Dataverse Explained: Upscaling from Sharepoint

Building Model Driven Apps that leverage SharePoint lists and libraries have limitations. Here are 5 key considerations when weighing Dataverse as a data repository for your business apps.
Check out these other videos we mentioned:
• A Citizen Developer's ...
• Solutions in Power Pla...
• Harnessing Environment...
If you’re interested in details on delegation limits, I’ve got some links for you below.
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/con...
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/pow...
Also including some links here to some content to help you with ALM
www.bulb.digital/blog/stabili...
www.bulb.digital/blog/alm-wit...
www.bulb.digital/blog/solutio...
Here’s a link to help you get started with SharePoint Integration...
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dyn...
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👋 See you on the next video!
0:00 Are you a Citizen Developer, Office Developer or Tech Leader?
0:50 Reason One - Changes Everything
1:56 Reason Two - Questions to ask
3:13 On Dataverse Liscensing Costs
3:50 Reason Three - Delegation Limits
6:28 Reason Four - Application Lifecycle Management
9:00 Code Reviews, App QA team, Planned Outages
9:50 Reason Five - Detailed Permissions
12:04 NEW The Workplace
12:30 Encouragements and Personal Story
#modeldrivenapps #sharepoint #sharepointonline #dataverse #microsoft365 #powerapp #powerautomate #m365 #citizendeveloper #alm #applicationlifecyclemanagement

[@BulbDigital]

Dataverse can feel intimidating! What encouragement do you have or what is holding you back?

[@qaazz]

The first point in this video really hits home for me, it's so nice once you get over all the initial hurdles of getting used to Dataverse. What really kicked things off for me was the "Dataverse for Teams" option, which is free as long as you run the applications inside of teams and can live with the limitations.

[@joel.engelhardt]

This video is remarkable! Wow! He is so well-spoken and clear. Thanks!

[@BulbDigital]

Glad it was helpful!

[@mikeymouse2]

Just the info I was looking for

[@closedchill5243]

It would be helpful to see a detailed price breakdown with a realistic scenario. Yes using Sharepoint is really time consuming and inefficient compared to Dataverse. You can do poor mans ALM with Sharepoint. You can do poor mans security with Sharepoint. You can do a relational database with Sharepoint. Managers with control of the purse often don't really care if life is hard for a highly paid dev. What would help is a realistic scenario showing real number cost savings due to using Dataverse, or a project that is truly impossible in SharePoint but possible in Dataverse.

[@BulbDigital]

Your comment echoes what some others have posted. With any single effort you'd almost need to build both ways and make a comparison. Or have accurate data about the build you did using SharePoint and then track the same data when you rebuild with Dataverse. This can make it difficult to calculate. It's not always about the expense associated with a single application. We see the biggest gain when an organization can make a strategic shift and apply Dataverse to a higher percentage of scenarios. This is a big reason we advocate for the strategic approach. Figuring out how to bring the "purse managers" along on the journey can be difficult. In terms of the price question, often the easiest way to justify license cost, build cost, ownership cost will be in terms of what it will do for your business. So, if you can make a case that is tied directly to a revenue increase or increase in profitability, the license cost can become a rounding error, making it an easy decision. If we were to list a few things that you simply cannot or should not do with a SharePoint back end, they'd be... - More than 2000 rows - Column level security - Use cases that demand complex permission schemes - Use cases that require advanced row level security

[@EdirinImiruaye]

One big issue I have with moving away from SharePoint is version history. Being able to quickly check who and when changes were made and roll back to a previous version is extremely key in my organization. Any way to move over to dataverse and still have this?

[@BulbDigital]

The easy thing you can do out of the box with data verse is turn on audit tracking. This can be enabled at the individual table level so you don't have to turn it on for everything. It will allow you to see exactly what happened when and who did it. Unfortunately it does not give you the ability to easily roll back to a previous version. There are all sorts of other implications that you would have to deal with if you wanted to roll back individual records in a relational database. If you most care about version history and rolling back to previous versions of documents then you can enable SharePoint document integration for your data verse entity and get the best of both worlds.

