Power Platform environments often accumulate unnecessary data, leading to excessive storage consumption and increased costs. Managing storage efficiently is crucial for maintaining performance and reducing expenses. Microsoft provides several methods to free up storage, but today, we’ll focus on the most impactful ones.
Why Should You Optimize Storage?
Managing your Power Platform storage isn’t just about cost savings. It also ensures faster performance, better organization, and compliance with Microsoft’s storage limits. If you’re experiencing storage constraints, here’s how you can free up space effectively.
1️⃣ Delete Unused Environments
If you’re holding onto environments that are no longer needed—such as test or development environments—you’re wasting valuable storage.
👉 Solution:
- Navigate to the Power Platform Admin Center.
- Identify environments that are inactive.
- If an environment is no longer needed, back up critical data and delete it.
⚠ Caution: Deleting an environment permanently removes all associated apps, flows, and data. Always verify before deleting.
2️⃣ Reduce System and Managed Tables
Dataverse stores system data, logs, and analytics which may take up unnecessary space.
👉 Solution:
- Use Advanced Find or Dataverse Storage Capacity Report to review large system tables.
- Clear system logs if they are not needed.
- Optimize and remove unnecessary Managed Tables if they contain redundant data.
📌 Best Practice: Retain system logs only if required for audits or compliance.
3️⃣ Manage Large Email Attachments
Attachments in emails and notes can consume a significant amount of storage.
👉 Solution:
- Set an email retention policy to automatically delete old emails after a specific period.
- Remove or migrate large attachments to external storage like SharePoint or Azure Blob Storage.
- Use Power Automate to redirect attachments outside Dataverse.
💡 Tip: Enable OneDrive for Business integration to store attachments externally instead of consuming Dataverse storage.
5️⃣ Delete or Archive Inactive Records
Old records—such as inactive leads, outdated cases, and completed opportunities—accumulate over time.
👉 Solution:
- Use Bulk Delete Jobs to remove old records.
- Archive historical data to Azure Blob Storage or SharePoint.
- Set retention policies for automatic record cleanup.
⚠ Caution: Ensure that records required for compliance are archived before deletion.
6️⃣ Reduce the Audit Log Size
Dataverse audit logs store a lot of data, and without cleanup, they grow exponentially.
👉 Solution:
- Regularly review audit logs in the Power Platform Admin Center.
- Disable auditing on tables where it’s unnecessary.
- Delete older audit logs using PowerShell or system jobs.
📌 Best Practice: Retain only essential logs required for compliance.
7️⃣ Remove Unused Reports, Dashboards & Views
Many organizations store outdated reports, dashboards, and custom views that no one actively uses.
👉 Solution:
- Identify unused dashboards and views using the Usage Insights feature.
- Remove obsolete reports in Power BI or Dataverse.
- Optimize queries in frequently used reports to reduce database load.
💡 Tip: Periodically review dashboard usage and delete those that are no longer relevant.
8️⃣ Clear Out Personal Views and Charts
Every user in your organization may have personal views and charts that accumulate unnecessary storage.
👉 Solution:
- Use System Administrator access to identify orphaned personal views from deactivated users.
- Delete or merge duplicate views.
- Educate users on how to clean up their personal views periodically.
9️⃣ Delete Old or Unused Power Automate Flows
Power Automate flows can generate large log files, run history, and execution data, which consumes storage.
👉 Solution:
- Go to Power Automate Admin Center and review inactive flows.
- Turn off or delete flows that are no longer needed.
- Configure flow run history retention policies to automatically clean old logs.
📌 Best Practice: Use batch processing in flows to minimize execution logs.
🔟 Optimize Tables with Many Columns
Having too many fields in a table increases storage usage due to indexing and data duplication.
👉 Solution:
- Remove unnecessary fields from large tables.
- Consider using lookup fields instead of storing duplicate data.
- Normalize data by breaking down wide tables into multiple smaller related tables.
💡 Tip: Use Dataverse Analytics to analyze the largest tables.
1️⃣1️⃣ Delete Unused Business Process Flows (BPFs)
Business Process Flows (BPFs) consume storage through logs, audit trails, and process data.
👉 Solution:
- Identify inactive BPFs and remove them.
- Optimize BPFs by reducing the number of steps and stages.
- If BPFs are necessary, consider retention policies to clear logs after a specific period.
1️⃣2️⃣ Clean Up Plugin Trace Logs
Power Platform trace logs from plugins can take up substantial space, especially in heavily customized environments.
👉 Solution:
- Navigate to the Plugin Trace Log Table and delete old logs.
- Reduce logging levels for less critical processes.
- Use external monitoring tools like Application Insights instead of storing logs within Dataverse.
💡 Tip: If logging is necessary, configure retention policies to delete old logs automatically.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing Power Platform storage isn’t just about deleting old records. It requires a strategic approach—removing unnecessary data, optimizing workflows, and leveraging external storage solutions.
💡 Quick Recap of Key Actions: ✅ Delete old environments & unused entities
✅ Archive large attachments & records
✅ Optimize system logs & auditing
✅ Remove redundant dashboards, views & flows
✅ Optimize tables & reduce unused columns
✅ Clean up plugin trace logs
By implementing these strategies, you can reduce storage costs, improve system performance, and ensure compliance with Microsoft’s storage guidelines.
🚀 Start cleaning up your Power Platform environment today!
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