Microsoft Dataverse Overview & Initial Thoughts - January 2021 WISPUG

thank you all for uh for joining us today um excited to have uh chris wagner with us um to talk about uh dataverse uh he's been using it early and often so i'm excited to hear kind of what the experiences are like uh and and things like that and how everything kind of works and where to go from there so with that chris take it away all right thank you thank you jonathan um and thanks everybody for coming and and uh uh going over this i i hope uh what i have to say is going to be informative and useful for you um as you're working at looking at how you're going to build out your your data offering uh inside of that loco no code space so um this is something that uh i think i was approached by microsoft on um actually two years ago um we began our conversations around this point so i'm very excited that it's now uh generally available and it's something that people are out there using and beginning to build out their solutions on all right so um little quick agenda we're gonna go over you know uh introductions just so you guys can become more familiar with me because you know while i know a few of you um i'm sure you know i don't have such an ego to think that everyone knows about that guy uh we're gonna talk through a little bit of the history around the dataverse we're going to talk about how you can uh use your data the dataverse inside your organizations the types of solutions that it can do uh that we'll talk through what that solution design is like and then we'll talk make sure that we touch in on some core concepts so if you guys are hit with some things and this stuff seems new to you or this stuff won't seem you know brand new to you it'll be something that you're you're familiar with and you're accustomed to to dealing with all right um uh so my name is chris wagner i'm the analytics architect for rockwell automation uh i provide uh solution design and support um broadly to the global uh enterprise analytics teams that rockwell automation has which means i provide a degree of support and and consumption for about a thousand fourteen hundred uh power bi pro developers uh i provide more detailed support for our 400 or so business unit content creators who share things through power bi premium and then um more you know even more detailed yet solution support for a handful of our capability teams uh who are actively growing and building out solutions inside this platform i'm also a microsoft data platform mvp i just got that in 2000 so you know i'm on month 10 of that um if anyone is ever interested in the mvp journey happy to walk you through that and talk you through what that means um uh you know what it means to be an mvp and and the process to get there because it's not straightforward i totally did it wrong for like five years uh and completely changed everything and you know how i was doing my mvp uh pre-work um in order to actually get it so um i've also been a member of the power bi uh and uh power platform client advisory board for the last five years uh for five years i've been on the power bi client advisory board it's only in the last year that i joined the power platform clown advisory board uh if you're not familiar with the client advisory board these are leads from major companies get together with the microsoft team two to four times a month uh basically uh around a lot of their like sprint retros and when it comes to planning and feature selections uh we provide a great deal of feedback on the on various topics that the platform is doing uh so we work very you know hard with microsoft to ensure that the you know the platform is going to be where we need it to be 18 months from now my biggest uh significant contribution there or the thing that i'm happiest and proudest um to say that i contributed in some small way is the new composite models that the power bi service rolled out in december this was something five years ago we hit on as a major component that the power bi service needed to offer uh as part of that client advisory board we sat down with the microsoft power bi team and we came up with i think it was 89 deliverables that the power bi service was going to need to add in in order to deliver that functionality and it's been very exciting to watch over the last five years as uh those individual pieces you know came to light came to fruition and then eventually uh culminating in the composite models so very excited about that uh in 2020 rockwell automation also received a future edge 50 award for their work in the analytics space and the integration of natural language generation which i was a significant contributor on so we're very excited about that and i'm also the founder of kratos bi uh this is a website where i highlight all of the data gods that exist inside the universe please come out check it out um there's lots of good stuff i tried to do the gods of the week you know sometimes i don't get one every week but uh if if you're looking for guidance and direction you know it's it's a good good place to go to get and understand all of the resources that are available for you all right but that's me now this presentation is for you i don't do these things for my health um uh i i want to make sure that you guys are getting something from this so uh we are not in a large enough group where like you know you coming off mute and talking to me is going to be a problem you know if there's going to be 500 i'd ask jonathan or um you know um anthony to field questions but if you have questions about anything that i'm talking about please do come off mute ask that question i'm happy to answer them uh i i do run several user groups internally at rockwell where i'm like often and regularly put on the spot so please do not feel uh awkward and asking me a question i'm very adept at to answering even the most random of questions in these types of forums so please do ask any questions that you have all right let's get to it so um i want to first level set where we're at and get us to why are we talking about the dataverse okay um and when we look at the enterprise you know the enterprise uh in i think it's 1989 or 98 or whatever it is we introduced sql server for companies to start to manage and build out databases for applications and data marks for analytics and all of that good stuff right um shortly afterwards there was a there was a recognition that you know we need to offer something as you know you know that's simplif you know simplified version of this that an individual could work with right so thus uh we saw the advent of the access database you know get born um and as that evolved we we began to see that people began to use uh you know you know introducing additional features and functionality another tooling to provide a similar experience right so eventually when sharepoint came along in the mid 90s when did sharepoint become a thing anyone i think it's been 90s maybe yeah yeah i think it was uh late 90s right or yeah one of the two late nights okay so as sharepoint came along you know there was a recognition that we needed to like advance and provide you know other ways for allowing users to be steering storing information that they would then share and use right um sharepoint is an excellent way of doing that number of different methods you know the sharepoint list has been around forever um in fact it's been so popular uh you know that microsoft just introduced it was it called the uh the o365 list right so i mean like um microsoft has recognized the power of the list uh what that can do for a user so that's really evolved as we've gone along um but the challenge that has has really came up and the gap that we saw inside the solution was on the um uh the access side um you know there was there wasn't a real good way to provide people with uh relational databases right um you know if you're going to stand up a sql server or you need uh you know a sql data warehouse you know you're going to be in the enterprise you're going to spend a lot of money you're going to spin those things up um but that didn't work for a lot of teams a lot of like ad hoc uses like what was done with it on the access side of the house um and this is something that is is very necessary right like companies and teams are are frequently spinning up and needing to create these relational databases to help drive applications and help drive the work that they're doing and um as we start to look at historically the challenges that we had in this framework especially when it came to access was i mean if you remember the dark days before 2010 access was in a completely different uh you know uh programming language if you needed to you know if someone went out and built this huge massive thing in access there was a massive lift to upgrade that into something that the enterprise could support um that's why in 2010 they rebuilt to access so that was backed fully by a sql server database so that that