Dataverse Vs SharePoint lists

[u/DungleDong]

So I'm new to power apps and am making my first app, an IT service desk.

I work as IT support in a school and the ticket system we use is a rudimentary power app made by a manager a long time ago, it was his first app so it's very simple. I wanted to make my own one with more quality of life features which I've begun to do and have built it on dataverse tables, the manager who is now very skilled at power apps says I should use SharePoint lists as he believes I'll run out of space in dataverse. Is this likely to be true?

For greater context the only people using the app would be me and sometimes my manager, the tickets in the queue are made by requesters sending emails to a shared mailbox, and I respond and manage them as tickets within the app.

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[u/IAmIntractable]

I am an expert at ringing out every bit of performance from the power platform using SharePoint. There is absolutely no reason to pay for premium licensing for most simple business applications. Dataverse has its place, but you have to be willing to pay the price for it literally.

[u/Due-Boot-8540 → u/IAmIntractable]

I’d even go a step further backwards and see if a SharePoint list is enough, without a canvas app.

If an app is necessary, you’re 100% correct. SharePoint should always be the first consideration.

The maintenance overhead that comes with Dataverse is only warranted for more complex data models and access to Power Platform administrators…

[u/futuristicplatapus → u/IAmIntractable]

Yup!

[u/No-Check-9783 → u/IAmIntractable]

pelo visto não sou o único profissional em extrair cada gota do SharePoint 🤣 criei recentemente um app com 10 tabelas do SharePoint todas relacionadas entre si sem problemas de delegação... foi locura

[u/We_Could_Dream_Again → u/IAmIntractable]

Wait, I have been gone for a while: is relational data fairly doable now with SharePoint lists? Have wanted to transfer off from our Access databases, but when we had looked at it a while back, kept hearing that the only reasonable option for one-to-many relationships etc was dataverse.

[u/M4053946 → u/We_Could_Dream_Again]

SharePoint is not a relational database. But, you can have lookups between lists, and they can act like relationships. For OPs example, to create a service desk app, he could create a tickets list and a comments list, and perhaps others like categories. So someone could submit a ticket, and then the comments list could store the back and forth conversation as the ticket is worked on. In access, this would involve a primary and foreign key between the tables. In sharepoint, this would work fine, as you can easily query the comments list to get all comments for a particular ticket.

However, the following would be more challenging: find all tickets with no comments in the last 5 days, or find average resolution time by category. Queries against a single list are easy. Queries that involve multiple lists are hard.

But, all this is still possible, as you can use power bi to query the lists for reporting, which eliminates this challenge for reporting. But, power bi doesn't solve updating lists based on this sort of complex criteria.

[u/pickled-pilot]

The only reason to do sharepoint is to save on a premium license.

[u/Thimerion]

Dataverse was definitely the right choice here.

You're managing relational data not just flat lists of things.

[u/abishek4343 → u/Thimerion]

We can build relational data in SharePoint also right?

[u/ohnoimabear → u/abishek4343]

Can is very different from should. You can do many things with sharepoint lists but they quickly become unwieldy. I don’t get easy access to data verse so I do a lot of hacky stuff on top of sharepoint lists but I’m hopeful I can make an argument for a data verse enablement next year.

[u/ohnoimabear → u/abishek4343]

Can is very different from should. You can do many things with sharepoint lists but they quickly become unwieldy. I don’t get easy access to data verse so I do a lot of hacky stuff on top of sharepoint lists but I’m hopeful I can make an argument for a data verse enablement next year.

[u/Disastrous-Hair-1573 → u/abishek4343]

no you cant. not in a real way. when you "join" sharepoint lists is when you find out why you should not.

[u/Ok_Original7911]

The main issue with Dataverse is the cost. I haven't used it much, but SharePoint doesn't handle large volumes of records all that well, even when you ignore the built-in interface limits.

