Developer environments:

The Power Apps Developer Plan gives you a free development environment to build and test with Power Apps,
Power Automate, and Microsoft Dataverse. The Developer plan enables you to:

 Create apps and flows without writing code, with full-featured Power Apps and Power Automate
development tools.
 Connect to any data source by using Power Platform connectors.
 Use a fully managed, scalable data platform with Dataverse, including support for common business
application actions. Use out-of-the-box common tables or build your own data schema.
 Export the solutions you create in your developer environment.

Manage Developer environments

After you have a developer plan license assigned to your user, you can create Developer environments in your
Microsoft Entra ID tenant.

A developer environment:

 Doesn't require a paid license.

 Permits you to explore Power Platform capabilities.
 Includes Microsoft Dataverse.
 Doesn't consume the tenant's capacity.
 Has a maximum Database size of 2 Gb.
 Can be a managed environment.
 Must not be used for production purposes.

Each user can have up to three Developer environments.

Dataverse creation with an environment reserves up to 1 GB in storage, so you should have a plan when setting
up Dataverse environments.

Exercise:

To create a new environment with Dataverse.

Create an instance of a Microsoft Dataverse database.

Add users and roles within an environment.

Create a custom security role.

Environment operations:
You can perform operations on environments after the environment is created in the Power Platform admin
center or with the Power Apps PowerShell cmdlets.

You can:

 Convert an environment type.

  Delete an environment.
 Recover an environment.
 Reset an environment.
 Copy an environment.
 Back up an environment.
 Restore an environment.
 Place an environment in Administration mode.

Note:

Not all operations apply to every environment type.

Change the environment type:

When you configure or edit an environment, you can change the environment from:

[Link] to sandbox.
[Link] to production.

You can also convert a Trial environment to Production.

For environments that don't have Dynamics 365 applications enabled, the default backup retention period is
only seven days. However, for managed environments, admins can use PowerShell to change the setting and
extend the backup retention period. The available options are 7, 14, 21, and 28 days.

All environments, except Trial environments, are backed up.

Microsoft Dataverse:

Microsoft Dataverse is the cloud data platform for the Microsoft Power Platform that is easy to use, compliant,
secure, scalable, and globally available. Using Microsoft Dataverse as the data store for your apps has many
benefits:

 Metadata: Properties you define on your data model are used by Power Apps, speeding up the building of
apps.
 Data access: You can control who can access which tables, rows, and columns.
 Logic: Calculations and rules can be added to table columns.
 Import and export: You can choose from multiple tools to manage your data, including Excel.
 Audit: You can track who accesses and changes data.
 Processes: Business processes can be added to ensure data quality and perform automation.
 Managed data in the cloud: You don't need to perform backups or configure the database because this is
performed for you by Microsoft.
 Storage: You don't need to worry about how the data is stored because Microsoft takes care of this for you.
 Skills: You don't need to be a DBA to manage Dataverse.
 Secure: All data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
 Integration: Dataverse is deeply integrated with Microsoft cloud services such as Microsoft 365 and Microsoft
Azure.
 Proven: Microsoft Dataverse is used by Dynamics 365 apps such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365
Customer Service.
 Connectors: Microsoft Dataverse has connectors for Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI.
Why choose Microsoft Dataverse?
 Dataverse addresses these concerns with an easy to use, easy to manage, compliant, secure, scalable,
and globally available SaaS data service.
 Dataverse requires no or little code to be written, so it can easily be used by everyone from knowledge
workers to professional developers.
 Knowing that it's built on Azure, organizations choosing Dataverse can be confident that it's globally
available, compliant, scalable, and secure.
 Dataverse includes a set of visual designers to create, edit, and interact with data. This makes it easy to
quickly define the tables, relationships, business rules, forms, and workflows that represent your
business.
Tables
Data within Dataverse is stored within a set of records called tables. A table is a logical structure of rows and
columns that represent a set of data, similar to how a table stores data within a database.
Table properties:
Tables in Dataverse have the following properties:
Name: The simple name defining your table such as Pets
Rows: Specific records in your data (such as a cat named Ashley)
Columns: Metadata for each record (such as pet Species and Breed)
Relationships: Describe the links to other tables (such as a pet belonging to an owner)
Keys: Column, or columns, to uniquely identify a row in the table (such as an ID number)
Forms: Forms used by model-driven apps to view and edit a table row
Views: Define the rows and columns for displaying table rows
Charts: Visualizations of table rows
Dashboards: A customizable visual glance at your data through charts and filtered data
Business rules: Logic that can be applied to columns in a table row
Metadata: Properties of the table that affect the capabilities of the table and how apps and flows can use the
table
Commands: Customizable buttons in your command bar for your model driven app.
Advanced options in creating a dataverse:
The most important of these options are:
Schema name: This is the internal name of the table created in the database. By default, the schema name is
automatically created for you based on the Display name. You can change the Schema name before creating the
table. The schema name can't contain spaces and includes the customization prefix for the Dataverse solution
publisher.
Type: Standard, Activity, Virtual or Elastic. These options are discussed later. Almost all tables you create use the
default option, Standard.
Record ownership: User or Team or Organizational: These options are discussed later. Almost all tables you
create use the default option, User or Team.

