Tag Archives: Portals
Power Apps Portals Extend Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
A great tool available to Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM users is the Power Apps Portals. Power Apps Portals can extend and customize the range of your Dynamics 365 solution.
users external to your organization either anonymously or through the login provider of their choice, such as LinkedIn, Microsoft Account, or other commercial login providers.
As long as those portals are located in the same environment as your licensed Dynamics 365 application, they are covered by your Dynamics 365 Enterprise license.
What can you do with a Power Apps Portal?
A Power Apps Portal lets external users such as vendors or customers interact with selective
What are some Portals offered by Microsoft?
There are five templates from which to choose when enabling a Power Apps Portal inside your
- The Customer Self-Service Portal lets customers help themselves to information, support tools, case status progress, etc. It also allows customers to leave valuable feedback.
- The Partner Portal: gives resellers, distributors, suppliers, and partners up-to-date access to all allowable shared activities.
- The Employee Self-Service Portal gives employees an easy way to perform self-service tasks and obtain information from a common data source.
- The Community Portal: Allows interaction between customers and your industry’s experts. Customers can interact with one another to increase knowledge, build forums, and provide ratings and feedback.
- The Portal from blank lets you build a website for sharing information with internal and external participants. There are samples and instructions to help you get started.
Can Portals be modified?
Yes! Each portal template consists of several configurable settings to change the style and modify the site’s visual elements. Define your theme with background, text color, and various layouts.
Where will my data be kept?
Your portal will be safely kept and maintained within the Common Data Service (CDS), and integrated with your Dynamics 365 environment, benefiting from Dynamics 365’s security.
What is the cost involved in provisioning a Power Apps Portal?
The cost depends on the amount of CDS (Common Data Storage) available. Portals connected to a Dynamics 365 Enterprise app (e.g., Sales or Customer Service) incur no licensing cost are if at least 1 GB of CDS Database capacity is available.
What is the cost if a Dynamics 365 Enterprise customer has less than 1 GB of available CDS
Database capacity?
If the customer exceeds the free storage of 10 GB database, 20 GB File, or 2 GB Log capacity, additional storage can be purchased as follows:
- CDS Database Capacity (1GB) $ 40/month
- CDS File Capacity (1GB) $ 2/month
- CDS Log Capacity (1GB) $ 10/month
Need to verify your storage capacity?
- Sign in to the Power Platform admin center and select an environment.
- Select Resources > Capacity.
- View the data on the Summary page.
There is no cost for internal users with a full Dynamics 365 Enterprise license to access a Power Apps Portal. There are costs associated with external users accessing a Power Apps Portal. Portals are licensed at a monthly rate based on the user’s anticipated login volume. Logins do not accumulate as individual assets that carry forward to the next month. Multiple logins during a 24-hour period will be counted as a single login.
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Microsoft Power Apps Portals with Virtual Agents in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement: Key Takeaways

With more people working virtually, it is more important than ever to be there for your customers, anywhere, at any time. Empowering people, either inside or outside your organization, to securely access the information they need to engage with your company should be a strategic imperative for any organization. Today there are low code, no code solutions that can unlock a host of business engagement opportunities for employees, business to business partner relationships and end customers.
In this interview, Uma Kaliaperumal, a Senior Software Consultant at
Ryan: What is Power Apps Portal?
Uma: PowerApps Portals allow organizations to quickly create branded websites that can be shared with users external to their organization either anonymously or through the login providers such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Microsoft Account, Azure AD and more. The best part is that the web portal is automatically integrated with your Dynamics 365 system. So any information a person submits through the web portal automatically lands in Dynamics 365 where further actions can take place.
Ryan: What are some key selling points and examples of people using Power Apps Portals?
Uma: Now you can build professional grade web portals very rapidly and modernize processes across the organization without expensive web development projects. A lot of challenges can now be solved by deploying simple engagement apps. For example, you could create an employee portal that allows employees to submit time-off requests, or even upload forms related to their health benefits enrollment. We also have bank customers that use the Power Apps Portals to capture borrower information and documentation related to their loan requests.