lift became easier so microsoft recognized that as we started to look at the cloud and what the offerings were they needed to come up with a solution that was not just a relational database solution but one that would scale and provide a great deal of functionality users and and that's where dataverse was or the common data model was created they figured if we could come up with the the you know the basic shape of the way data is most often consumed uh and give users the ability to work in it make small adjustments to it we could really help users go from zero to 60 when it comes to building out and deploying solutions all right um now uh where does uh where does the divers fit you know you know there's always going to be the need for a sharepoint list that exists out there you know you were you know we're just seeing that proliferate we're seeing more and more of that uh come out especially with the o365 list right um but dataverse on the other hand is an ideal solution well it comes in two different flavors which is something uh you really need to be aware of right so there's dataverse for teams um this is the the big announcement that microsoft had in december this is out it's ga um dataverse for teams is excellent when you need that relational database you know you're gonna have less than a million records right it's gonna be something small and it's gonna be less than two gigs in size now the big kicker and the big key thing here is this is free right so this means that if you're trying to build out scalable solutions that you can deploy across your uh your enterprise or if you're looking to uh monetize as a service that you offer your customers this is something that you can build out script out and deploy as part of your solution right so this becomes infinitely scalable when it comes to that broad-based consumption as long as you're operating inside these frameworks now uh if you need more than this you need a you know more than a million records you know you need more than two gigs of data um then you can upgrade into the fully fledged dataverse uh i've got to toss out a whole bunch of like just fyis or like uh points of awareness around that is you can get hit with some significant licensing fees there um uh i would highly recommend if you're going down that path of like the pro dataverse space you spend some significant time with your uh uh your your licensing department and make sure that you understand the ramifications of what it would mean for to introduce uh the full-fledged dataverse or even like uh power apps power automate the pro versions of that uh what that would mean to your company um i i think the licensing is 35 a user a month and that's not just developer it's users so very easy for that to become incredibly expensive so just be aware of that okay um and then you know if you need something that's greater than that right or you have a dataverse environment that's growing it's getting becoming successful that's when you should look at you know making that step to that azure sql db or even synapse analytics uh type offering these are much more scalable you know uh solution items that are out there but typically it's gonna be driven through the it okay um does anyone have any questions about where this solution fits no excellent one question i i just kind of came up with as i was you know kind of thinking about some of the examples that you're running through is you know if you were to you know go out there and pick a database for something you know what what stops you from picking a sharepoint list versus database for teams you know versus dataverse when you look at the low code no code solutions is there you know ramifications from a power bi standpoint are there other limitations that you've run into personally just from a personal experience it doesn't need to be everything under the under the sun yeah so the big thing that i have found is uh the reason to make the transition over to teams is when you need that relational database experience it could be really hard to replicate that with lists um uh that's not saying it's not possible it's just it can be very hard to do that inside the list space without a lot of overhead and a lot of processing and i'm also a big preacher around keeping your your solutions as simple as possible if you can do it with the sharepoint list do it with the sharepoint list don't complicate what you're doing because there's something new and great out there i'm happy to like uh you know help people upgrade to the dataverse but you know if something you know can be done with another solution don't over complicate it right right um the other big advantage you get with the the dataverse is that uh model that's you know the models that are out there um and how they they're gonna start to integrate with you know various template apps that are coming out and becoming available um i think that's some of the visioning stuff that microsoft has i've seen around that that that makes that very attractive for teams especially if you're working inside of dynamics um the inter interaction and integration with dynamics can really make this a powerful solution okay awesome yeah no problem any other questions always chime in all right um so this is where it fits so you know you've you've got your like you know today i learned type thing so uh we're going to take a little step back and you know make sure that people understand you know the basic components that are out there what the heck my next slide looks weird oh okay there's animation to it sorry um so when it comes to the power platform um you know these are the various components that are that make up that power platform power bi powerapps power automate and power virtual agents um again i think when it comes to knowledge and understanding inside the community this is you know power bi has been around for a long time people get this power apps have been around for a few years this is becoming more mature same with power at automate uh if you haven't had a chance to work with power virtual agents uh highly recommend you do check this out um uh it is a new feature that microsoft has offered where it makes it very easy for you to stand up and spin up the virtual agents uh you know basically chat bots that you can extend outside of your organizations to make available to people do be aware i think these cost a thousand dollars a month so you're not going to just spin them up uh to like answer questions internally uh unless you're you're you know for like you know bs right you're gonna incur costs so please be aware of that underpinning all of these tools are uh three basic core concepts and principles that are commonly accessible across all of them the first being microsoft's dataverse this is the data platform that is going to make the foundation that becomes available across all of these um i i would say the advantage inside the dataverse especially for like dynamics clients is you're going to see that it's going to inherit a lot of the functionalities and capabilities that are in dynamics are just going to naturally blend into the dataverse and then as we start to look forward in time over the next you know six to 24 months you're going to see more of these features for uh dynamics integration just light up across this entire platform and that's going to come through data versus okay data connectors drive your connections through and then ai builders is what helps power um you know that data science or that artificial intelligence integration like we see in the virtual agents this too is going to have a broader impact on um power bi power apps and power automate as we move or the ai builder is going to as we move through the next you know six to 18 months so very excited to see these advances in this space all right so as we look at all of these the big key and function you know the benefit that comes along with this platform um is that it is integrated right um each of these tools is all brought to a common platform where it's easy to integrate them it's easy to bring you know uh automate you know your analysis you know bring things together it's really easy to have that conversation as we start to integrate uh the virtual agents but as we also start to integrate teams inside this space this becomes an incredible source as a one-stop shop for a lot of people as they're working and operating inside this tool right and when it comes to building out in a loco no code environment the more you can simplify the more you can already have integrated your solutions the easier it is going to be for people to develop and work inside this space right one of the big things we're seeing at rockwell automation is that we're actually seeing a growth and adoption of the power platform radically faster than we we saw when it came to the power bi space and that's without any um real prompting or direction that we're giving people uh because they're finding that they need to do it right this this