[@EdirinImiruaye]

@@BulbDigital thanks, guess I’m on a path towards change management

[@navarrocloud]

Can you point to some documentation or examples where it shows that the Power Apps is aware of the relationships when using Dataverse as the Datasource?

[@BulbDigital]

@navarrocloud yes, I can speak from personal experience. While working on a Canvas App this week having many tables, two of which are Device and Case. The Case has a relationship / lookup column called Device. While updating a label within the item template in a vertical gallery using Devices as my source (Items). I was able to use CountRows(ThisItem.Cases) in order to get the number of cases that were related to the given device. That's just a 30 second example. This "feature" is most useful in terms of the intellisense used when writing expressions against Dataverse datasources, which is what is demonstrated above. There are some ways to build "data first" screens in your canvas app, but it's not at the same level you get with building a Model Driven App. I found this article to be helpful in laying out all of the ways relationships can be created in Dataverse and might be leveraged within a Canvas App. Check the links at the top of the article to dive in to each one more... thepoweraddict.com/how-to-master-dataverse-relationships-in-canvas-apps/

[@navarrocloud]

@@BulbDigital Great. Thank you very much appreciated.

[@alexk7837]

Do you have any videos on dataverse management and upkeep?

[@BulbDigital]

At the moment we don't have anything specific to point you to, but we love that suggestion. Are you interested in the Power Platform environments administration side of that question, or more from a solution / app operational side of things? Another way to ask might be... "Dataverse storage / usage / capacity / feature updates?" or something like "Medium to long term strategies for managing my app data? "

[@alexk7837]

@@BulbDigital I guess both are valid tracks, but I was seeking a strategy for managing data as it expands and becomes stale. How do you mitigate data duplication?

[@ZombieEtiquette]

Dataverse isn't very viable when you are building apps for company wide (400-800 staff) use, since every user that uses that app has to have a power apps premium license ($20/user/mo)

[@BulbDigital]

First, not every user needs the $20 / month per user license. You have other choices like Per App licensing, which is a $5 / month add-on per user accessing a single app. Additionally, you can start with Pay as you go licensing to assess real usage to see what you really need. I think the other thing I'd say is if your organization is 600 strong, and the apps you're rolling out to "everyone" are core to the business, then it's certainly within reason that you'd need to spend some money on an annual basis to run and operate these apps. Applying the per app pricing to 600 users for a year means $36k for an app that has significant impact. I know of companies that spend way more money on software solutions that help them accomplish their mission. If you're building apps that are not connected to a measurable outcome that matters, then you're right, it's too much money. Why would you build that app in the first place?

[@EMiller500]

@@BulbDigital I started in Dataverse (before SharePoint), by creating apps with Dataverse in Teams. My understanding is that this doesn't involve any additional licensing, right? Whoever has access to the Team, has access to the app, right?

[@Plainace]

Managed to convince a multi billion dollar company to FINALLY invest in the licenses - can finally move out of Sharepoint 🎉

[@BulbDigital]

Woohoo! Seems like it shouldn't be so difficult, right? This is a problem we think about quite a lot actually. There can be many hurdles to overcome when trying to get leadership to unlock something great. Often, they're in that position because they're good at what they do, and often what they do simply isn't technology related. We are always looking for ways to effectively identify and articulate the value technology can bring to the workplace. @Plainace what approach worked for you?

[@Plainace]

@@BulbDigital When 25,000 users are using a canvas app with a SharePoint back end, performance issues become way more obvious - that's all the convincing I needed :D

[@ENG.Kelvin]

Unfortunately no logarithm functions are supported in Dataverse

[@BulbDigital]

If you need to do complex math, you might want to look at the use of Power BI, or even embedding Power BI into your office apps. We have another video coming soon on this topic! Power Query and DAX both offer LOG functions which can be used in Power BI. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powerquery-m/number-log learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/log-function-dax

[@ENG.Kelvin]

Mathematical functions have a long way to go. Excel is better in calculation by far

[@BulbDigital]

Thanks for the comment! This video has to do with switching from SharePoint to Dataverse as a backend for a modern app. Excel wasn't really part of the discussion. Surely you're not suggesting Excel as the right solution for building apps 🫤