The new designer interface is also very simple for anyone to use. Microsoft created an end-to-end experience so designers can quickly create a website and customize it with portal pages, define specific layouts, and add a variety of content. We can reuse page designs through templates to save time and add forms and views to securely display key data from Dynamics 365.
Power Virtual Agent
Ryan: What is Power Virtual Agent?
Uma: Power Virtual Agents are intelligent chatbots that can be used with the Power Apps Portals and the Power Platform. They can be used to automatically answer common internal employee or external customer facing questions. These chatbots can be quickly created and deployed using a guided, no-code graphical interface without the need for data scientists or developers.
Ryan: What is key selling point for power virtual agent?
Uma: Power Virtual Agents free up staff to focus on more complex issues. Also, simple and common requests can oftentimes be the highest priority for your customers. If a customer is having a login issue, a typical response could be to highlight some troubleshooting steps. They expect a rapid response to move past their critical issue and if they don’t receive one, they are not going to be happy. Though important, it can be very disrupting if a subject matter expert on the team has to stop helping another customer with a more complex problem to send a common list of login troubleshooting steps. This is where a Virtual Agent comes to the rescue.
Ryan: What are some business use case scenarios for Power Virtual Agent?
Uma: A few scenarios that come to mind would be if you had an e-commerce website and you wanted the virtual agent to provide recommendations based on the time of the year or the specific geography you live in. Checking on certain statuses, for example, product shipping status could be another great example where you can employ a virtual agent. Another great use case would be around seasonal type work or short-term events needing more employees on a temporary basis. Employing virtual agents to temporarily support the increased volume without hiring more staff can not only bolster your bottom line, the increased coverage can positively influence your levels of customer engagement.
Ryan: What are some pain points that Power Virtual Agent solves?
Uma: Organizations that need to do more with less can really take advantage of virtual agents. Even in this ever-increasing global economy, a lot of companies are ill-equipped to handle 24×7 customer support. A virtual agent can fill those coverage gaps. Product knowledge is also difficult to transfer when an employee leaves the company. Training a new employee takes time and can be expensive. You can mitigate this risk through the use of product knowledgebases. A virtual agent can draw upon a product knowledgebase to provide rapid responses that are consistent and thorough. You also don’t need to worry about a virtual agent being impolite because they are having a bad day.
Next Steps:
Many organizations have developed and delivered low-code apps to internal employees with Power Apps. Now, with Power Apps Portals you can build low-code, responsive websites which allow external users to interact with the data stored in the Common Data Service. Think of the many compelling use cases for working with partners, customers, franchisees, and others who are outside your organization. And by adding Power Virtual Agents you can bring a whole new level of customer engagement to your customer experience.
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Adding New Users to Allow Access to Power Apps Portals Admin Center
A common issue for new Power Apps Portals deployments is that you may need to have multiple internal employees that need admin level access to the Power Apps Portals admin center. These users would need this level of access to perform common Portal Actions, including: Restart the portal Update Dynamics 365 URL Install Project Service Automation Extension Install Field Service extension for partner…
Dynamics 365 Portals – Leverage Liquid and Java Script Custom Code to Enhance Portal Capabilities

Dynamics 365 Portals
Dynamics 365 Portals offer a great way to enhance customer experience by extending some CRM configurations directly to the customer. There comes a time when you may want your portal to perform some action that is beyond the out-of-the-box functionality. Extending portal functionality often requires custom Java Script and or Liquid code. Get familiar with some of the basic understandings of these two programming languages using this guide.
Liquid Code
Liquid code runs server-side- meaning that this code works great for making queries back to Dynamics to deliver data or perform an action. Suppose you want to display some information from a parent record on the current record that a user is viewing from the portal. You can use Liquid Code to define the field on the parent entity as a liquid object, and display the object on the web page. Code like this is often times implemented on the Web Template portal entity. Web Templates are used to structure and display data in particular ways for all Web Pages that utilize that Web Template.