helps them do their work and they do it in a consistent way uh a little aside we actually had a young guy at rockwell um right out of college he came into a department and team that um has been around for decades and for decades they have been like running 24 7 to try to keep up with the demand and the work and they they you know they you know they've really struggled to to keep up right that's just things are moving too fast for them it was you know too difficult for them to you know just meet their minimum things that they were looking to deliver as part of that team well this young guy came in and over the course of his first few months when he discovered automate he went through and automated a lot of his tasks freeing up you know 60 80 percent of his time so that he was able to work on not just you know the minimum requirements of things that he was delivering but the long-term things that you know the stretch goals that no one was else was able to get to when people recognize that they uh you know they they brought him forward to do more of the workflow management and and do more of that application integration and by by building this out he was actually able to automate a lot of work of his entire department so they that department went from like struggling to keep up and maintain everything and like working super hard to you know knock it out of the park you know so that you know they were they were crushing it and it was all because of the automation and building out using a lot of these new tools um if you ask him the way he looks at dataverse and the opportunities there is he had to do a lot of rework duplicated work um and he had a lot of challenges in building this out because he didn't have access to that relational database inside that space when we started start to implement this that made his life a heck of a lot easier uh as you start to bring in the the um uh the dataverse toolings right hey chris at rockwell uh when you look at the number of makers and and the people that are building apps or building flows power bi reports is it typically uh you know the the people that have been in that space for a long time i know that you know powerapps and power automate are relatively new but i'm kind of going back to your that same story is it typically the newer people that are kind of you know adopting this and you know automating and kind of taking to the next level or is it is it a mixture you know where where are you seeing that at rockwell let's so uh we're very fortunate um that rockwell is a company of engineers um you know we've been an engineer engineering minded organization for like 120 years so uh we we are very process driven you know we have lots of six sigma you know certificated certified individuals we are constantly running you know those types of programs to get more people trained up in it um so i i think we saw um while there were a lot of new people who like took to the new tools and wanted to definitely get involved there were a lot of people who had been around for a long time who you know saw yo who saw this as an opportunity to address some of those issues and saw how easy it was to get in there and build some of this stuff out um it was just frankly it was you know it was too difficult and painful for them to go any other way um we saw that you know using your our classical like it capability team model um it took a long time for a business you know you unit to say hey i need this project that project goes into the backlog that project gets balanced out and you know it moves up or moves down and executives have no problem getting projects through um but you know people who are not necessarily executives you know it could take him 18 to 36 months to get a a project through i.t um yeah and often it was hard to you know definitively say that there was an roi that justified it right especially that amount of effort power automate and power apps uh really helped simplify that so you know that the businessman will run and build things out in a much faster basis take with covid when covid first hit um you know rockwell like every other company on the planet was very you know caught very flat-footed right like we were not prepared to go on lockdown and stop all of our engineers and sales people and service reps from visiting all of our you know all the countries that are out there and all the manufacturers around the world in fact uh because we provided hands-on solution support for critical resources needed to address the pandemic we couldn't stop we just suddenly had to have all sorts of new processes that needed to be automated you almost saw an optic during that time um in some sectors we definitely saw an uptick uh i'm going to point to our fiscal reporting for whether or not we actually saw an uptick or not oh i mean as far as automation and such yeah especially on the um on the loco no code side we we had an individual who who had a need to automate tracking all of the service reps who are going to the various factories around the globe uh and all the sign offs and paperworks and testing right um uh he built that out inside of power apps within uh on a sunday afternoon he just sat down and started watching youtube videos a week away eight o'clock at night he he published this out and by the end of the first two weeks uh we had all of our regulatory compliances that addressed every country on the planet um in place to to manage those service reps uh once that work got out all of a sudden all of our sales reps all of everyone who is traveling uh you know you know we began to scale that solution right and as it started to grow um you know one of their biggest challenges was um you know hey we need more than a microsoft list to manage this data um now they made do uh with lots of microsoft lists but that was a large lift this is the perfect type of situation uh for a dataverse type solution right yeah it kind of speaks to some of that rapid development the word gets out you know you have a solution that works really well and then it's rapid fire on the back end people are you know buying in they want more of it and then yeah it's just that discussion about the data source and and so forth yeah yeah it becomes really hard to manage and grow right but um the nice thing about it is you know you can do those things right awesome um now when we talk about uh the power platform in deniverse this may throw some people off because the dataverse has gone through many different names out there so if you're not familiar uh the dataverse initially was called the common data model or common data service so if you're going out trying to find like documentation on this and you're not finding dataverse out there uh in fact if you just google dataverse you'll find more documentation on harvard's data first for internal databases uh at harvard then you will on uh dediverse for uh for the moment being uh i would imagine that's going to grow and change as time goes on but just be aware that you know dataverse is a relatively new name for that uh last summer microsoft had when you know dataverse was going or i'm sorry the common data model was becoming public you know ga they ten you know for a handful of days they called it data flex when uh the lawyers got involved and you know microsoft got sued because dataflex is already a name and then it had no name for like three weeks then became project oakdale for several months uh but now uh the lawyers apparently are very happy with it being called uh data dataverse okay um you know when we talk about what is the dataverse this is that functional deployment of the common data model that we've been talking about so those you know when you deploy a dataverse you're going to actually see that um there are lots of common entities that are going to get created as part of your solution how much or how little you use any of these things is up to you uh it's very customizable and we'll kind of go into some of that stuff as we get into it but the idea is that framework gets put out there and becomes immediately accessible and user usable by people right the advantage here though is um this is very easy for people to secure and manage inside the the um the data verbs for teams and inside of dataverse uh this brings lots of advantages some risk that does come along with this um please you know like because especially with danvers for teams uh this inherits a lot of the security things that you may have when it comes to external users inside your your company right so if you're allowing you know external clients to come in and work inside your team's environment so they can see docs they can see information that's in there by using dataverse for teams you can build out applications that store information relational management or relational structure that can then be accessible by these outside people so that's that's a huge advantage of dataverse for teams is that can be something that is very hard to do otherwise like i know