Microsoft have announced the public preview of the next generation column in Dataverse.
Formula columns will help users express business logic on top of existing columns and will also allow reference to columns from other tables. As formula columns will be calculated in Dataverse, this means the results can be seen in a Teams table view, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and the Dataverse APIs.
As this new feature is currently in public preview, the editing experience is initially limited to Dataverse for Teams (a lightweight version within Microsoft Teams). There are plans to bring this feature to the rest of Dataverse via the maker portal in the near future. In public preview, the feature will support decimal, currency, Boolean, lookup, and limited date/time functionality. Microsoft have also stated more will be added to this list.
What is the Microsoft Dataverse?
Microsoft Dataverse is a cloud-based solution layer that easily structures a variety of data and business logic to support interconnected applications and processes in a secure manner.
What is Microsoft Power Fx?
Microsoft Power Fx is an open-source formula language for low code which is based on Microsoft Excel, therefore becoming immediately more familiar for users.
These formula columns are based on Power Fx which provides a much richer set of functions than what was previously available with calculated columns, especially for text processing.
What is the benefit of Power Fx Formula Columns?
Integrating Power Fx with formula columns in Dataverse and across the Power Platform is another efficient low code development that will help improve the user experience. In the image below, the Power Fx formula bar is being used to create a formula column that computes total price by multiplying the quantity and price column.
Summary
Although this new functionality is only in public preview for the moment, the introduction of Power Fx formula columns in Dataverse is a useful update from Microsoft which will help improve efficiency for users. If you are an existing Strategy 365 client and want to discuss Power Fx formula columns with one of our team, feel free to get in touch.