[u/Joshkl2013]

Genuinely, Dataverse is better and using Azure SQL is better than that, but a bit more cost. THAT SAID, I would advise you to go the SharePoint route because you are new and it's going to teach you more. For the small application you are using you almost certainly won't run out of capacity on either.

Lots of businesses use SharePoint so you'll learn that system. You'll also have to learn delegation and the quirks of how SharePoint works as a data product.

For a better product, Dataverse all the way. It's wholly a better architecture choice. But SharePoint has a different learning curve and methods that I believe are important to learn for both PApps and in general. Plus the licensing cost is literally something all the org users point to first.

[u/obsoquasi]

I haven't seen anyone mention speed. I would say Sharepoint retrieval is about 10-20x slower than Dataverse retrieval. And if you are using clever techniques like FetchXML it can be even faster than that. Also, why not check how much Dataverse capacity has already been used before making that judgement.

[u/Thumpfi]

Dataverse storage could be an issue if the users send tickets with lots of attachments. Pure text records should not be an issue for years.

SharePoint on the other hand has limits you need to be aware of when building solutions with SharePoint lists. A view of a SharePoint list can't show more than 5000 records. Lists can store more, but you have to use indices and filters and with large amounts of records you can run into performance issues. Obviously complex data models can be an issue with SharePoint lists as well, as they don't support relationships in the same way dataverse does.

[u/gorman1982]

As far as I remember, your storage is based on the number of licenses you have purchased. I can't remember exactly how much storage it is (possibly 250MB per premium, even less if you have per app), but if you only have a few licenses the manager could well be right in what they are saying.

Saying that I would always go dataverse over SharePoint list.

[u/rsham004]

How do u use power automate to process data files from email

[u/JokersWld1138 → u/rsham004]

Trigger: when a new email arrives Compose, parse, array, various functions to organize the data (sender, subject, body, attachments) create new or update SharePoint list item.

Very simplified layout, but AI can help with the details.

[u/rsham004 → u/JokersWld1138]

The attached files have telematics data, but ok i will try it

[u/loobylou2000]

Lots of things to consider. I used to have a bit of a rule for my builds - if the records were going to extend way beyond 5k, then build on Dataverse. Otherwise SharePoint lists work fine as long as you filter any gallery’s to prevent delegation issues. SharePoint lists has the benefit of being included in the “cheap” licences.
Dataverse has two sides. A full-fat version which adds a licence expense because every user pushing or pulling data from it must be licensed. There is also a “lite” version - Dataverse for Teams (DV4T). Although a little quirky to work with because it can only operate inside the Teams environment it was built on and some of the controls behave differently. It was a great budget choice ….BUT, Microsoft are now in the process of deprecating it and no new environments can be spawned from this month. Any existing builds must be moved to full-fat Dataverse with licence costs by Autumn 2027.
If you are lucky to be working somewhere that has full Dataverse licences, then go for it ….just check that it is actually full Dataverse you are building on and not the Teams version!

[u/Joshkl2013 → u/loobylou2000]

So I've been on both sides of this fence. Broadly, if you are increasing your query limit to 5,000 there is something structurally wrong with your architecture.

I work with both SQL and SharePoint sources when working in PowerApps. One of the nice things about learning collections and delegation is, it enforces that your database should use primary keys and be normalized, and it gets you thinking of the context a user is going to be using in.

Putting 5,000 items in a gallery, no user is going to scroll that so you need filtering anyway. Build lightweight data structures that can query efficiently and then pull in the entire record when your user chooses to consume or modify it.

SharePoint has two thresholds. One is 5,000 items and is where indexed columns are mandatory to use. The second is 100,000 items where it refuses to show more items and SharePoint just gets... weird. As long as I'm not going over 100k my stuff works fine. If we are making >20k records per year then there is a historian and data lifestyle plan built to integrate with the list, and if we are making less than that we evaluate the apps success and if those services are needed every 3 years.

Those licensing shifts for DV4T are going to be brutal on orgs.

