Intro to Microsoft Dataverse for Teams: Extending Microsoft Teams with Apps and Flows

Paul Papanek Stork

Microsoft MVP, MCM & MBA

Use of Microsoft Teams has exploded for many companies as a result of the global pandemic. For many organizations Teams has become the app that connects all their employees together. Power Platform apps, like Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents, provides a low-code platform for extending that functionality.

But extending Teams with new apps, flows, and bots requires a place to store content. SharePoint is a possibility, but from a data point of view SharePoint has a lot of limitations since it isn't an actual relational database. Dataverse, formerly known as CDS, provides relational data storage, rich data types, and enterprise-grade governance. But Dataverse has always been a premium feature requiring extra licensing.

This is where Microsoft Dataverse for Teams comes in. Using the Power Apps application inside Teams we can build and deploy apps using a custom version of Dataverse that is included in the Microsoft Teams license. This provides access to a real relational database and one-click solution deployment to the Teams app.

In this talk we'll take a look at what Dataverse for Teams and how it can be used in the Power Platform to extend the Teams application.

We'll cover the following points with slides and demos.

What does the Teams License cover?
Differences between Dataverse (CDS) and Dataverse for Teams
Creating Dataverse Relational Tables
Building a Power App with Dataverse for Teams
Integrating Dataverse for Teams with a Flow
Accessing Dataverse for Teams from a Bot