Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Mar 31, 2020

Using Forms as a front end for a database

Hi all, First time posting so I hope this makes sense. I have a piece of work to do where I need to get various departments to check a spreadsheet of course start and end dates and a few othe...

microsoft forms

andrev5

Brass Contributor

Feb 13, 2023

RobElliott what is CDS?

And what if our org uses a central database outside of SharePoint lists. Can the Power App be used to read from/pre-populate, then give the option to fill in/overwrite, that non-SharePoint database?

My org has a number of databases all linked internally so they can be queried as the data source within Power Apps, but I am not sure if Power Apps has the ability to write to those databases, or just read from it. Thanks!

RobElliott

Silver Contributor

Feb 14, 2023

andrev5 CDS was the old name for Microsoft's Dataverse database. The ability to read & write to/from a database depends what that database platform is; if it's Dataverse or SQL then a Power Apps can write to those. But it can't read or write to Access for example. It depends on whether there is already a connector for your database platform or whether someone will need to build a custom connector.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Intranet, SharePoint and Power Platform Manager (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

andrev5
Brass Contributor
Feb 14, 2023
Thanks RobElliott - I really appreciate this info!