Looking to open up a world of new opportunities with cloud and mobile scenarios for Microsoft Access? The combination of Access and Microsoft Dataverse with Power Platform will do this for you! This combination unlocks hybrid solution scenarios that keep the value and ease of Access together with cloud-based storage in a number of ways.
Microsoft created more hybrid solutions for one reason: customers have been asking for them! They’ve requested new front end app scenarios on mobile devices or with Microsoft Teams, the ability to have real-time sharing and editing of Access data and new security and compliance capacities.
Fortunately, Microsoft has delivered on all of these, and the new features are available for users just like you! You can now share Access data with Dataverse, a cloud database that lets you build Power Platform apps, automate workflows, virtual agents and more for the phone, web or tablet.
What is Microsoft Dataverse?
Dataverse is the backbone of the Power Platform and it can store data that has been shared across multiple applications. Data within Dataverse is stored within a set of tables. A table is a set of rows and columns. Each column is designed to store a certain type of data, such as name, age or income.
You are able to create your own custom tables in Dataverse, or you are free to use the standard tables that cover typical scenarios. Some reasons to use Dataverse include:
- Easy to manage. When using Dataverse, both the metadata and data are stored in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about how your data is being stored!
- Easy to secure. Additionally, data is stored securely so that people can only see it if you grant them access to do so. We recommend assigning roles so that you can control who sees what.
- Access Dynamics 365 data. Data from your Dynamics 365 applications is also stored in Dataverse, allowing you to build apps with this data and extend your apps with Power Apps.
- Works with all types of data. Dataverse is even designed to work with all types of data, including relational, non-relational, file, image, search and data lake. This makes it easy to quickly define relationships, tables, workflows and more.
Migrating Data to Dataverse
If you decide to migrate data to Dataverse, we recommend backing up your database first. There are a number of steps you’ll need to follow, which you can find here. They include the following:
- Creating and specifying a Dataverse environment.
- Exporting data from Access to Dataverse.
- Selecting tables and related tables.
- Creating linked tables in Access to the migrated tables in Dataverse.
- Managing primary keys, names and relationships.
- Validating the data export.
- Previewing results in Access and Dataverse.
If you are ready to migrate Access data to Dataverse, contact the database experts at Arkware. We can show you how to manage your data safely and securely so that you can get the most use out of Access, Dataverse and Power Platform.