rockwell we have a lot of policies that will actually prevent someone who has even if you have access to an app someone finds a way to get you into it you won't actually be able to access any of the data in the app because well you you don't have a ri id right this is a good means of enabling people to access that information something to be aware of but you know you're going to need to manage it watch over it but this is something you can do okay now when we talk about um um how this is architected and how this is designed um it all starts with that api right how do how does you know the dataverse interact with different things it's all through api driven uh architecture right so uh first level is you know our apis when it comes to security authorization you know we add in the business logic to drive that um we then talk about our data storage our modeling our reporting uh those types of concepts and then oh i'm sorry there's our storage right everything is built in such a way as to be um scalable consumable and really in a similar modern framework that you that we're seeing inside of our existing enterprise data spaces this in turn ensures that any solution that's being built out there can be scaled up if necessary right because they're using common tooling because they're using common cloud services and functions this can be scaled up into an enterprise great solution to to address any of the you know the largest potential needs that your company might have okay um hey chris is that something that you guys run into often where you know somebody gets a hold of a solution like we mentioned earlier and then you need to upgrade figure out where you're going to go is that is that something you know is common at rockwell not necessarily it's a rockwell thing but i guess i'm asking more of a generic question so that's a great question um uh that has classically for you know plagued the low code no code uh let users have access technology uh environment right and that's why i kind of brought up the whole access issue right like people used to i mean i i can remember in the 2000s like finding out that oh the bank i work at um runs all of their global reconciliation of monetary processing through an access database that you know kelly manages and secures and she's automated you know millions of dollars moving in and out of various banking accounts at the bank through this access database and it's this huge security violation now we need to upgrade that out of out of that and it became uh you know a six to nine month project and engagement to make that actually work outside that access space so that that was a huge problem that has continued to plague any of these you know uh like hey let the users do it type frameworks um that these solutions that are critical or need to be secured get built out uh not maliciously right like you know kelly was just trying to get her job done and needed something you know that and that it wasn't providing and so she she did that in access and you know frankly good for her because then the code was at least there for people to follow instead of like having to talk with dina and remember like the 400 steps she took to manually do something so um uh but microsoft wouldn't you know when you know they approached this low code no code platform you know they learned you know from decades of dealing with you know it administrators like pulling their hair out around this stuff and said okay hey as we do this we're going to do this in a way that uses all of the tools that are that our cloud has to offer is scalable and you know can move up and be built up um so uh have we done this at rockwell yes we've definitively done this in a number of cases we've scaled up solutions that have been been uh built built out in there but this is a universal need when it comes to you know people adopting these self-service and dataverse you know type tools right right and the reason i really like the dataverse tool is because it does use common coding patterns that are scalable right so you know you know you're often using power query to ingest data inside that that framework right so well that's just m which means you can run that in data factory and you know instead of sending into dataverse you could send in to synapse so you know literally as much storage you know as you conceivably could need you can have right without having to recode everything does that drive oh yeah you know that's great yeah that's that's good to hear uh you know i think going back to what you said it's kind of like you're not going to have the shadow i.t i think that's that's a big piece that i heard there well you're going to have less of it anyways you know you can still start something and probably get away with a little bit but um and then outside of that you're learning that that common tool and it's not some tool that you only use in this little spot it's something that can you know if you learn it in you know the position that you're in today it might be beneficial for you you know down the road as well right right right right awesome thank you good question all right um the great thing when it comes to the data versus how integrated it is across the entire platform right so when we we see how it's running and interacting with power apps you know all of those tools that a cloud architect or solution architect would have to build out and add into your infrastructure are automatically built as you start to work inside that dataverse right so building out that load balancer and all these different components are something that's just done in the background right like you don't necessarily have to be concerned with you know managing you know sql elastic pools or what your data lake storage has to look like or a cosmos db right all of this stuff is brought together inside of the tooling without you know you as a user having to be concerned with any of these things or managing any of the costs that are associated with it especially you know if you could stay in that you know dataverse for teams that is a fantastic solution that is uh broadly available okay um now when we talk about the core concepts when it comes to uh dataverse uh i wanna talk about uh you know it breaks out into three pieces tables logic and security uh when we go into the tables it's going to create um you know every time you spin up that data versus as i said you're going to get your core tables that are going to come along with that right you're going to see that account table you're going to see activity you'll see contact all of these things are going to come up and they're going to get automatically popu or not populated but they're going to be defined for you so that you know using the most common definitions that are out there um if you have specific needs to customize you're more than welcome to customize these uh you know columns uh you know uh enhance and build out and bring forward your you know different relationships between the tables and just like in any sharepoint list you can create forms and views that sit on top of these uh so it's exorbitantly powerful uh some words of um i don't know if it's necessarily warning um but a pro tip uh you want to encourage your users to modify these tables or these entities as little as possible the reason for that being the integrations that you're going to see when it comes to like out of the box template flows template apps they're going to be designed to sit on top of the dataverse or the cdm uh using the information that exists where it is um if you go through and you heavily edit out um or edit these uh entities uh you're gonna find that as you try to implement these template apps and uh as users start to to pull in these functions that are available inside the service they're gonna have to do more work when it comes to like customizing those those that tooling that's out there um which may be beneficial and valuable if you know uh to your organization like if you're like i gotta modify this to do this so i can make my joins i can do my imports you know hey great do that um but if it's you know like i just i like to have my emails defined as a hundred varchar versus whatever it has um don't do that leave it alone just let it be okay now um uh one one of the the big things that also comes along with um dataverse is um as you have mappings in it's got a lot of logic already built in and really easy to enhance and drive to add in business rules that help ensure that the information that you're you're running through your pipelines is secure it's accurate it is what what um users would expect it to do uh it's very easy to add in additional and new business rules you know document these flows and build out work for workflows around um around your data versus entities and the data that exists inside your your space uh a big one here is uh approval workflows this is something that was classically very easy to do in sharepoint uh it unfortunately uh got more difficult