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Creating a service principal application using API (preview)

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[This article is pre-release documentation and is subject to change.]

Authenticating via username and password is often not ideal, especially with the rise of multifactor authentication. In such cases, service principal (or client credentials flow) authentication is preferred. You can authenticate with a service principal by registering a new service principal application in your own Microsoft Entra tenant and then registering that same application with Power Platform.

Note

The Power Platform CLI provides an easier way. Learn more in Creating a service principal application using PAC CLI.

Registering an admin management application

First, the client application needs to be registered in your Microsoft Entra tenant. Review the Authentication article for Power Platform APIs to learn how.

After your client application is registered in Microsoft Entra ID, it also needs to be registered with Microsoft Power Platform. Today, there's no way to do this via the Power Platform admin center; it must be done programmatically via Power Platform API or PowerShell for Power Platform administrators. A service principal can't register itself. By design, an administrator using username and password context must register the application. This constraint ensures that only someone who is an administrator for the tenant application registers the application.

To register a new management application, use the following Request with a bearer token obtained using username and password authentication:

PUT https://api.bap.microsoft.com/providers/Microsoft.BusinessAppPlatform/adminApplications/{CLIENT_ID_FROM_AZURE_APP}?api-version=2020-10-01
Host: api.bap.microsoft.com
Accept: application/json
Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOi...

Make requests as the service principal

Now that the service principal is registered with Microsoft Power Platform, you can authenticate as the service principal itself. Use the following request to query for your management application list. This request can use a bearer token obtained using client credential authentication flow:

GET https://api.bap.microsoft.com/providers/Microsoft.BusinessAppPlatform/adminApplications?api-version=2020-10-01
Host: api.bap.microsoft.com
Accept: application/json
Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOi...

Creating a service principal application using PAC CLI

Use the Microsoft Power Platform CLI (PAC CLI) to add Microsoft Entra ID application (SPN) and associated application user to the Dataverse environment. The admin create-service-principal command creates Microsoft Entra ID application (SPN), and it also registers it with Microsoft Power Platform.

pac admin create-service-principal  --environment <environment id>

Learn more about the pac admin create-service-principal command and how to install PAC CLI.

Limitations of service principals

Currently, service principal authentication works for environment management, tenant settings, and Power Apps management. APIs related to Flow are supported for service principal authentication in situations where a license isn't required, as it isn't possible to assign licenses to service principal identities in Microsoft Entra ID.

Service principal applications are treated within Power Platform similar to how normal users are with the Power Platform Administrator role assigned. Granular roles and permissions can't be assigned to limit their capabilities. The application doesn't get any special role assigned in Microsoft Entra ID, as this is how platform services treat requests made by service principals.