Why Most SharePoint Systems Fail. And How Dataverse Fixes It
while SharePoint remains an excellent collaboration and document management platform, it often becomes the wrong place for business-critical systems to live.
Business Process Automation
For more than a decade, organizations have relied on SharePoint to store information, manage lists, and build lightweight applications. And while SharePoint remains an excellent collaboration and document management platform, it often becomes the wrong place for business-critical systems to live.
The result? Bloated lists, broken permissions, inconsistent data, workflow failures, and frustrated users.
But here’s the good news: the problem isn’t your team it’s the limitations of the tool. And there is a modern fix: Microsoft Dataverse.
In this article, we’ll break down why SharePoint-based systems frequently fail and how transitioning to Dataverse enables scale, security, speed, and long-term stability.
The Truth: SharePoint Was Never Meant to Be a Database
Although SharePoint Lists look like tables, they are not designed to function as relational databases. Organizations often push SharePoint far past its intended purpose, which leads to systemic issues such as:
- Structural Limitations
- No true foreign keys
- Difficult relationships between lists
- High risk of duplicate and inconsistent data
- Lookups break easily when lists grow
When your data model becomes more than “one list with some columns,” SharePoint struggles.
- Performance Breakdowns
As lists grow:
- Views slow down
- Flows fail or time out
- Filtering and sorting degrade
- The 5,000-item threshold becomes a recurring enemy
Teams often spend more time fixing performance issues than improving processes.
- Security and Permissions Become Unmanageable
Many organizations create item-level permissions, nested groups, or hundreds of unique permission entries.
This causes:
- Long page load times
- Locked or inaccessible items
- Security gaps
- Inability to audit effectively
SharePoint simply isn’t built for granular, dynamic security models.
- Automation Friction
Power Automate flows often break because:
- The underlying schema changes
- SharePoint throttles large operations
- Triggers fire inconsistently
- Lookups return strange data types
This leaves IT and business teams firefighting instead of innovating.
Why Dataverse Solves These Problems
Microsoft built Dataverse specifically for modern business applications, relational data models, and secure, enterprise-grade solutions. It is the database engine behind the Power Platform, the back-end SharePoint has never been able to be.
Here’s why Dataverse is a game-changer:
- A True Relational Data Model
Dataverse supports:
- Many-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships
- Cascading behavior
- Referential integrity
- Lookup consistency you can trust
This eliminates the chaos of trying to force complex systems into SharePoint lists.
- Enterprise-Level Security
Dataverse offers:
- Role-based security
- Row-level security
- Field-level security
- Hierarchical access
- Auditing and compliance controls
This unlocks sophisticated governance structures without performance tradeoffs.
- Scalability Without Compromise
Whether you have:
- 10 records
- 100,000 records
- Or millions
Dataverse is optimized for speed, reliability, and long-term growth.
- Clean Data, Clean Processes
Dataverse gives you:
- Choice, lookup, date, number, and complex field types
- Business rules
- Server-side logic
- Calculated and rollup fields
All systems behave predictably without the duct tape solutions SharePoint often requires.
- Power Automate Works Seamlessly
Flows become:
- More stable
- Faster
- Easier to test
- Less likely to fail silently
Dataverse connectors deliver consistent, structured data dramatically reducing troubleshooting time.
- Model-Driven Apps Bring Everything Together
With Dataverse, you unlock model-driven apps, giving your users:
- Auto-generated forms
- Role-based UI
- Dashboards
- Advanced search
- Process flows
- Subgrids
- Related tables that are actually related
This is where your business processes finally come to life.
The ROI: Dataverse Saves Money, Time, and Sanity
Organizations that migrate from SharePoint to Dataverse consistently experience:
- Fewer outages
- Fewer broken flows
- Dramatically improved performance
- Better user experience
- Cleaner data models
- Easier maintenance
- Stronger governance
And because Dataverse is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, your investment compounds over time.
Ready to Stabilize and Scale Your Systems?
If your SharePoint lists are held together with band-aids and Power Automate retries, it’s time for a more resilient foundation.
Articello specializes in transforming fragile SharePoint solutions into scalable, enterprise-grade Dataverse applications.
We help teams:
- Redesign data models
- Build modern model-driven apps
- Strengthen security and governance
- Implement structured automation
- Clean and migrate existing data
- Build future-ready digital operations
If you’re ready to modernize, stabilize, and finally stop patching the same problems, we’re here to help.
- Contact Articello to start your Dataverse transformation today.
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