or app needs (e.g. "a SharePoint connection") from any specific connection instance (e.g. "the dev SharePoint site"). At solution import time, each connection reference is bound to an environment-specific connection — the same managed solution package deploys to dev, UAT, and production with different bindings per environment. Without connection references, deploying a flow across environments requires manually re-pointing every connection each time. Combined with environment variables for configuration values, connection references are essential to portable solution ALM. Modern Power Automate flows should use connection references for every external connector.