Microsoft announced that its key Power Platform tools, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agent, are now generally available apps for use within Teams.

The Power Platform tools available within Teams will give organizations the option of building native low-code applications, automated processes, and chatbots without professional developers, according to Nicole Herskowitz, Microsoft Teams General Manager.

"Many of our customers are looking to digitally transform the workplace, but do not have enough developer capacity or time to build fully custom apps. For these customers, we’ve brought together the Microsoft Power Platform and Teams," she wrote.

Along with the GA of these tools, Microsoft has rebranded the Common Data Service as Microsoft Dataverse.  Common Data Service (or CDS) is the data management, storage, and integration engine that undergirds Power Platform.

This is the second official rebrand of CDS, following the short-lived "Dataflex" launch in July. After legal challenges resulting from an apparent failure to search the market for similar uses of the name, the product was unceremoniously transitioned to the temporary code name "Project Oakdale." 

In choosing the name Dataverse, Microsoft has picked another brand name that is not entirely new. "Dataverse" is already trademarked for a somewhat different area, as part of an open source software project for academic data sharing and analysis. 

Microsoft will be offering two services: Dataverse, the full CDS offering; and Dataverse for Teams, which Microsoft director of program management Ryan Cunningham described as "the essential subset of Dataverse capabilities included as a powerful, built-in data platform for millions of Teams users at no additional cost."