Best practices and guidance when using Microsoft Dataverse

Microsoft Dataverse provides an extensible framework that allows developers to build highly customized and tailored experiences. When you're customizing, extending, or integrating with Dataverse, be aware of the established guidance and best practices.

Within this section you learn about the issues we have identified, their impact, and guidance to resolve those issues. We'll explain the background about why things should be done in a certain way and avoid potential problems in the future. This understanding can benefit the usability, supportability, and performance of your environment. The guidance documentation supports the existing information within the Developer and Administration guides.

Targeted customization types

The documentation targets the following customization types:

• Custom workflow activities and plug-ins
• Working with Dataverse data
• Integrations extending Dataverse

Sections

Each guidance article includes most or all of the following sections:

• Title - description of the guidance
• Category - one or more areas impacted by not following the guidance
• Impact potential - the level of risk (high, medium, or low) of affecting the environment by not following the guidance
• Symptoms - possible indications that the guidance hasn't been followed
• Guidance - recommendations that might also include examples
• Problematic patterns - description or examples of not following the guidance
• Additional information - supporting details for a more extensive view
• See also - references to learn more about something mentioned in the article

Categories

Each guidance article is classified with one or more of the following categories:

• Usage – improper usage of a particular API, pattern, or configuration
• Design – design flaws in a customization
• Performance – customization or pattern that might produce a negative effect on performance in areas such as memory management, CPU utilization, network traffic, or user experience
• Security – potential vulnerabilities in a customization that could be exploited in a runtime environment
• Upgrade Readiness - customization or pattern that might increase risk of having an unsuccessful version upgrade
• Online Migration - customization or pattern that might increase risk of having an unsuccessful online migration
• Maintainability – customization that unnecessarily increases the amount of developer effort required to make changes, the frequency of required changes, or the chance of introducing regressions
• Supportability – customization or pattern that falls outside the boundaries of published supportability statements, including usage of removed APIs or implementation of forbidden techniques