Hi,
Was wondering if I could get some advice on what direction to take for a project we are about to embark on.
We are about to build a canvas app and flows for a smallish (sub 20 people) team. The app will be critical to their day to day operations but won't be doing anything highly transactional.
Originally we have been planning to build it with SharePoint lists as the data source to replace an old SharePoint site that uses nintex and infopath.
We have since gained access to the Microsoft team's dataverse and I'm unsure if that may be a better starting point.
Some key requirements:
- Manage multiple environments of the app (dev, staging production)
- Custom table access based on a user's function in the team
- Ability to have several views of the data that are accessible in read only to potentially 4000 staff
- App will probably generate max 50k rows of data per year
- Need scheduled flows, flows that trigger on data changes and instant flows
- The team likes to delve into the data outside of the app and have view's of it etc
I'm considering the teams solution due to:
- It appears the dataverse can be exported and imported along with the app and flows across environments (different teams)
- The new fluent ui
- Ability to switch to a Microsoft dataverse to use portals in the distant future
- Ability to backup and restore data
Teams negatives are:
- Can't use the teams dataverse to save costs for a bulk of the users while connecting a model driven app or portal for select premium users
- Running an app critical to daily operations within the team's ui where it closes everytime you click to another team or tab etc would be infuriating
- Unsure on the ability to customise permissions down to the table level for internal users
SharePoint has point's for it being:
- Ability to open the app multiple times or even open a record from a column in a list for enhanced productivity
- Doesn't have the whole team's ui loading around the app
- Custom per list permissions
- Easy to have view's of the data for large audiences
SharePoint as the data source has negatives being:
- Can't easily maintain separate SharePoint data sources for each environments of the app
- Can't upgrade in the future to a dataverse
We can't consider a premium model driven app/dataverse because there is the potential for up to 4000 users who may have limited interaction with the data/app over the course of a year and the current pricing model just didn't scale for that.
Any insights into what direction to take would be appreciated as I am stumped at present.
Ben
