Unanswered

Standard vs. Custom Tables for Party Data (Account, Contact, Organization...)

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by CF-07111227-0

We are developing an application on the Power Platform with Dataverse as the backend.

Our core architectural challenge is determining the best way to implement a party based data hierarchy using the standard dataverse tables: Account, Organization, and Contact. What are the specific roles of these three standard tables, and is it best practice to extend them for our custom model if they fit in instead of creating new, parallel tables?

For example we have a Party table which shall be related with a Person and Organization (Company, ...)

Categories:

Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

I have the same question (0)

All responses (2)

Answers (0)

Suggested answer

Michael E. Gernaey 52,970 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (1)

Report

Standard vs. Custom Tables for Party Data (Account, Contact, Organization...)

Hi @CF-07111227-0

I do not recommend setting up parallel tables. There is nothing wrong with extending and I want to be specific (do not use organization), Account and Contact.

Use Contact for Person and Account for the other and extend as needed.

You can use things like lookups, connections etc between records so as you extended your model its easy to link these tables together.

You also have the option of using the polymorphic "customer" which can be EITHER a contact or an account. and you would have to use a check in your expressions for whether you are using a contact or an account record in that field type.

I would look at adding custom fields as you need too and add custom entities (tables) and then link them to those 2 tables.

I honestly have yet built a customer solution where I intentionally created different tables for those specific things.

Not that you can't I just do not do it.

If these suggestions help resolve your issue, Please consider Marking the answer as such and also maybe a like.

Thank you!
Sincerely, Michael Gernaey

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
CF-07111227-0 6 on at

Like (0)

Report

Standard vs. Custom Tables for Party Data (Account, Contact, Organization...)

Hi Michael E. Gernaey,

Thank you for your response.

Since in our case a contact can have many accounts and an account can have many contacts (a many-to-many relationship), what is the best practice: using a relation entity, adding contextual data, or using connections?"

If i understand it correctly, the connection should be used for informal relationships?

Thanks

Christian

Was this reply helpful? Yes No