Java Script
Java Script comes in handy when you want to improve the user-experience, but not always the best option to meet a business process’s needs, as Java Script can be subverted. Want to hide/show a field on a portal page based on another field’s value? This is precisely where Java Script should be implemented. It doesn’t stop there, though. Use this code to pre-populate fields, hide/show sections and tabs, send an alert to a user, lock down fields, even make collapsible tabs! Java Script is most commonly used as a way to mimic Dynamics 365’s Business Rules. Implement this style of code of Web Forms, Entity Forms, Entity Form Metadata, and Web Templates.
Using Liquid and Java Script in conjunction
It is possible to use these two styles of code on the same portal component, within the same script. Be aware though, that this method will not work in some cases. For example, say you have a Java Script block of code that looks for a change of a field, and you want to execute a block of Liquid code when that field changes. While this type of code could prove useful, it’s not possible, as Liquid runs server-side and cannot run after a web page has already been loaded on a browser.
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Stay Connected with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Portals

In its simplest expression, a customer relationship management system helps you connect better. To this end, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM) puts at your disposal several tools: these include web-based, interactive portals allowing you to connect with your clients, partners or employees, depending on your specific needs.
Easy to set up without HTML or code, preconfigured Dynamics 365 portals allow you to connect, communicate and collaborate directly. In the case of client portals, they maximize customer engagement by providing them with a direct channel to your organization, facilitating processes and freeing up your service and support representatives.
Here are just a few ways Dynamics 365 portals can benefit your organization:
- Let clients create and follow up on incidents through a customer service portal. This alleviates some of the burden on your customer support team, allowing them to focus on resolving incidents by reducing the number of follow-up requests they need to answer. The information is also recorded automatically in the CRM, where it is easily accessible by users who need it.
- Give customers access to a knowledge base or FAQ. Suggested knowledge base articles based on keywords allow customers to find answers to their questions without having to submit a support request. This keeps the number of incidents down and speeds up the process, increasing customer satisfaction.
- Allow customers to get in touch with other customers or representatives easily. A moderated forum is a great way to promote customer engagement by providing them with a platform where they can share tips, ask questions, and discuss your products and services.
- Ensure that your customer contact information is always up to date. Customers can validate and update their contact details and other information themselves through the portal. Having up-to-date customer information in the CRM also allows you to touch base with them through various campaigns and increase long-term retention.
- Customize your portals based on your needs. Code and HTML can be used to modify portals as necessary: you can promote upcoming events, for instance, or add custom entities such as a product list that customers can scroll through. Knowledge base entries can be pulled up automatically depending on the product chosen, to name only a few possibilities.
With all these benefits, the portals provided by Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement provide a great tool for interaction and engagement by allowing your customers to interact with your organization, freeing up your employees to focus on their priorities and provide a higher level of customer service.
By JOVACO Solutions,
In-place upgrade of ADX 7.x to Dynamics Portals 8.x
Recently the Product Group released a migration guide to move from Adxstudio v7 Portals to Portal Capabilities for Dynamics 365. That announcement with a link to the guide can be found here. On the heels of that announcement I wanted to share my experience with doing an in-place upgrade of ADX 7.x to Dynamics Portals 8.x. The guide itself covers several migration options including reimplementation both self-hosted or Microsoft hosted as well as an in-place upgrade both self-hosted or Microsoft hosted. I won’t go through the details of the process since it is very well covered in the guide, but I’ll point out some of the findings as a result of going through the process.
Cleanup Prior to Upgrading
It is worthwhile to do a little housekeeping prior to starting the upgrade process. You may have artifacts that are no longer being used and this would be a good opportunity to address those items. The upgrade process will “split” each of the existing web pages into 2 pages – a root page and a localized content page. The issue that arises is that even inactive web pages will get split and will result in an inactive root page with an active content page. This will result in unexplained “404 not found” errors on the upgraded portal and potentially navigation links that are normally not visible due to Access Control Rules being now visible. If there are inactive web pages that can’t be removed prior to the upgrade, an advanced find can be used post upgrade to find inactive root pages that have an active content page. Those content pages should also be deactivated.
