Power Platform | Wrap-up current insights on Dataflex

Juli 21^st, Microsoft announced Dataflex, a built-in flexible database for Microsoft Teams with data storage and one-click deployment for full solutions, supporting relational, file and image data with find, filter and sort. So people started asking:

Is this yet another data source option for my Power Apps applications?

What´s the difference between previous data source options and this?

Before answering this, let´s start by adding that previously known Common Data Service got rebranded to Microsoft Dataflex Pro with the same announcement, continue delivering all well-known services, such as

• Enterprise ALM, data types
• Rich access control, auditing
• Governance & Security
• Accessing premium connectors
• Integration services, such as API, Web Hooks, etc.
• Broader set of CDM entity support
• to be used in any application, not just Teams
• Sharing, field-Level and hierarchical security

You can take a more detailed look into the comparison of each capabilities here.

For further details on the announcement, please refer to this page. So why Dataflex? Why a new name for Common Data Service? Due to the high demand of Microsoft Teams during remote working times and based on the fact of a huge demand on applications running in a single remote workers Teams experience, there was truly a need of a robust, flexible yet relational data platform that could host all this.

With Microsoft Dataflex enabled, Power Apps developers and Power Virtual Agent chatbot creators are now able to design, build and manage their apps and bots directly in Teams using the embedded Power Apps studio experience. Sounds great? Additionally, apps built with Power Apps and used in Teams will be responsive to the form factor they´re loaded on, meaning they can be used either by the Teams full-screen- or mobile experience. There must be a price for this, right?

As I outlined in an earlier article as well – licensing should never be the only tour-guidance around a robust technical architecture, so customers with qualifying Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscriptions can now benefit from this included service offer. Let me repeat, it´s included.

Microsoft Dataflex is great for building Power Platform solutions in Teams. And what about Power Automate? Teams processes can be automated with Power Automate for Office 365 over Microsoft Dataflex data. Microsoft Dataflex will make low-code app creation an easy task within Teams via tables that power all the customizations that you build for Teams, including Power Virtual Agents.

So how are you going to maintain, govern and secure Microsoft Dataflex? Using Power Platform Admin Center? No. A dataflex environment is mapped with a Microsoft Teams team, therefore creation will only be possible from within Teams. Granting access is managed by Teams Owner by adding or removing Teams members. Access is pre-configured with a security role based on the membership type. And as Marc Mercuri outlined in his comparison, we´ll also see more Common Data Model support coming soon – sounds promising, right?

Finally, what about data maintenance and integration? Adding data to tables will of course be possible via the user experience of an application or via logic within a Power Automate flow. Furthermore, you will be able to import data into Microsoft Dataflex using Data Flows. In addition to Office data sources, such as SharePoint and Excel files in csv format, you will be able to bring in data via standard connectors. But that´s not all. You will also be able to use an editable grid experience to be more productive when creating tables and editing data in Microsoft Dataflex.

Sounds like an offer you need to familiarize with?

Being new to this topic and never heard of Common Data Service before? Let me shortly explain that with Microsoft Dataflex you will have the opportunity to upgrade to Dataflex Pro as well, which means you would benefit from the additions brought with that offer. So if you´d like to have the freedom of choice in terms of the clients you want to use accessing your applications, Dataflex Pro is certainly the way to look at. Another important bucket should be the Integration layer when it comes to more complex type of applications you´d like to build and deploy in your organization.
With mobile offline and relevance search as well as a couple of additional advanced data types, you´d also like to consider Dataflex Pro being the choice for you applications. Dataflex Pro remains part of Power Platform licensing and for instance comes with a Power Apps per App or per User license.

Last but not least, you might ask why didn´t I touch on the Dataflex vs. Microsoft List topic? Well, I thought of this worth another separate article, so stay tuned. Until then…