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Microsoft Introduces Project Oakdale to improve the Microsoft Power Platform integration with Microsoft Teams

Yesterday at the Inspire event Microsoft announced a new product called Dataflex, subsequently renamed  Project Oakdale which is build on the Power Apps Common Data Service.   Project Oakdalesimplifies building and deploying apps and intelligent chatbots in Teams with Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Virtual Agents.  

The rapid expansion of remote working during the COVID-19 crisis has fueled adoption of Microsoft Teams.  Project Oakdale adds features to make Teams more competitive to products such as Slack.  The new functionality of Project Oakdale allows apps and bots to be created from inside Microsoft Teams. This means that organizations can access more data without leaving Teams for other apps. 

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Adoption of Teams strengthens the appeal of Office 356.  Some companies that rarely used Teams or even maintained subscriptions to online meeting products such as Zoom, GoToMeeting and Webex have come to appreciate Teams for internal and external collaboration.  The enhanced security of Teams compared to Zoom spurred use of Teams, and Microsoft continues to add new features in order to gain dominance in this market segment. 

For more details, see this post by Charles Lamanna on the Power Apps blog. 

NOTE: DataAccess offers a product called DataFlex which was introduced in 1982.  For now, to find technical documentation on what is now branded as Project Oakdale by Microsoft, you should search for Common Data Service or CDS.  

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