I recently chronicled my first attempt at using Access’ DataVerse export ‘feature’:

Access - My First Venture Into Dataverse

I had a new client for whom I thought Dataverse might be a perfect solution to their need. So I set out to give it a whirl and see if Dataverse could do the job, see if the hype and demo I had been shown by Microsoft lived up to their ‘promise’. The proverbial ‘kick…

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Access – My First Venture Into Dataverse Part 2

So I’ve been playing around with Dataverse a little more today in a continuation of yesterday’s fiasco!  So if you haven’t already seen my previous post, best start by reviewing: Below are my preliminary observations and my impressions may change with time and experience, but as of today, this was my impression of things.  

After many, many hours of work I got enough functional that I wanted to provide a demo to a client.  The question then became, HOW?  Since it is linked to my Account, how can I share it out to an external user.

How can I share a set of tables, not all the tables, with an external user?

I played around in the DataVerse Table admin pages and found nothing remotely about security and/or permissions.

Then I decided to ask the Access Dev Team directly, as surely they would know, this had to have been planned for!  Sadly, I was informed they didn’t know and it was more an Azure question.

I spent 2 days, looking here and there, trying all sorts of things, turning in circles through the labyrinth that is the admin centers in Microsoft’s WWW (Microsoft, Office, PowerApps, Azure, …), posting in forums, to ultimately never manage to successfully do so.  So I then decided to try using Microsoft support.

After submitting the ticket, an hour or so later I received the following confirmation

For starters, you have to love the ‘Expect response within:’ value of ‘8’.  8 what exactly?  Hours, Days, Months,…  This isn’t a new system, you mean to tell me for 5+ years no one has mentioned this, no one at Microsoft has addressed this!?  Hey Microsoft, I know a few database developers that could help you fix this!

I’m assuming, and yes I know the expression, 8 hours was what is implied here. Well, I’m now past 96 hours and counting with no answer to what should have been a simple question.

If support can’t even help me with this, how in God’s name are users supposed to figure this stuff out.  This should have been part of the Microsoft Access documentation for the feature right out of the gate! (or a redirect to the appropriate page on the matter).

Moral of the story, for now at least, always do development in your client’s environment.  That means, that they will need to purchase the required account even just to be able to explore possibilities with you.

Furthermore, what a contrast to the traditional ease of distributing Access solutions. Sadly, it seems that with DataVerse you’ll need to have your IT Admins involved, and even then I’m still not 100% sure it is even possible to do.

Update 2023-06-02 :: 12 days now, and still nothing from Microsoft Support! This is what Microsoft promotes as Enterprise (this is an Enterprise MS365 account) level support?! Seriously. Maybe I was wrong in my earlier assumption, maybe the ‘8’ meant 8 Weeks, so I’ll hear back from support in late July, LOL!

Update 2023-06-20 :: never heard back. I think that says it all!

Update 2023-08-11
I recently informed the Access Program manager that I was done with Access/Microsoft. Upon his request, I gave him a bunch of reasons, one of which was this issue and getting no help… I think he made some calls because within a day I suddenly had an e-mail from Microsoft Support telling me that my ticket had fallen between the cracks of their system and that they don’t do this type of support. So basically, no help whatsoever.

They suggested that I should be “reaching out to your Customer Success Account Manager, who can assist you in scheduling Advisory services with a Cloud Solution Architect.” If only I had a ‘Customer Success Account Manager’! They they further suggested: “If you do not have Premier support, we offer tools to empower you to do more, and suggest utilizing Microsoft Docs and the Community Forums at Power Automate Community Forum , Power Apps Community Forum , or Power Virtual Agent Community Forum for how-to assistance.”  So use a forum, geez, why didn’t I think of that.  Oh ya, I did, and no one had a clue because it’s new technology and only Microsoft could be in a position to answer such questions!

At the end of the day,

• The Access Dev Team wouldn’t/couldn’t assist me.
• Microsoft Support was less than useless.  3 months just to tell me to go use public forums.  Wow, impressive help there!

I moved on and do not recommend DataVerse!!!