um uh but with this it's a little easier if you if you're using the the um dataverse i can make that a little easier to leverage the template apps that are out there so um uh this is something that does become easier for people to use and develop in all right um when we talk security uh the great thing around the data versus it it does basically especially in dataverse for teams is it follows the security levels that you create inside your team framework so if you have owners you have um you know they have admin rights on the dataverse and you know it basically flows through um to everything inside the universe it's something that's very easy for people to to work with secure and understand who can do what um and when it comes to low code no code you know under you know making sure that people understand how these pieces all fit together uh easily is gonna be the the biggest piece of this okay um now i've talked for a long time i've hit on a lot of the high level pieces i've gone hopefully not too far into any of the weeds or on what dataverse is and um how you can use that inside your organization things you can do um what questions do people have for me on dataverse and and its usage patterns or anything at all anything somebody's gotta have a question just waiting to ask it the perfect time to actually program it examples so it um it's a so if i could show you a demo i definitely would i unfortunately can't um but where's the training films and yeah so um there's a number of great films out on youtube i can share some links over with you guys um but it is it is point and click it's you know once you have it installed and i will just give people a word of just fyi once you enable a dataverse inside of a uh inside of teams or inside of a workspace in powerapps huh excuse me once you enable it it does take 10 10 to 20 minutes for the all the entities to get set up and and become available for you so just be aware that there's a little lag there but it's super easy for people to work and operate in the entities just all appear inside of your your power apps or teams environments that you've created and it's just a matter of going in and and defining each one of those inside of you know inside of your applications or inside of your flows and automate great question john does that answer your question be nice to actually give us some pointers to what films or what youtube's and such on how to get started how to install it how to fire up your first app yeah i can provide some links on that i don't have that in my deck right here but i can get you some of those links happy to excellent any other questions yeah i think i'll just kind of speak on that a little bit oh it looks like john actually another john was gonna mention something yeah uh hey chris real quick when you're saying not to change the tables not to edit the tables too much is that basically don't change the current fields that are there or not even really add fields great clarification um and yes if you're going to if you need to add something add away right um it's it's try to avoid changing any of the current fields that are in there not saying don't um just a a pro tip is you'll find that you'll you're going to be more able to use a lot of the out of the box template apps and template flows that microsoft and others publish if you haven't uh edited the the out of the box fields that are there okay um you know but take that you know as i always look at like the you know 80 20 rule right like 80 percent of time you can avoid changing it that's great and just you know just don't do it go in and be crazy with it is that jive john perfect thanks yeah no problem yeah this thing is not like a relation i heard it's like a relational database it's kind of a cheap or free relational database for powerapps but this thing's populated with sales data with like um dynamics data great question uh it is uh a free you know the dataverse for teams is a free solution that is available for uh people to use and leverage when it gets created all that gets created are empty entities inside of the framework so it's like basically it's a blank database with tables and fields already created for you the power when it comes to crm integration is there's a lot of data flows that are out there that are you know template data flows that allow for easy integration between crm dynamics and these various data verses so you'll find that it's really easy for you to like flow information out of crm into the uh the dataverse so that you can drive and power apps using that does that make sense sean so it's not populated automatically you'll have to do some work to get that populated um but there's template apps that make it easy for you to do that yeah maybe even just diving into what the differences are again of you know the dataverse for teams and datavert because i know that that's that can be a really you know there's there is a a clear line but it's not very clear you know all the time so it's it's something that you know i'm always you know re-educating and working with folks on to showcase you know the differences between those two sure um and the the big difference is in my mind and the way i look at it is around cost um now the regular dataverse you can you can scale beyond you know because the free version has some real hard caps right uh can't have more than a million records can't exceed two gigabytes um it's a relational database and it's free as long as you could stay within those parameters it is an excellent option for teams or applications that need a database and they need it free for integration um and want to keep it as low cost this is a great solution for you uh it can also be upgraded to the you know the the the full on dataverse um but it's not right out of the box uh some other notes on delivers for teams and the apps that you build out inside of teams they're only accessible through teams you can't access them through the the classic powerapp portal um so if you have users going in and using lots of power apps they're going to find that their apps for teams and the you know that you know that are using the diverse for teams are not going to show up in there so that's just one kind of little caveat you have to be aware of between these these two solutions if you want your your app to exist inside teams and inside of the powerapp space then you'd be talking about upgrading to the the full on dataverse [Music] excellent question so chris can you connect the power automate to the dataverse for teams yep 100 and if you're staying inside that o365 platform you don't have any need for additional licensing so um you know if all of your files and all of your data comes in through emails and it's dropped into a sharepoint bucket uh or they're all you're gathering information from several different sharepoint lists you can bring those together using uh power automate uh into your dataverse environment and you can drive it through there okay so expand and to expand on that so with the open api against the teams for dataverse then i could connect potentially the sharepoint development framework to it and expose the data through that process as far as getting the data into sharepoint uh you should be able to um i don't know of any limitations on that um but i have not tried that specific item so if you ran into issues i guess nothing is i've always run into the issues with you know the limitations of the sharepoint list and looking for an alternative solution um and and that was potentially one because if it is the open the web api technically you should be able to expose that data into sharepoint then correct yes and that's how it's designed right it's designed to be broadly accessible across the entire o365 platform whatever you're doing so um uh if if it's not available and does not work today i would fully expect that you're going to start to see these things become more available in the future now that's with the full on dataverse the dappers for teams is this free version is uh isolated inside of the team's space um i know there are restrictions there that are preventing it from being more broadly accessible i don't know if there's workarounds around that i have not played with it enough to uh you know you know see if i can expose it you know outside of the team space but the dad verse you can definitely do that with yeah i guess i was looking for a dataverse for teams because it is free sure that's a key word for everyone right it sure is all right thanks chris no problem uh and i'm honestly i i i talk with microsoft four to five times a week um uh i talk with the the this power automate team on uh two or three times a month every time i talk with them i push them on lowering the cost of the stuff because their initial price point is crazy i think they need to you know really straighten that out um because this needs to be a progression right you start with the free sharepoint list you you need more capabilities you need that