Have you ever built an application? Have you needed the skills of developers and DBAs and months of work to get even the simplest solution up and running? Have you created a Power App on top of a SharePoint list? If you have done any of these then you may have reached limits of skills, time or technology that prevented you from building the app you needed. Model-Driven Power Apps make use of the Common Data Service (CDS) to allow sophisticated applications to be built and sustained using no code. In this session I will explain what the building blocks of Model-Driven Power Apps are and demonstrate how you can build a solution quickly and easily. We will also explore the boring stuff like the "L" word (licencing) and the exciting stuff like extensibility, automation and reporting.

1. @al_eardley
Power Platform
Modern Workplace
Modern Work Management
Model-Driven Power Apps for
Dummies (and non-Dynamics folks)
Black Country Power Apps & Power Automate User Group - May
2020
Alan Eardley
12 May 2020

2. @al_eardley
About Me
• Head of Modern Workplace,
CPS
• 20+ Years in IT
• Prosci© Change Practitioner
• Scrum Master
• PRINCE2© Practitioner
• Hat: @greyhatbeard
I have been a
• Developer
• DBA
• Product Owner
• Project Manager
• Solution Architect

3. @al_eardley
What will I cover?
How have we got here?
What is the CDS?
What is a Model-Driven App?
Why should we use them?

4. @al_eardley
How have we got here?

5. @al_eardley
Potted History

6. @al_eardley
What is the CDS?

7. @al_eardley
Types of data

8. @al_eardley
Types of data

9. @al_eardley
What can you build on CDS?
Client Connectors Common Data Service
Power Apps (Canvas) Yes Yes
Power Apps (Model) No Yes
Power Portals No Yes
Flows Yes Yes
AI Builder No Yes
Power BI Yes Yes
Power Virtual Agents Yes Yes

10. @al_eardley
Common Data Service:
What’s in the box
Jobs
Calculated &
Rollup fields
Business
Rules
Data
validation
Duplicate
Detection
Plugins
Workflows
Catalog
and discovery
Modelling
Reporting
Common Data
Model
Relational
databases
Files and
blobs
Log files
Semi-structured
data
Search and
Find data
Data lake
Eventing
Webhooks
Data export

11. @al_eardley
Common Data Service
Common Data Service. . . Extends with Azure
Compute Eventing + ExtensibilityStorage
SQL Server
Management
Studio

12. @al_eardley
What is a Model-Driven App?

13. @al_eardley
Building blocks
CDS
Security
Entity
Data
Flow
Business
Process
Flow

14. @al_eardley
Security
Environment
Entity
Record
Field

15. @al_eardley
Entity
Entity
Fields
Relationships
Business
Rules
Views
Forms
Charts

16. @al_eardley
Data Flows

17. @al_eardley
Business Process Flows
• In interface process
• Guides users through a
process
• Can span multiple entities
• Up to 10 BPFs per entity
• Control access via security
roles

18. @al_eardley
Demo

19. @al_eardley
When should you use
Model-Driven Apps?

20. @al_eardley
Key reasons
Line of business applications
Scale of data
Import/Export capabilities
Increased ability to use AI Builder
Secured content
Data Loss Prevention
Ability to deploy “Solutions”

21. @al_eardley
Roadmap
Direct Query from Power BI
T-SQL access to CDS
Convergence of Canvas and Model-Driven
New CDS Offline sync capability

22. @al_eardley
The “L” Word
Business case for increasing efficiency
Retire legacy solutions
Consolidation of cottage industry applications
Benefit from better integration
Make use of mobile capabilities

23. @al_eardley
Summary

24. @al_eardley
Key Take-Aways
CDS is a robust, feature-rich storage
platform
Model-Driven apps are built with a
proven interface

25. @al_eardley
Modern Workplace | Modern Work Management
Microsoft 365 | Azure | Power Platform
Thank-you
Twitter: @al_eardley
LinkedIn: Alan Eardley