Images that had a space in the partial URL were no longer rendered after the upgrade, so it may be worth while to search through the child files and update the partial URLs so there are no spaces prior to the upgrade process. Remember to update the related link to the file wherever it is being used.
Uninstalling ADX Solutions
Having ADX 7.x solutions deployed alongside Dynamics Portal 8.x solutions is not supported (and would not work anyway for the most part) so part of the upgrade process will include uninstalling the ADX solutions. Depending on what ADX portal package was originally deployed as well as what productivity packs were also deployed, it’s possible to have 20+ ADX solutions in Dynamics 365. As you can imagine removing these with all the interdependencies can become quite challenging. Fortunately there are 2 utilities that can help.
Determining Installation Order
FetchXML can be used to retrieve the installation order of the ADX solutions. Ordering the results in descending order of the installedon field will yield the correct uninstall order of the ADX solutions. Use the FetchXML statement below, replacing “orgname”, and “x” for the version numbers to reflect your organization to retrieve the ordered list. (I’ll give credit to the below information from here)
https://[orgname].crm[x].dynamics.com/api/data/v8.[x]/solutions?fetchXml=
Finding Dependencies
There may still be situations where a lingering dependency is blocking the solution from being removed (e.g. maybe an ADX field is being used in a workflow, etc.). The Dependency Checker tool is useful for identifying the exact dependency (or dependencies) that needs to be addressed in order to remove the solution. Use the following URL below replacing the “organization url” to reflect your organization and the “objectid” of the solution attempting to be removed. You can use the list of solutions from the above FetchXML statement to get the object id of the solutions.
FetchXML in Liquid Templates
As part of tightening up security on the portal, executing FetchXML now requires entity permissions on any entity that is part of the fetch statement. At least the Read privilege needs to exist on the entity. No errors will result after the upgrade as an indication, the fetch will result in no records so the liquid template will not work as expected (e.g. – if there is logic looping through results, etc.).
SMS for Two-Factor Authentication
Twilio support (and SMS in general) has been dropped with Dynamics Portals. The Product Group is moving more towards external authentication/identity providers and this may be the opportunity to start investigating that path if your application is leveraging local authentication with 2FA enabled. Email is still an option for sending the security code.
Web Templates – new reference to Website Record
Web Templates are a common way to store JavaScript functions as well as Liquid Template code. Web Templates now have a reference to a Web Site record. This will initially be missing after the upgrade has completed which results in “not found” errors anywhere the web templates are being referenced. Simply updating the Web Template records lookup to the Web Site record will resolve this.
CSS Class Differences
There are a few changes to the CSS classes that are being used throughout the Portal. Sub-grids is an example that comes to mind immediately. Depending on how much custom theming was done to the original portal, it may be necessary to make changes to your CSS to reflect the differences in the upgraded portal. If you entries in the various Custom CSS areas, now may be a good opportunity to consolidate those into a single file and use that as a child file of the root page.
“Failed” Portal Provisioning
When I went through the last step of provisioning the portal against my Dynamics 365 instance the provisioning did not actually fail with an error, it just never seemed to complete and the portal itself would display the “getting things ready” page. I’m fortunate enough to have access to the product group and we were able to determine what was happening. This is touched on in the migration guide, but I’ll offer some insight below.
At two stages of the upgrade process you will be deploying portals solutions to your Dynamics 365 instance. The first time this is done to upgrade your existing portals artifacts to their 8.x counterparts. The last time this is done is to provision the Dynamics portal against your Dynamics 365 instance (which will most likely further upgrade any already installed portal 8.x solutions and possibly deploy some new ones). As you are choosing the portal package to deploy in each of these steps, you should be consistent with the original ADX portal type that was deployed. This is important because the package that was originally chosen when first configuring the ADX portal will dictate what the ID is of your Website record and when you do the final upgrade step of provisioning the Dynamics portal against your instance if the GUID of the package chosen during provisioning does not match the ID of the existing Website record, the provisioning process will always appear to be still provisioning.