relational stuff you move to a database for teams um when this is not scaling or you need to scale you need to be able to go to uh that next step and that cost needs to be comparable right i mean an azure sql db uh that people will be able to access and do whatever the heck they want it's 350 a month right like that's your baseline entry into you know databases dataverse can't cost your platform you know three million dollars because you start to add in dataverse right or any of the power platforms so um yeah we we we need to you know we need to help microsoft see the uh see the light on that stuff so i'm working on that hey chris one question that comes kind of with that is um do you know anything about uh you know permissions in microsoft dataverse four teams if there's gonna be any updates there that you can give us um i do not know of publicly not nda uh changes that have been announced inside that space i will say that microsoft has for for the last five years have been working very closely with the agile framework uh from taking user user feedback uh and building out and delivering on stories um uh they are exceptionally good at that so uh you know there is a a site out there for like things ideas you know at uh at powerapps or power i think you'd want to do it through powerapps um uh about you know if about enhancing the security i go out there and make sure you make that known uh so i can get prioritized um but yeah i can't i wasn't sure if there was anything you could share that's all i i didn't want you to slip but i if there was things you could share you know we're always our ears are always open you know uh so things have only slipped three times um so i've only said three times uh and then those three features that i slipped on never got delivered because they just kept getting bumped and so i'm like wow i look like i'm just making stuff up at this point yeah you're almost bad luck right right right right so i'm not gonna i'm not i'm not letting anything out there so cool cool thank you yeah no problem um yeah any other questions well that was certainly helpful from a teams and a you know the full-blown version uh you know kind of just diving into that and what you get for the you know for the price range and and so forth so yeah thank you for for diving closer into that any other i mean examples that you can kind of dive in that you've you know contemplated using dataverse or dataverse for teams or maybe there's a reason why you went with sql over dataverse or you know vice versa and and guys i'm gonna jump in too because i can share my screen and share some stuff um that might help to pull it together for folks because i know when i got started looking at it too i was trying to i was looking for the dataverse button and there isn't one right so you know trying to trying to pull that together i can share my screen i think uh i used to because i haven't really found any starting point that's been really good yeah so let me know when you guys can see my screen here we can see okay so a couple of layers um that helped me out so first dataverse is and chris definitely correct me where i'm wrong because i'm a noob on this too but the powerapps app in teams gets you into this which is dataverse for teams so here i can create an app so a powerapp or other things inside of this team and inside of a team and in this one i've got this dev team kind of set up and then you can also kind of scroll through it here on the build side to now see for this team's team here are the entities and things i'm using so i have a table um right i got a table i had a chat bot in there i think but right so that's that's the right visual that you need to start with right you're there's nothing called dataverse there's no button anywhere um it starts i think with powerapps app in teams so that being said what happens under the covers a little bit is it's creating a power apps uh environment but it's not one of these uh i'll go with this one it's not one of these that show up in power apps or power automate where you have different environments so those teams based environments are still hidden from you here because they're special this obsidian environment here is my obsidian environment tied to dynamics crm so that's got a dynamic crm database in it ad hoc is just the normal office 365 one but if you go into the admin center an admin can see them all and now you can see there's a teams environment for that one team there's another one here and then i've got my production crm environment and my default ad hoc environment so that's what's kind of going on in a couple different ways that it's magically happening in the teams app to create this environment when you start and then you use the teams power apps app to build and and and build out from there yeah i've been a couple points there too is the only time that you can really modify that table is through teams you have to be logged into teams and and be able to you know you have to be an owner to to modify that um you know you have either in the powerapps app within teams or you're in this you know back end you know build mode where you can modify that database as well so there's two ways you can do that but those are the only two ways that you can really access that information so too i think it was a john w's point earlier these are the ways that you can access that information i'm not sure if you can access that in sharepoint i you know it is still a bit newer you know the way that they've implemented the the dataverse for teams so i i'd be curious on that on getting that answer too yeah if it works it's going to be down the security of the team right on the graph api on the back end so it might work probably works yeah i i i too would be interested to know if that works because especially the way that they've defined um uh uh defined uh how this is going to work inside of teams it sounds like the intentions that it shouldn't but um uh i i could totally be wrong right yeah because the way that they encapsulate you know the the database there it might be a little bit different than the regular data you know dataverse as well so yeah yeah it's definitely an interesting uh use case and not you know i'm sure you're not the only one thinking about it yeah and so uh john um i did post my favorite youtube uh video it's a series of videos a guy did i think there's six of them i posted the link to the first one you can go through there and get more information on it and then i did post a link to the microsoft learn path on uh in getting introduced to dataverse uh if you haven't used the learn platform before exceptionally useful in getting you up to speed in these new toolings it's one of the first places i go to for information to like buff up my understanding of how each of these things and pieces work yeah i 100 agree with you with microsoft learn it's done it's a really good job of small digestible components and you learn something quickly so i agree with that and then the last thing on the screen here and it finished quick enough so i'll show you so i just i click this inspection app to team so i did one of the samples and it finished within like five minutes or less i had just done it while we were on the call now you can see that these apps they had those templated apps kind of pre-built now and added to my dev team if i go into that dev team here now you can see the power app that's built for the inspection and managing exceptions inspections so those two apps are now showing up in this team's channel as tabs well that one there it is but now again now you're starting to see now you got these i would assume canvas apps kind of sitting inside of this team's channel using the database um uh for uh in the dataverse i think part of the fun there is you know when you view it in teams and it's just a second tab out there a third tab that you're looking at it looks and feels as if it is teams oh i mean it is technically teams but um i mean they did a really great job of integrating that where you know your end users aren't going to be confused it's not learning loading this third-party looking type of tool um you can see they did a really good job of matching you know the the back color there and the you know the way that this app performs they put some thought into it all right so hopefully those those visuals help because it took me a few uh searches to figure out where the dataverse button is because there isn't one so i have um a question kind of hi this is rachel hi chris um so um i come at this from the sharepoint side of things right so i will admit that i'm not following along with a lot of what you're saying i get all the shiny bits it's super cool i'm very excited about oh database that's nice um i i can i'm working on a project right now where they are pushing what i consider to be the relational limits of a sharepoint list or five um so so so that's where i'm coming from not i'm data kind of competent as chris knows um teams