Introduction
In this module, we'll focus on the building blocks of Common Data Service and model-driven apps. You can use both of these things with Business Central. Let's start with a short introduction about what Microsoft Dataverse and model-driven apps are.
Dataverse is a cloud scale database used to securely store data for business applications built on Power Apps or Power Automate.
Model-driven app design is a component-focused approach to app development. Model-driven app design doesn't require any code and the apps you make can be simple or very complex.
An overview of Dataverse
Dataverse is a straightforward platform that you can use to begin designing your data structures and helping to keep them safe. Then, with your data in place, you have rich integration capabilities from Power Apps and the rest of Microsoft Power Platform.
The Dataverse is a data source for Microsoft Power Platform. You can't use Dataverse as a standard data source for Business Central, as we have different data sources in Business Central. Common Data Service is a regular data source for apps such as Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Insights - Journeys. It's also used for integration with some other systems. Business Central has recently included functionality that allows embedded integration with Dataverse as well as for some other integration scenarios. Because of these things, it's important to understand the basic concept as it can be very useful for Business Central professionals and users.
Environments in Dataverse
Business Central and Microsoft Power Platform don't grant you automatic access to Dataverse. If you've deployed Sales or other customer engagement products in your tenant. With these products, you'll be able to automatically create new environments with data sets in Dataverse. Based on the environment where you want to build your solution, or that you want to use for integration, you need to choose the right environment from your tenant. You can easily change environments from the top bar.
Some environments don't have databases. If you don't have these products in your tenant, you have no access to Dataverse. To check if a data set exists or not, expand Data in the menu and select Entities. You will likely get a message of No solutions found. The button Create a new environment is available.
If you want to install data set to create apps based on this data source and connect it with your Business Central, just click on the Create a new environment button. In the New environment window, enter the Environment name you want to use, select the Region and Environment type (Trial or Production) and click on Create environment. When you get the message You created an environment, click on the Create database button. Select Currency and Language and then select Create my database. When you get a message that your database is created, you may need to wait a few minutes before opening the entities.