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What is Microsoft Dataverse?

Microsoft renames its Common Data Service as Microsoft Dataverse. It is a cloud-based storage space offered to organizations for securely storing their business application and data. Microsoft Dataverse is based on Common Data Model principles and empowered with rich security features, business logic, and productivity tools.

It helps easily import data of any size; or format and streamline processes that help export or manage data out of Dataverse. Dataverse is built on the foundation of Microsoft Azure, ensuring scalability, global compliance, data security, and availability.

At a glance, many will feel that Microsoft Dataverse is just another database technology platform like SQL or Access. No wonder! The tables, columns, rows, and relationships make it look like a common database, but in reality, it is much more than what it appears.

Microsoft Dataverse is a database technology with a long-standing history of 18 years. It was started as a core engine for Microsoft CRM. Later on, it evolved to become a central pillar of the modern Microsoft Power Platform.

Microsoft Dataverse – More than Just a Database

All Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications (including Sales and Customer Service modules) and Power Apps are embedded within the Dataverse and used for storing their data. Microsoft Dataverse allows app-building against this data, thereby maintaining a single source of truth and preventing third-party integrations from unifying the data.

Using different data export services like Azure Data Factory, dataflows, and Power Queries, you can seamlessly import data from any source of your choice. Besides, you can utilize a set of connectors in Dataverse for communicating with Salesforce, SharePoint lists, Oracle, My SQL, SAP ERP, Oracle, MySQL, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, and many more. Microsoft adds a layer of security to Dataverse using a set of highly customizable built-in roles.

Microsoft Dataverse works with all data types as it is made capable of incorporating all major data technology categories required by any organization. It works seamlessly with data lakes, relational, non-relational, file, image, and search. Users can create a set of visual designers for creating, editing, and interacting with the data. Making it easier to deal with and quickly define tables, relationships, business rules, and workflows representing your business.

What do you Get with Microsoft Dataverse?

Dataverse API: At its core Dataverse is just an API. The built-in connectors make interaction with the Power Platform features such as Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents, and AI Builder an entirely seamless process. Besides, Dataverse uses WebAPI to interact with applications written using other languages apart from Power Platform.

Model-Driven Power Apps: These are directly built into Dataverse for offering a friendly, easy-to-use business application interface for Dataverse.

Dataverse Connectors: At present, there are three connectors to access Dataverse, the Dynamics 365 Connector (deprecated), the Common Data Service connector, and the Common Data Service (current environment) connector. However, we will be seeing the fourth connector – a Dataverse Connector especially made for the Power platform.

Dataverse Security: It offers built-in security for the platform level. Dataverse has updated the security considering the business usage versus discreet data access. It helped to transform the dataverse security more straightforward for configuring a robust security profile for applications.

Dataverse Logic: Dataverse offers a series of configurable logic engines necessary for building applications. Classic Workflows is a fully configurable workflow engine that enhances the performance of many synchronous and asynchronous series of steps. Additionally, business rules, business process flow, and fully featured SDK and custom plug-ins written in .NET allow implementing advanced logic.

Dataverse Data: Storing data is one of the many functions of Microsoft Dataverse. The Dataverse gives a whole meaning and relativity to the Excel spreadsheet. The ready-to-use tables provided by the Common Data Model and developed following industry standards offer enough scope for customization. Besides, users can store unstructured data such as file attachments in Dataverse. Microsoft Dataverse stores the data in a combination of Azure SQL and Azure Blob storage.

Dataverse Integration: Virtual entities or connectors help integrate or view data with Dataverse. One out-of-the-box feature of Dataverse is to populate Microsoft Word templates, integrate with Microsoft Excel, and send and receive communication with Microsoft Exchange. Additionally, it works with Outlook and helps export to Excel and Outlook Integration.

Dataverse for Teams: Microsoft Teams license holders can now build Power Apps, Automate flows, and Power Virtual Agent Chatbots directly within the context of Teams. Even if users do not have Dynamics 365 or Power Platform licenses, they can use it for small-scale automation tasks, segregating business intelligence data with Power BI, building AI or creating virtual agents.

Benefits of Microsoft Dataverse

Structural & Semantic Consistency
Dataverse comes with a Common Data Model offering common language for business tables and covering the full range of business processes and systems. It helps data share a semantic and structural consistency making it easier to work with data.
Dissemination of Data
By making data share a consistent and common form, disseminating the data wherever needed is made seamless by Dataverse. Besides, it helps in deeper, more useful, and most importantly, real-time, Business Intelligence.
Easy to Manage
Dataverse stores both – the data and metadata in the cloud. It relieves organizations from worrying about how it is being stored and how they will access it. Once Dataverse is integrated, the cloud directly handles all your data.
Makes Data Secure
Dataverse offers role-based security, making it easier to control the access of tables for different users within the organization. Besides, the ability to create field-based security allows users to choose the granularity of data security.
Integrates with Dynamics 365
By default, all the data from Dynamics 365 and Power Platform is stored by Microsoft Dataverse. It allows your organization to build apps quickly that either use or recycle data from Dynamics 365 and extend your apps with Power Apps.
Allows Deeper Insights
Once you integrate Microsoft Dataverse, it starts pulling data from Power BI and presents some astonishing facts and insights that you were not aware of previously. It uses pre-built connectors for gathering and merging the data automatically.
Highly Customizable & Flexible
It is easy to modify and customize the schema code at the backend of the Common Data Model to enhance its adaptability for using it alongside the Standards Schema required to fulfill unique business functions within your organization.
Empowers Interoperability
It allows easy integration of common data store with a single set of common logic by using Store in Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI with all other Dynamics 365 data. Besides, once imported, it presents data in a usable format.

Microsoft Dataverse Consulting Services from EPC Group

Is your business interested in delivering the services with more agility, does your organization want to enhance the operational scale and efficiency, and do you want to use your organizational data more interestingly and insightfully?

EPC Group is here to help you resolve all your issues with custom Dataverse consulting services. Our team of highly capable consultants will help you implement, integrate, and train you in using Microsoft Dataverse.

EPC Group is a Microsoft Gold Partner offering Microsoft consulting services for the last 24 years. Their experience and expertise working with Common Data Service make them the most eligible and experienced consultants to work around Microsoft Dataverse (Microsoft Dataverse was formerly called Common Data Service).

By partnering with a team of highly experienced and professional consultants at EPC Group, you get a chance to access the complete potential and grasp the entire capability of Microsoft Dataverse. Additionally, EPC offers continuous and cost-effective consulting and support needed to optimize your Dataverse and Power Platform experience.

You can rely on EPC Group for all the Microsoft Dataverse and related services like,

  • Microsoft Dataverse
  • Microsoft Power Apps (Model-Driven)
  • Microsoft Power Apps (Canvas)
  • Microsoft Power Apps (Portals)
  • Microsoft Power Automate
  • Microsoft Power BI

Why Choose Us

Why Organizations Recognize EPC Group's Consulting Services as the Industry Leader
EPC Group wrote the book on SharePoint & Power BI
Microsoft Partner for 25+ Years
Over 4 million Office 365 users successfully migrated
200+ years combined senior team migration experience
Expertise migrating to Office 365 in every vertical
EPC Group's Chief Architect Errin O'Connor was on the original SharePoint and
Office 365 Beta teams