as we all know is a ui that sits on top of sharepoint right all the data that's stored in your team is actually in a sharepoint site and you can go into teams and um and you know open in sharepoint see all your team stuff in in in there in sharepoint so that's great um is there a way so if i were to build one of these things so here's what here's what i'm thinking of like i said i have this one application that i'm working on that's pushing the limits of this relational database thing and you can only have 12 lookup columns blah blah blah and so forth yadda yadda yadda and everything else but this is a public thing so it needs to be on a sharepoint site and publicly accessible to everybody as a in one of our businesses and globally and everything else preferably from sharepoint not from teams these people are not savvy these people are not savvy okay uh so trying to explain to them to each of these thousands of people oh go to teams and put in no not gonna work i need to be able to give them a link is this an option or is this no rachel walk away uh that's a great question rachel um i i think there's some things you might want to try to experiment with um it is designed to just go through teams and only be accessible through there but that doesn't mean you couldn't get clever and sneaky when it comes to embedding an object inside of your sharepoint site so that it's really teams embedded in sharepoint um i think there might be some options there that you could potentially attempt uh but it's not gonna be something that's natively out of the box going to work inside of sharepoint today because this is the reason i called out for the project that hey we're pushing the limits of sharepoint sure pink can be relational database e ish and i warned them i said you're pushing the limits and you know it's fine for now but in a year and a half when this thing gets really big and is handling all of the projects in ssb this could be a problem and we would need another solution that is more traditional database that can handle a million lines of data and more than you know and everything else so i'm trying to look down the road and and see how soon i should call you chris um you know god don't even finish what you're working on call me now or let it go for two years and we'll worry about converting it i don't know um this is the type of thing where you you might want to do some experimentation with to see if you can get it to work um okay by i uh just knowing the timelines that you are often tasked with rachel i would like for you to um uh come to me you know a month from now and say i spent a month on this and it didn't work um uh don't do that um i would hate for you to to waste a month on something that uh is not designed to work in the way that you're necessarily wanting it to work right today um so i would definitively say give it a shot but i i can't uh definitively say that it's going to work for you uh doing what you want okay the solution that we have within sharepoint i mean i've made it work and it's fine it's functional and you know it'll work and everything else i just i have concerns that as they iterate through this thing and well you know how you know how these things go in six months well now they want to add this thing and then then they want to add that you know and then it's gonna i don't know bad things will happen but so this sounds like it would be a an interesting fun cool thing i don't know how it would all right yeah so i'm i'm trying it now and i i i'm gonna say i wouldn't do it if it was me um but uh i think it's kind of the jurassic park principle of even if you can do it you might not want to because you can doesn't mean you should right so i had that conversation today with someone so yeah so after this loads right so one reason i would say it's not easy enough to do is this is a slightly different like canvas app editor tool um than the standard one so it doesn't have the info tab and the link to the the power app that you can use to embed it into sharepoint so it's not easily giving you that that information which is a hint that maybe you don't want to do it um but all right i'm i'm creative i can go farther than that um so now let me go into the admin center and see if it can give me an id because i just need the id really right and then i could test it but i don't even know here it's not even telling me in the admin center kind of what the idea is to to go at it so the last thing i might try is like right click and use dev tools to try to pull it out of nowhere um but again because i had to do all those steps is probably a pretty good hint that says they don't want you to try yeah if they're hiding it that hard it's a good indication that they don't want you to find it and you should stop digging yeah and and again i your scenario would be people gotta start using teams you know it but microsoft's going that way you it's just the the long term answer you get you're not gonna be get away from teams uh later so that's the hard truth that i'm currently arguing with these people that they need to have the project managers not just go enter things in sharepoint and not submit an excel spreadsheet first that's where i am my my ability to convince them to leave sharepoint for teams that's so far down the road for these people you'd be surprised i don't disagree with you it's just yeah i can only bring them along one step at a time right if you're moving to sharepoint now in teams later though you got to do this twice if you jump forward um you just have to make the big change once and then you're set for a while so keep that in mind i mean i've i've done it i've seen lots of teams and uh and worked with lots of companies on it and and yeah it's hard um but you know you just gotta gotta go with the flow of the product otherwise you're in trouble and you're in the cloud now too you have no control over the timing of the the new feature and the deprecation of anything that again i would that's how i would do it but right i mean right now it's working and it's stable and it's fine with standard sharepoint lists and lookups and you know it's it's fine um like i said i've already let them know that hey within two years you need to look at something else because i i don't think that'll be and i think it's just like you're saying you know it's it's that being you know transparent it's it's a moving target like john's saying where you know yes this will work for now you know you know as you grow the the data source there's there's many entries being added you figure out more about that the app you figure out more about the people and then there's a time that there might be a time to change so you know or maybe it dies off so yeah i think it goes back to what you know chris said earlier where you know keeping it simple start somewhere and then once you need to you know kind of go back to that you know that's the time to make some changes and that's exactly why we did it this way which is you know for now a sharepoint list will work and it will work on a lot of levels it's easy for the current people to be able to manage and add new things and they can update it and they can do their things with it it's super easy for alfonso to be able to access and get it into power bi so they can do all their crunching and numbering and things like that and it will ease the pm's i'm hoping use it to ease them into an electronic interface that does not include excel you know if i can get everybody into this one world you know making the jump in a year or two to something like this i think will be less difficult that's my that's the story i'm telling myself inside my imagination please do not correct me yeah crawl walk run please please don't correct me please don't tell me how wrong i am [Laughter] it's what lets me sleep at night all right but thanks i i kind of was hope we'll see who knows maybe in two years it'll work that way i don't know we'll see you never know i mean the way that lists are going to i mean they've expanded on that so i mean it kind of yeah like you said it's uh you never really do know where microsoft is going sometimes sometimes it's uh yeah it's it's interesting sometimes it's a pleasant surprise and sometimes it's a brick wall like yep they never delivered the feature i wanted hey there have been a couple of features they just delivered that i've been waiting for for 10 years so um yay microsoft yes yep i'm excited when you can you know partner with microsoft and see those solutions develop and evolve over time um they're very impressive with their ability to do that all right any other questions or comments or items is any i uh this is my third major presentation of the day i started off the day presenting uh to 70 engineers on how we're going to change the way we do analytics engineering at rockwell i then presented to the entire power bi team at microsoft uh so like three to six hundred people or something crazy like that on um you know we know where