Introducing Project Oakdale, a new low-code data platform for Microsoft Teams

The COVID-19 crisis has rapidly changed the way we live and work, and many organizations have shifted to remote work or are implementing a hybrid remote work approach as they reopen physical locations. To support this shift to hybrid remote work, we continue to improve the Microsoft Power Platform integration with Microsoft Teams to enable our customers to tailor Microsoft 365 to their needs and empower everyone to be a developer using low-code tools.

Today, we are excited to announce the release of Project Oakdale. Project Oakdale delivers a built-in low code data platform for Microsoft Teams, and provides relational data storage, rich data types, enterprise grade governance, and one-click solution deployment. Project Oakdale enables everyone to easily build and deploy apps and intelligent chatbots in Teams with Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents. Project Oakdale is built atop the Common Data Service, which reached general availability four years ago. Since that time, the Common Data Service added over 1,000 features and introduced support for Dynamics 365 and Power Apps.

Microsoft Teams and the Power Platform is shaping the future of work with low-code apps to run the business. The new functionality enables users to easily build applications and bots directly within Teams, empowering business users to rapidly respond to changing business needs and create custom solutions. With the addition of Project Oakdale, Teams users now have key business data at their fingertips to build new apps that address real business problems—all without ever leaving Teams.

The powerful combination of the Microsoft Teams and Project Oakdale enables:

An integrated experience for your custom apps inside Teams

Avoid wasting time by switching between multiple services and apps with one fully integrated experience. Creators can build, deploy, share, use, and administer Power Apps solutions from within Teams. Responsive app layouts native to Teams provide a streamlined experience across web, tablets, and mobile. With the ability to create and share custom templates, Teams users, Microsoft partners, and IT departments can create and share app templates across the entire company. Automate your Teams processes with Power Automate for Office 365 over your Project Oakdale data for an end-to-end experience.

Quickly build and deploy apps and bots inside Teams

With both the Power Apps App Studio and the Power Virtual Agents Portal embedded in Teams, users can now easily and quickly build apps and bots with drag and drop simplicity in Teams without switching applications.

With this built-in data platform and an easy-to-use editable data table, there is no need to connect to storage. All users can now easily create custom data tables that are team and scenario specific. Optimize your Teams processes, drive greater collaboration, and improve efficiency with a built-in low code platform and low-code data storage.

Easily share and administer custom solutions through Teams

With an environment for each Team and no limit on the number of applications, Project Oakdale enables a simplified sharing model for Teams owners and members, all with immediate access to the data. Rely on built-in security and governance that works and was proven through Common Data Service. Project Oakdale provides access and security roles granted automatically through Teams membership, but customizable by Teams owners. Easily create and share chatbots with one-click deployment using your organization’s subject matter expertise and Project Oakdale data.

An example of the power of Common Data Service can be seen with Rockwell Automation. Rockwell Automation is a worldwide leader in industrial automation and information, providing automation solutions to a broad range of industries such as energy, mining, food and beverage, and automotive, in over 80 countries:

“As part of Rockwell’s digital transformation, we are focused on transforming everyone across the organization into engineers who can leverage technology to automate and simplify their jobs. We look at the Power Platform as a highway to turn all 23,000 employees into engineers. Common Data Service is the data backbone that enables people to store their data in a scalable and secure environment dynamically.”—Chris Wagner, Analytics Architect, Rockwell Automation

Additionally, customers can start to realize immediate value by leveraging pre-built Power Platform solutions for Teams that build atop Project Oakdale. These solutions include Asset and Area Inspections, which can be customized to support inspections across multiple domains, create tasks for outstanding issues, and view long-term trends of commonly identified issues. These can be assets managed by organizations in banks, government agencies, or for spaces managed by retail stores, warehouses, hotels, and hospitals. Another solution that comes out of the box is Employee Ideas, which empowers team managers to engage all team members to submit ideas. Ideas can be organized by theme via campaigns, and all team members get to vote on the best ideas.

To learn additional details, please read the “A Closer Look at Data Platform Capabilities in Project Oakdale” blog post.

Note: This post was updated on August 11. A name will be selected which we will share in the coming weeks.