Table types
Before creating tables in Dataverse, you should understand the different types of custom tables that you can
create:
Standard: A table where you can store data and add to the navigation in model-driven apps. Most tables you
create are standard tables.
Activity: Activity tables store interactions with time dimensions such as phone calls, tasks, and appointments.
Dataverse has a set of activity tables. These tables share the same set of columns and share security privileges.
Many of the table options, including the primary column, are fixed and can't be changed. Activity tables appear
in the timeline on model-driven app forms.
Virtual: Virtual tables connect to data from an external data source such as Microsoft Azure SQL Database.
Virtual tables appear in your app to users as regular table rows, but contain data that is sourced from an
external database dynamically at runtime. Rows based on virtual tables are available in all clients including
custom clients developed using the Dataverse web services.
Elastic: Used when your table includes a large dataset in excess of tens of millions of rows. Elastic tables are
powered by Azure Cosmos DB. There are some considerations when to use them over other table types.
Table ownership
When you create a custom table, the options for ownership are User or team owned, or Organization-owned.
After a table is created, you can’t change the ownership.
User or team owned: Data belongs to a user or team. Actions that can be performed on these rows can be
controlled at the user level.
Organization-owned: Data belongs to the organization. Access to the data is controlled at the organization level.

Create a Microsoft Dataverse table

In this unit, you create a table and then customize key components. You learn how to:
 Create a custom table.
 Add custom columns to your table.
 Customize a view.
 Customize a form.
Relationship types
Table relationships define the ways that table rows can be associated with rows from other tables or the
same table. There are just two types of table relationships:
One-to-many relationships: In a one-to-many table relationship (1:N), many referencing (related) table rows
can be associated with a single referenced (primary) table row. The referenced table row is sometimes
referred to as the ”parent” and rows of the referencing table are referred to as ”children.” A many-to-one
relationship is just the child perspective of a one-to-many relationship
Many-to-many relationships: In a many-to-many (N:N) table relationship many table rows can be associated
with many other table rows. Rows related using a many-to-many relationship can be considered peers and
the relationship is reciprocal.
Tables within Dataverse can use rich server-side logic and validation to ensure data quality. You can also
reduce repetitive code in each app that creates and uses data within a table.
Business rules: Business rules validate data across multiple columns in a table, and provide warning and error
messages, regardless of the app that's used to create the data.
Business process flows: Business process flows guide users to ensure they enter data consistently and follow
the same steps every time. Business process flows are currently supported only for model-driven apps.
Real-time workflows: Workflows automate business processes without requiring user interaction.
Business logic with code: Business logic supports advanced developer scenarios that extend the application
directly through code.
Business rules:
Business rules are used to replace the need for code such as JavaScript in model-driven app forms and are an
important low-code feature of Dataverse.
Business rules provide a simple drag-and-drop declarative interface to implement and maintain rules.
SCOPE :
Individual form: The rule applies only to the specified model-driven app form.
All forms: The rule applies to all model-driven app forms.
Entity: The rule applies to all model-driven app forms and when the row is created or updated on the
Dataverse table. This is the default setting.
Types:
 Set column values.
 Clear column values.
 Set column requirement levels.
 Show or hide columns.
 Enable or disable columns.
 Validate data and show error messages.
 Create business recommendations based on business intelligence.
Forms in model-driven apps can use all actions available on business rules, however not all business rule
actions are available for canvas apps at this time. The following actions are not available on canvas apps:
 Show or hide columns
 Enable or disable columns
 Create business recommendations based on business intelligence.
Business rules work with most column types including text, number, choice, date, lookup, owner, and image.
However, business rules don't work with the following column types:
 Choices (multi-select)
 File
 Language