Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power App Portals

PowerApp  Stakeholder Access Introducing PowerApp Portals

The Microsoft Power Platform Release Wave 2 Plan was released  and while it’s jammed packed with many new features that will be released in the coming months, one of the features that I am excited about is the arrival of Power App Portals.

A highly requested feature from Microsoft was the ability to provide the ability for external stakeholders (partners, members, customers, etc) access to Power Apps.

In many cases, an external stakeholder may not need deep application functionality but rather access to read or transact with information in the a PowerApp based system (including Dynamics 365).

A PowerApp portal provides the ability for an external stakeholder to view data from a CDS system either anonymously or by logging in as an authenticated user. Information can be filtered and security applied to the external user so that they only see or interact with data that is specific to their user or role. Think of a student accessing only their exam results tracked in a PowerApp.

The technology is adapted from the Dynamics 365 Online Portals, which of course were built from AdxStudio Portals. The same concepts apply to PowerApp portals such as Entity lists, Entity forms, Web Forms and Liquid based templates. These components are combined to create and configure PowerApp portals.

You will soon be able to deploy a portal directly from https://make.powerapps.com. Using the new portal maker experience, a citizen developer can begin to design and configure a PowerApp portal linked to a CDS database.