Share via

Prepare and submit your connector for certification

The connector certification process outlined in this article is for independent publishers. If you own the underlying service to your connector, go to Verified publisher certification process.

Note

This article provides information for certifying custom connectors in Azure Logic Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Power Apps, and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Before following the steps in this article, read Get your connector certified.

When Microsoft certifies your connector for the Independent Publisher program and publishes your connector, your name appears in the product as the official publisher and a generic icon appears on your connector. Preparing and submitting your connector for certification is easy. Before you submit connector files to Microsoft, review and complete all the steps in this article.

Prerequisites

The Independent Publisher Connector Group lets anyone with verified credentials publish a connector to the official list of Microsoft connectors. If you want to contribute to the group, review the group's resources and take any required actions:

Step 1: Verify connector isn't already built

Before you start building a connector, verify that the connector isn't already built. To check, you can search for the connector in these places:

Use this table to see what you can do with your connector based on its status:

If your proposed connector: Option:
Already exists for Copilot Studio and Power Platform. You can't build the connector.
Already exists as an independent publisher connector. You can add more functionality to the connector.
Is currently a pull request and a proposal. You can contact the independent publisher to collaborate with them on the connector.
Is a pull request and isn't a proposal. Wait until the connector is certified and deployed. Then, add an update to that connector.

Step 2: Share connector proposal with Microsoft

After you check that the connector isn't on the platform, share your connector proposal in the Independent Publisher Connector Group's GitHub repository. Sharing your proposal helps avoid duplicate efforts and can help you find collaborators.

To share your proposal, submit a pull request in the GitHub repository that meets these criteria:

  • Title the pull request, Proposal - Connector Name. For example, Proposal - HubSpotCRM.
  • Commit an intro.md file with as many details as you can provide. If you're open to finding a collaborator, include your contact email.
  • Share your verified credentials. If you don't have your verified credentials set up and ready to share yet, you'll receive an autogenerated link to a form for you to fill out and submit. The connectors team will reach out via email with information to start the one-time process of setting up your verified credentials.

Note

You use the same pull request when you're ready to submit all of the files for certification in Step 4.

Step 3: Build connector

Build your connector. To get started, see Create a custom connector from scratch. Before you submit your connector for independent publisher validation and deployment, follow connector preparation best practices:

Review all the steps in the prepare connector files for certification article.

Step 4: Submit connector artifacts

When you're ready to submit your connector artifacts for Microsoft validation, certification, and deployment, be sure to:

  • Submit the connector artifacts to the pull request you created in Step 2.
  • Fill out the checklist in the pull request template.
  • Remove Proposal - from your pull request title.

Step 5: OneVet Verification

To maintain the trust and safety across the Power Platform community—all the publishers submitting GitHub PRs need to validate for identity and authenticity. Please follow these steps to get Verified Credentials.

Step 6: Go through connector validation and certification process

After your identity is validated by Microsoft, please follow these steps:

  • Fork the microsoft/PowerPlatformConnector repository.

  • Create a pull request (PR) containing all files that were previously needed and then add a package.zip file to the PR.

  • Package your connector files by referring to Prepare Agent & Power Platform connectors for certification.

  • Validate the package for structure before submitting the package for certification to Partner Center - Run Package Validator tool.

  • The certification team adds a comment to the PR called certify-connector to start the certification process.

  • If the package is valid, certification passes through and a success message appears in the PR stating the deployment process will begin soon.

  • The connector's folder name in the GitHub repository cannot be changed once added. If you, as the publisher, would like to change the file name, you need to reach out certification team.

  • The certification team completes the code review and initiates deployments of the connector. Once the deployment process is complete, the PR is updated and merged by the certification team.

  • If there are any errors with the submission that need to be addressed, you'll see error details populated in the PR comments. After making updates and resubmitting the PR, the certification process is starts again. You can create a fresh PR, but ideally, it's best to work with the same PR.

  • Updates must be submitted by the same publisher who submitted the previous version. If updates are received from a different publisher, the pull requests (PRs) are rejected.

  • If you are the original publisher and you've lost access to your account, you must manually contact the certification team for verification and to request unblocking.

Note

OAuth connectors are unsupported at this moment for Independent Publishers.

Step 6: Wait for connector deployment

Important

On average, it takes 15 business days to deploy the connector. This time is required regardless of the size or complexity of your connector, whether it's new or an update. To protect integrity, all connectors are subject to the same validation tasks to test functionality and content followed in every deployment.

  • Deployment schedules: Connector deployment schedules for production start Friday mornings, PST/PDT. Notify your Microsoft contact at least 24 hours in advance when you're ready for production deployment so your connector is included in the next scheduled deployment.

  • Region deployment: Microsoft notifies you by email with the names of the regions where the connector is deployed, as deployment to regions happens in steps. If there's a deployment delay or freeze, you receive an email notification. To learn more, go to Region deployment.

Follow submission best practices

Follow best practices for a successful connector submission:

  • Submit only one connector per pull request to ensure a smooth validation process.
  • Add your email that's associated with your GitHub account to the support email section. This is in case we need to contact you.
  • Fill in the privacy policy parameter with the privacy policy for the end service.
  • Write detailed operation descriptions so users can understand your operation.
  • If your connector uses OAuth, provide detailed steps on how to create an app in your readme.md. If you don't, certification is delayed. For an example of documentation to include, see the Readme.md example.
  • Add response schemas to your actions unless the response schema is dynamic. This helps your connector get more usage.
  • Review the Checklist before submitting.

Microsoft guarantees

Microsoft commits to satisfying the following guarantees:

  • If there's an update to the connector, we run the breaking change tool and all other validation tools over again.​
  • If there's no update to a connector, we guarantee that it works unless there's an API change or update, or a platform issue.​
  • If there are any platform or security issues, Microsoft investigates as they arise and deprecates broken independent publisher connectors.​

Next step

Move your connector from preview to general availability (GA)