Five forgotten features of Dataverse

If Microsoft Dataverse were a human, they would now be legally old enough to vote, drive, and drink alcohol. The feature is more than just a database, it truly a Common Data Service (it’s previous name) that evolved from the data layer that was part of Dynamics CRM since 2002.

Over the years, Dataverse has been cloudified, enhanced, upgraded, and now becoming a core part of the new AI agentic reality. You can even connect to Dataverse as an MCP server (in preview)!

That being said, over the years there have been features added or a part of Dataverse that have been forgotten or not well known that still provide value to anyone building agents, apps, automations, analytics or websites. Some of these features are not found in the Power Apps maker portal so they can be easily overlooked.

Here is 5 features that I find while discussing building Power Platform features that some makers/developers/admins didn’t know or had forgotten. Some of these appear to only be Dynamics 365 features but are fully available to custom applications built on top of Dataverse.

Tired of reading? I got you covered, here is the YouTube version of this post:

5 forgotten or lesser known features of Dataverse!

1. Outlook Client

A while back I made a post/video about the Power Platform Outlook client:

Connecting Microsoft Outlook to model-driven Power Apps

This feature is an extremely valuable way to associate emails to Dataverse records as well as link Dataverse contacts to Outlook contacts. The app itself is still labeled as “Dynamics 365 Outlook Connector” which I believe causes confusion. If you have a Power Apps license, you are fully entitled to use the Dynamics 365 Outlook connector.

This is one of the valuable features that can really add extra value to your Power Apps!

2. Exchange Online integration

Going beyond just the Dynamics 365 Outlook app, did you know that you can integrate Dataverse with Microsoft Exchange (or even other email systems?)

A lot of Power Apps makers will create Power Automate flows using the Outlook connector to integrate email capabilities with their Power Apps. Did you know that by default, your Exchange Online is connected to your Dataverse environment? This features will allow you send and receive emails directly from your Power Apps without the need of Power Automate flows (using up valuable flow runs) and doesn’t require specialized service accounts (e.g. for the Outlook connector).

Setting up the server integration, mailboxes, queues, and other email enabled features goes beyond the scope of this post/video, but if there is interest in this, please let me know!

Check out the Microsoft documentation: Integrate (synchronize) your email system

3. Speed test

“My Power App is running really slow!”

There are a lot of reasons why your model driven Power App might seem sluggish, but having a way to measure could help you prove the speed and allow you to investigate further.

Simply put the following URL into browser, replacing the <orgname> with your Power Apps URL. Note your <crm> value also relates to the geo your environment is installed in.

https://<yoururl>.crm.dynamics.com/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx

Pro tip: Run the diagnostics on a regular basis and compare results… that way if something is off, you’ll have something to compare it to.

4. Field Mappings

Did you know that when you create related records in model-driven Power Apps (for example, creating a new contact from a subgrid embedded in an account form), common information is automatically populated to the related record? For example -> address fields?

This is configured in a little known feature called field mappings. For some reason, the user interface has yet to appear in the newer table designer interfaces. You can get to it by choosing the “classic” interface. (If you get prompted for why you are using classic, be sure to state “field mappings” as the reason!)

You can configure which fields are mapped, note that they must be the same type and smaller or same size (string fields). Also this is only during record creation, any updates to the parent record will not reflect on the child records with this feature.

For more information, check out the Microsoft documentation: Map table columns.

5. Multi-table lookup

A few years ago I posted about a feature that many had been asking for years, the ability to link multiple different tables through one lookup.

Using Multi-table lookups (polymorphic relationships) in Microsoft Dataverse

Out of the box, you can add a customer lookup that will allow you to choose either an account or contact. The ability to create a custom lookup pointing to different table types opens a lot of opportunities for configuration.

For example, instead of having different lookups to different booking types in my expense application, I can instead of one lookup to will allow me to choose different types.

Unfortunately, while Microsoft created the feature, the ability to create these types of relationships was limited to the SDK, and they have yet to create a user interface to allow makers to be able to set these up. Thankfully there is an XrmToolBox utility that allows you to configure these special relationships:

Microsoft documentation reference: Multi-table lookups

Other forgotten or little known features

Here are a few others that I find are all that well known.

Calculated Field Lookup – did you know you can show related lookup fields on a form? This can come in handy when you don’t want to use embedded quick view forms. See a previous post where I use this feature to get around an issue in sorting Power Pages views. Using calculated columns in Power Pages

Multicurrency – Dataverse has the ability to manage multiple currencies. I have posted on this a few times and few months back I showed a way to update the exchange rates from email: AI Builder: Update Dataverse currency exchange rates

Report Wizard – You can create simple reports and charts with a Dataverse solution. They definitely aren’t fancy, but there are functional. The report wizard will create a SQL Server Reporting Services report linked to Dataverse. Check out one of my older posts: Secrets of the Dataverse: The Report Wizard

SSRS – SQL Server Reporting Services reports – you can create reports using FetchXML in Visual Studio and upload to Dataverse, without requiring any additional licenses. There are now a few more updated ways to create reports and dashboards (Power BI, Generative pages, Canvas apps, Word docs, etc). Using SSRS reports used to be the way to create reports in Dynamics CRM (and later Dataverse).

Here’s are *really* old article on creating SSRS reports. It still should work, for now? Maybe? How to Create Your First Dynamics 365 SSRS Report

Summary

There are others, like SharePoint document integration, duplicate detection, Word templates, Excel integration, and likely others. Are there things that you find useful? Do you think there are better ways to handle some of these features in our new AI world? Would you like me to drill down into some of these lost features deeper? Should they be deprecated or enhanced?

Nick Doelman is a Microsoft MVP, podcaster, trainer, public speaker, and competitive Powerlifter. Follow Nick on X at @readyxrm or LinkedIN, and now; Bluesky.

Need Power Platform expertise or training? Check out Nick’s website for more details.

Listen or watch the the Power Platform Boost podcast with Nick and co-host Ulrikke Akerbæk every second week for news and updates from the Power Platform community.

Original Post https://readyxrm.blog/2025/08/28/five-forgotten-features-of-dataverse/