How to Design and Build a Data Model in Microsoft Dataverse

In this video I break down the thought process of creating a data model in Microsoft Dataverse, taking you step-by-step through the process of designing and building a data model with multiple tables and relationships. This can help you prepare for exams including PL-100 where you need to understand how to create a high level design for your app and data source. #MicrosoftDataverse #DataModeling #PowerApps

0:00 - Designing a data model in Dataverse
0:37 - Why Dataverse?
4:46 - Create a solution
6:02 - Design a table and columns
12:53 - Create a Power App connected to your dataverse data
18:11 - Designing your data model
22:05 - Contact, User, AAD User Tables
25:40 - Create 1 to many relationships between tables

[lillyclimant]

Thank you so much Lisa for sharing your knowledge. Very simple, useful and practical.👏👍

[jannatulf]

Thank you so much for this video Lisa. I truly appreciate your work.

[taiwoadegbite]

I am loving these tutorials. You deserve a Golden Medal Lisa. Thank you for all your profound help and support, taking your family time to impact other professional lives. Really appreciate you.

[lesliegombart]

Thanks Lisa, I REALLY enjoy your content on Model Driven app's. Helps me a huge amount as I am trying to teach myself to replace Access app's that I have created in the past😊.

[anilb]

Excellent Tutorial on Power App - Dataverse, Ma'am. Watching your video, I am pretty confident and started preparing my own tracking report. Appreciated for preparing such an informative video and your efforts.

[el_witcher]

Fascinating stuff you've been putting out there, Lisa. Love it.
Thank you so much.

Greetings from Germany.

[simonlloydspencer]

Another great vid Lisa, really helpful 🙏

[nitinrajput]

Excellent way of explaining the subject and its insights. Extremely helpful Lisa! Subscribed! 🙂🙂

[SothearithKONGMrMuyKhmer]

Thanks so much, Lisa! That’s really helpful!

[conormcconnell]

Fantastic Lisa!! I'd definitely love more of this

[dododudu]

I love your content! It helps me a lot. Thankyou :)

[wachhagottoday]

Thanks heaps for this video Lisa. The Crows nest notation and how it translates to the backend with regards to Creating relationships between a myriad of tables was really helpful. Would love to go deeper into more complex model designs to get indepth understanding and also would love to see the AAD User table put to use :) Thanks again!

[PavloBilan]

Thank you very much for your videos, especially for scheme at 35:20. It's very helpful for understanding relationships between the entities.

[christopherbahl]

One of the best videos I have seen. Better than Pluralsight videos! I have a project coming up where my first steps are Dataverse modeling which I have never done before. This video makes me confident. You saved my job!

[davidjuliovergaramarin]

Excelente aporte y muy bien explicado Muchas Gracias

[lakergreat]

yes please! more videos with aad user tables!

[pliupby]

Love this video!! Please create the data model for the AAD user

[greghodgins]

Really great video Lisa! I really like you delivery/production too. This is the first one I watched on a whim tonight, looking to answers some questions I've had for a while. I'll definitely be checking out some of your others.

I have a couple questions for you. First, when you choose any of the standard OOTB tables, are you getting a copy of the table? Inheriting all of the structure, but your applications own copy? Is that how/why you are able to customize the table? You're not changing the "business" table to supplier for the rest of your organization, and the rest of the organization is not seeing your data, and you're not seeing the data from other application. when you choose it. I can imagine there may be some times when you might want to share a table like customer across all your organizations applications, so perhaps that is also an option somehow? But, in general, you're just getting a copy of the structure and underlying capabilities, no data concerns outside of your application. Correct?

On a related note, I gather you recommend using the available standard tables vs. doing everything custom. I understand they can deliver much of the structure you often want, and more. Things you might not even know you want - yet. However, all of the columns can be a little overwhelming, distracting and perhaps of concern in terms of efficiency. Both in working with the tables and the data size, no?? Can you remove columns, or do they need to remain to ensure some underlying capability, one you might not even leverage in the application, remains possible? Even if you can, should you? Do you just learn to live with all the baggage columns for their capability - kind of like you need to accept all the tables that are available to you as a benefit?

Lastly, being old, I find the web based GUI interface to be somewhat limiting in terms of speed and perhaps storing the database structure/definition as code for quick modification and replay. Have there been any developments of a more code based data model for the Dataverse?

Thanks again!!

[moisesgonga]

Hello Lisa, thank you for your great content. You're doing a great job. I noticed a mistake in this ER diagram, specifically in the connection between "Asset Allocation" and "Asset Check". The connection should be one-to-many (1:N) from "Asset Allocation" to "Asset Check". With this configuration, we will have the key from "Asset Allocation" present in "Asset Check", as shown in the picture at 00:08. Additionally, there should also be a one-to-one (1:1) relationship between them.

[bokinloch]

Another great Dataverse tutorial, Lisa! I'm coming from canvas apps, so I've got to admit that the lookup method of creating a table relationship makes the most immediate sense to me. I think that thinking about it as a crow's foot diagram is a really good idea, though. The reason being is that one can make the mistake of creating lookups going both ways between two tables and not really thinking about which table is playing more of a dimensional role. (Note that you can use Excel's (or Power BI's) PowerQuery environment to model these tables out visually.)

Have you done content of tying a Document Library in SharePoint with a DataVerse model? Use case: contract lifecycle management (storing contract metadata in Dataverse and using SharePoint as the DMS). Business-user front-end in Power Apps canvas app, admin tools in a model-driven app. Happy to have a chat about it!