Power Pages: Building Secure External Portals

Power Apps are excellent for internal employees, but what if you need to expose data to customers, partners, or the public? Enter Power Pages (formerly Power Apps Portals), a secure, enterprise-grade platform for building, hosting, and administering modern external-facing websites.

1. Why Power Pages?

Unlike traditional CMS systems (WordPress, Drupal), Power Pages is built directly on top of Dataverse.

• Single Source of Truth: When a customer updates their profile on the portal, it updates the record in your CRM/Dataverse immediately. No sync jobs, no APIs to maintain.
• Authentication: Works natively with Azure AD B2C, LinkedIn, Google, and Okta.

2. Security is Paramount

Exposing internal data to the web requires rigorous security. Power Pages utilizes a unique security model:

• Table Permissions: Define granular create, read, update, and delete rights for specific tables.
• Web Roles: Group authenticated users (e.g., "Gold Partners", "Standard Customers") and assign permissions to roles.

3. Use Cases for Enterprise

We see three primary patterns for high-value implementations:

Customer Self-Service

Allow customers to log support tickets, view invoice history, and schedule appointments without calling a call center.

Partner Management (PRM)

Give distributors/resellers a portal to register leads, access sales collateral, and view order status.

Public Sector

Citizens applying for permits, licenses, or grants.

4. Pro-Code Extensibility

While Power Pages offers a robust design studio, web developers can extend functionality using Liquid template language, JavaScript, CSS, and the Web API to build completely custom user experiences.

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