The provisioning process should create a record under Settings –> Portals –> Settings named PackageImportComplete. The value for this record needs to match the ID of the portal package you selected to provision. If the Website Copy tool was used against the ADX portal, it’s possible that the object of your Website record will not match one of the standard IDs. This (having a non-standard Website id) may or may not impact the creation of the PackageImportComplete record. If the PackageImportComplete record is missing you will need to create it and set the proper value based on the portal package that was selected. If the record does exist and the value does not contain the proper value based on the portal package selected, update the record with the correct value. The portal package values are:
Type | ADX v7 | Dynamics Portals v8 |
Custom | D78574F9-20C3-4DCC-8D8D-85CF5B7AC141 | D78574F9-20C3-4DCC-8D8D-85CF5B7AC141 |
Community | 2AB10DAB-D681-4911-B881-CC99413F07B6 | 2AB10DAB-D681-4911-B881-CC99413F07B6 |
Employee Self Service | 9D3AEE93-0766-4548-B85F-F00EF4620798 | 10152FEB-F33D-4CBD-997E-F7A336C3B8BF |
Partner | 6D6B3012-E709-4C45-A00D-DF4B3BEFC518 | 6D6B3012-E709-4C45-A00D-DF4B3BEFC518 |
Event | 0B48376D-F961-4154-8B54-FB278B5DACBE | C0887167-3954-E611-80DC-00155D209102 |
Customer | 51C9210D-998A-4A79-B3A4-848E858D5FC3 | 7B138792-1090-45B6-9241-8F8D96D8C372 |
1/18 Webinar: Using PowerApps and Flow to create Line of Business “portals” by Vishwas Lele
This webinar is designed to show you how to more easily create PowerApps applications and take advantage of the recently introduced PowerApps custom visual for Power BI.
Using PowerApps and Flow to create Line of Business Enterprise “portals” by Vishwas Lele
Vishwas will showcase a PowerApp application that is essentially a “portal” for existing Line of Business Enterprise Applications (inventory, contracts etc.) and Services ( Dynamics, O365, DropBox etc. )Through the use of PowerApps features like the out of the box connectors, integration with Flow and mobile enablement, learn how easy it is to build an app for the information workers that allows them to have all the information in one location and on a device of their choice.
When 1/18/2018 10AM
Where: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSMAAFHK44c
About Vishwas Lele
Vishwas Lele serves as Chief Technology Officer at Applied Information Sciences, Inc. Mr. Lele is responsible for assisting organizations in envisioning, designing, and implementing enterprise solutions. Mr. Lele brings close to 24 years of experience and thought leadership to his position, and has been at AIS for 18 years. A noted industry speaker and author, Mr. Lele serves as Microsoft Regional Director for the Washington, D.C. area and is a member of Windows Azure Insiders group. Additionally, Mr. Lele received an MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Solution Architecture.
Portals: Changing the Date from the Default Format

In Microsoft Dynamics 365, the date for Portals is in a USA format by default. In this blog we’ll show you a simple way to change the date to a UK format without using JavaScript.
1. Navigate to Portals in the dashboard
2. Click on Site Settings
3. Browse through the Site Setting records to check if you can find a record with “DateTime/DateFormat” in the Name field
If Record found:
4. Open the record and edit the Value field to the desired date format string
i.e. dd/MM/yyyy
5. Click Save
If no Record found:
4. Click +New to create a new recordUnder General tab enter:
Name: DateTime/DateFormat
Website: Your Portal Name
Value: The desired date format string i.e. dd/MM/yyyy
Description: Custom date format string
5. Click Save
6. Refresh your portal page with a date field to make sure your change has been applied
There you go, a simplistic approach to changing the default date format for portals in Dynamics 365! Keeping checking our blog for more helpful Dynamics 365 tips.
Happy Dynamics 365’ing!