where we're highly successful in implementing their solutions and then some items that we see as major things that would help in implementing uh to try and set some uh visionary items for microsoft to address is any uh at one point in time i had some messages saying that people would like to see the types of things that we're asking for um yeah says beer o'clock so as we're having a beer is anyone was anyone interested in seeing these uh visionary statements that we've we put out there for microsoft on the power bi side this has nothing to do with sharepoint and nothing to do with other things so i'm happy to not to share this stuff but some people sounded interested i don't want to speak for everybody but i'd i'd be curious just to get the the 30-second overview of it okay yeah i kind of have a quick glimpse into you know your guys's world and and kind of you know shed some light because i you know probably you know even some of these sharepoint people and you know myself included i am not a power bi expert i've been in there you know a few times and i wouldn't say i've been super successful but you know kind of poking around it's kind of it's good to learn you know those complimentary tools sure and that is why i am here [Laughter] complimentary tools right well and in many ways microsoft makes it easy right it's got a wonderful low code no code platform but in some ways they just continue to make it harder on themselves and the world around them um and so that's why we went through and we brought forward some some items i presented to them that we we see that would really help the platform uh number one being clear resource usage and usage metrics and controls for users right so that people can take more you know clear control of their destiny the work that they're doing understanding how and where things are or are not performing um you know i i think there's this illusion that oh we're in the cloud we should have infinite compute and storage capabilities at all times the reality is that's just not ever going to really happen right there's there's always going to be controls in place there's always going to be throttles limits issues when it comes to performance and processing uh so you know we should find a way to bring this more available uh accessible to people this would be exceedingly helpful and to continue to iterate through feedback on this stuff so that it's not just a static mvp launch that you know sucks for the next two years before they come back to do an iteration on it where it sucks slightly less but still sucks right like let's do more right um the other the other piece was let's turn power bi into the netflix for data let's find some transformative ways to bring those data assets that we i mean rockwell spending you know millions and millions of dollars every year on analysts and licensing and our platforms and you know all that stuff to bring analytics to light and many companies are in the same boat uh let's bring this forward in a way that's engaging and brings to light all of the information that is uh most relevant to users when they're accessing the information and now don't just bring forward you know individual metrics and you know uh like hey does this visual make any sense like bring instead of that bring forward the stories that are the power bi reports that are most relevant for users right um you know and find different ways to enhance that experience with like voting mechanisms community forums visual previews all of these different things i will say after i presented i had 10 people reach out specifically to get a shot of this slide from the power bi team so i think this is the one that they're most excited about so fingers crossed that's a good sign they may have ignored me on everything else microsoft is already i believe well we'll step back uh it would be you know one of the other asks is to add in the ability to have more of a conversation around the actual reports so the more they can do to integrate the power bi reports into teams and integrate conversations into the reported experiences this is the better uh as well as having people be able to put in comments in charts in graphs in the reports that are out there would be you know exceptionally helpful as well right like if there's a spike or a dip or a hero or a villain that people see in there it'd be great to be able to call that out inside that experience right get people talking about what's going on inside the data the other big ask is microsoft just released composite models which allows you know business users to take a model uh take another model and mash them together this is going to be super easy for enterprises that have an uber advance mod you know centralized data warehouse with good surrogate keys that are centrally managed and are highly curated um i've never worked in a company like that i've worked in companies that say they want to do that and you know they work towards it but it's never something that ever actually appears so i we were asking them to build in a robust surrogate key experience inside the power bi desktop that would enable users to basically um add these in uh create circuit keys off business keys uh that are managed inside the experience to address late deriving data new dimensions these joints that type of thing uh and then we we put out there the spider-verse challenge um uh this is you know i i this hit me about like eight nine months ago when i was on the elliptical one morning watching spider verse and i thought wow spider-man has come an amazing way from the old you know 60s and 70s renditions of spider-man to all these just visual styles that just pop you can feel what's going on inside there i want to see the same thing happen inside the power bi experience so it becomes uh something that people can feel what's going on inside the data i would love to see that that visual get you know a massive uplift forward um uh we're also looking for ways that you know power bi can close that gap uh between our data science communities and our business users right now our business users are lucky if they're in power bi um many of them are uh but some are still trapped you know outside of that space right uh our data scientists on the other hand are leagues you know light years away operating in python notebooks we've been pushing hard for an offering called power bi notebooks that was on the roadmap then it's off but to bring that back so that we could bring those insights our data science community is building out and integrate that directly with the business so that they can take advantage of these insights right um and and i did then highlight the number one reason i i believe microsoft and power bi and all of these tools is um uh it all goes back to how engaged microsoft is with their community and is with the the the feedback that they get the story i have is in 2012 i was working at a bank i was working on their bi team i was on a committee where we had just uh selected tableau as the the business intelligence platform that the bank was going to be using for a very long time um and while we were in the process of standing that up i already supported an msc bi based install i was on a very early preview of power bi and i made a comment uh in a meeting about power bi in which the product manager hunted down my phone number and called me up the next day to talk more about the feature uh which was not difficult and that it was just a small thing that it needed at the time uh microsoft and the power bi team turned that around inside two weeks and when the new version came out two weeks later the feature i'd asked was inside the service that got me to switch from the the tableau horse over to the power bi horse and i've been very happy ever since so um those are the items that i presented today to the to the microsoft power bi team that we see as visionary and critical to the continued success of the platform as new features like that as well as microsoft continuing to reach out and engage with the community and understand what really drives us forward dynamics 365 you want to cover something while we're here all right well thank you chris uh definitely uh um i'm thankful for your time uh energy into this space um it was it was great um overall so all right um with that i think we're we're pretty good for today uh thanks all for joining um different time of day we're trying something different that goes back and forth um we'll probably keep playing with that while it during the pandemic uh when we're all kind of not moving around very much anyway uh morning afternoon kind of the same right i don't even know what day of the week it is anymore uh so we'll keep playing with it all we'll get the recording out there soon and have a good week awesome awesome thanks everyone thank you very much thanks chris bye thanks

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Length: 84min 24sec (5064 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021