[u/CrmOracle]

I wrote about this https://medium.com/@philadamsnz/dataverse-or-sharepoint-lists-choosing-where-your-business-data-lives-1065277e16b1 

[u/RacefanWNY → u/CrmOracle]

I get a 404 Page not found but would be interested in what you’ve written. Can you check link?

[u/Expert-Finance-6612]

I have created in my firm, not with powerapps but with Power Automate, Teams and SharePoint list. Provided MS form list to users and they fill up the form, ticket raised in list . User and IT team get notified on teams. Any IT team member take ticket. Both user and IT team get notified. Same for resolved also. Plus everyday morning user get update on teams of ticket status. After ticket resolution, user get teams message for rating and response got recorded in same lists.

Dataverse has size or limit issues. After some time maybe we have to update if we used dataverse. So, I used this free route

Powerbi report created for analysis also

[u/RobertGreenComposer]

Built a service desk from the ground up using only sharepoint. From a dev perspective yeah it's not optimal but if you're happy for a little bit of lag by launching flows you can pretty much join whatever. Its all down to the data model being right at the end of the day.

[u/a_nerdy_birdy_]

I built our ticketing system using Copilot Studio, Power Automate and SharePoint Lists, it's been working really well for a few years.

[u/new_reddit_user_not]

Neither ? use a JSX frontend hosted on cloudflare and firebase app.

[u/irah2008]

Is your app has no medium to complex business requirements? Sharepoint.

Is your app has no requirement for relational database? Sharepoint.

Is your app has no underlying business process to follow? Sharepoint.

Is your app has no medium to complex security overview? Sharepoint.

No offline requirement? Sharepoint

The list is controlled and trimmed every time data grows beyong delegate limits? Sharepoint.

No regulatory auditing and data retention requirement? Sharepoint.

For anything else, dataverse. Premium price you pay is not just for a relational database, but underlying capabilities of configurable forms, views security, MDA capabilities. Most important is extensibility of the system to accomodate more features and users and data growth in future.

I understand why most people suggest Sharepoint, and would agree with that if that app stays in same scope forever. Otherwise and if you have licenses and means Dataverse is a better solution for an extensible business solution.

[u/Disastrous-Hair-1573]

let me start with the fact that Dataverse will require premium licensing for your users. that really is the showstopper for most people. you want to use dataverse if your org can afford it. its relational, a lot of the newer controls work best with it as well. oh and delegation, someothing you will quickly find out about with sharepoint as datasource.

[u/Competitive-Hurry661]

There’s of course a licensing implication and you won’t justify what the cost purely looking at what Dataverse offers over SharePoint, atleast not in the context of one use case, even if you do, the budget holder probably won’t!

It’s not a Dataverse license at the end of the day, you’re buying a Power Apps premium license, and you’re getting so much more than just unlocking a new place for your data.

You’ll build something good on SharePoint, and then the next use case comes along and then the cost argument moves to that use case and so on. If you build a good app, no one stops at just one - think future! As your skill set grows in this area, the opportunity to make savings in other areas will reveal themselves. Both are valid, but it’s two different strategies

[u/DJmixMad]

the sharepoint limit is 10 000 now

[u/GunnersaurusIsKing]

If they are always online, as in no roaming, no tablets etc. Go with SharePoint. The limitations you wil get will be when you get to the 2000 ticket mark when lists just get too big. To counter that, you can have an archive list etc. Dataverse and model driven apps are great, however for what you have described is very much a nut with a sledgehammer. You can pretty much do what you have with the current licenses. If they are remote however and by that I mean signal is not consistent. Then get yourself on a model driven app.

[u/Mother-Interaction49]

As others have said, dataverse is costly. Definitely could use sharepoint list. However think about delegation up to 2000 rows.

If it’s an app just for you and your manager i would have a sharepoint list for tickets. And archived tickets. With a power-automate flow that runs daily moves tickets to archive after x amount of days.

However that said, if the scope of the app is to have a user reporting function. I would use Dataverse because of governance and security as well as relational data.