Scoop – 1
Imagine that you are planning to access and connect with multiple data sources across your organisation (of course, only those authorised to you to access), and you are finding it difficult to have an easy way to connect to these data sources to put all the pieces together. Microsoft Dataverse can act as a rescuer in such scenarios by letting you store data on Azure (the cloud) and combine data from multiple sources, especially Dynamics 365 products, through Microsoft’s ecosystem of applications and software.
Now that Dataverse means? Microsoft has rebranded its Common Data Service (CDS) to Microsoft Dataverse, announced in November 2020.
Dataverse is a built-in data source, and you may securely manage and store data that business applications utilise using Dataverse. A Dataverse is a data warehouse or online database that collects and saves data from many sources and allows you to shape your data easily. Then, for analysis and further use, this data can be retrieved or fed into other programmes.
Dataverse uses a collection of tables to store data. A table comprises rows (formerly known as records) and columns (previously known as fields/attributes). Each column in the table intends to hold specific information, such as name, age, salary, etc. Typical cases are covered by a foundation set of standard tables in Dataverse, and you can also design bespoke tables unique to your company and use Power Query to populate them with data. Then, developers may use Power Apps to create sophisticated applications that utilise this data. You can create tables with the ‘Drag and Drop’
Dynamics 365 applications—such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Customer Service—also use Dataverse to store and secure the data they use, enabling you to build apps by using Power Apps and Dataverse directly alongside your business data, which is already used within Dynamics 365, without the need for integration.
Note: Finance and Operations apps currently require the configuration of the Data Integrator (pro developers programmatically interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, create custom connectors, and integrate with external data.) to make your business data from Finance and Operations apps available in Dataverse.
Microsoft recommends using dual-write, which provides tightly coupled, bidirectional integration between finance and operations apps and Dataverse. Dual-write is an out-of-box infrastructure that provides near-real-time interaction between customer engagement apps and finance and operations apps.
Power Apps interface. Fact: you might need pro developers who can interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, create custom connectors, and integrate with external data.
There are multiple ways to integrate data into Dataverse, –
- Data kept within another application can be regularly synchronised with Dataverse.
- Power Query, commonly used in Excel and Power BI, can transform data when imported into Dataverse.
- Simple Excel and CSV files can be used for a one-time (or occasional) data import into Dataverse.
For Developers –
Developers can use the default standard table to develop an app and extend the functionality by adding custom entities (tables) per the organisation’s requirements. Dataverse includes features for developers to programmatically access metadata and data to create tables and business logic and interact with data.
For more detailed reasons why to choose Dataverse, please read our Dataverse Scoop – 2
