Reaching Beyond the Organization with Power Pages

Throughout this book, we have come to know all the capabilities that Power Apps offers to all kinds of users of an organization, from low-code specialists to pro-code developers. These skills are often geared to handling data internally, but what about when an organization needs contributions from external users? That’s when the new component of the Power Platform comes to play, Power Pages.

This component reaches outside the organization by extending what we can do with Dataverse, giving you the ability to offer solutions such as:

• A self-service solution for customers to manage, update, and review their financial data so that the legal department can build contracts
• A support portal to allow external users to manage their tickets
• An internet presence to offer all company services

As a progression from the previous method of working with external users, which was Power Apps portals, Power...

Technical requirements

Since Power Pages is the current evolution of Power Apps portals, the licensing requirements remain the same with a clear differentiation of internal and external users. For more information, please refer to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/powerapps-flow-licensing-faq#portals

Regarding the approach of this chapter, as in Chapter 2, the following recipes need to be addressed in sequence to build a complete help desk solution. For easier access, here’s the link to Chapter 2’s GitHub repository: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Microsoft-Power-Apps-Cookbook-Second-Edition/tree/main/Chapter02

Setting up Power Pages

When creating websites, we need to use a specific maker portal during the transition from Power Apps portals to Power Pages. This differentiation must be in place until all current portals get upgraded to the new version.

Keep in mind that not all features currently available in Power Apps portals are available in Power Pages, such as the progressive web app settings. All capabilities will get consolidated in Power Pages in the coming months.

Getting ready

Since you will be extending the help desk solution from Chapter 2, Building from Data with Model-Driven Apps, you need to have it deployed into a Power Platform environment of your choice. You will need to use the same one to build the support portal.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Power Pages maker portal, https://make.powerpages.microsoft.com, and select your desired environment from the list on the screen’s top right.
   • If this is your first time accessing this...

Extending the Dataverse solution

Working from a portal often requires different approaches to data manipulation. When working on a model-driven application, we can take advantage of all sorts of data controls to manage our process efficiently. Still, sometimes a more straightforward approach can help specific scenarios, such as when an external user creates support tickets through your Power Pages portal.

To improve the existing help desk solution to be used on Power Pages, we will create new forms for the Tickets table.

Getting ready

As mentioned before, you will be extending the help desk solution from Chapter 2, Building from Data with Model-Driven Apps, so you must have it deployed into your environment.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Power Apps maker portal, https://make.powerapps.com, and click on Solutions on the left pane.
2. Look for your help desk solution, as per our example, AMPI Help Desk, and click on it to open it.
3. Expand the Tables...

Building the help desk interface

Power Pages offers a portal solution like any other Content Management System (CMS) platform, such as WordPress (https://wordpress.com) or DNN (https://www.dnnsoftware.com). The difference lies in the built-in integration with Dataverse, not only with data but also with security and integrations.

Taking advantage of this platform’s website-building features, we will create an external user-facing portal to build an internet presence that allows registered users to create support tickets.

Similar to using the model-driven pages editor, modifying pages is just like making changes to a Microsoft Word document with a predefined structure. Moving the mouse over the page hovers the sections and elements of the page. Clicking on them allows you to edit them or remove them altogether. If you have some experience building SharePoint pages, you will feel right at home.

Getting ready

We will continue extending the help desk solution by...

Configuring user access and security

Building a website to acquire an internet presence is vital for any organization. These websites can add more value by implementing services to registered users, allowing them to interact with company data using proper permissions.

Dataverse offers a security model to interact with its data. Power Pages provides another layer, allowing makers to safeguard certain portal areas. This layer is composed of several components including authenticated users, web roles, table permissions, and page permissions.

For more information please visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/security/power-pages-security

For this recipe, we will take advantage of table permissions for the base tables and related child tables. These permissions will be associated with authenticated users. We will also cover how to use code snippets to improve the experience for users who have not authenticated to the portal.

Getting ready

We will continue...

Automating record attributes

Every help desk solution follows the same process flow. Users log into the portal, create a ticket, and then interact with it until it resolves. The idea is that every new ticket gets associated with the logged-in user, so they can see their status when they log in again.

To accomplish this, we will leverage functionality available from Portal Management. This application allows the configuration of all Power Pages and Power Apps portals available in a specific environment. It holds every configuration setting you can think of: from the forms you build in the Power Pages editor to the website analytics settings of your provider of choice, such as Microsoft Clarity (https://clarity.microsoft.com) or Google Analytics (https://analytics.withgoogle.com).

Getting ready

We will access the Portal Management application from the Power Pages editor to configure the ticket form metadata. We will continue this recipe from the Power Pages editor with our...

Adding custom fonts to the portal

The current abilities of Power Pages focus on an easy-to-use platform to build sites connected to Dataverse. Even though it inherits many features from Power Apps portals, some options are still unavailable.

One example is the ability to use any font from the ones listed in the Power Pages editor when making changes to the pages of your site:

Figure 12.14: Available fonts in Power Pages

This recipe will help you overcome this requirement by leveraging the Power Platform CLI and Visual Studio Code to make changes directly to the portal contents.

Getting ready

We will need to install the Power Platform CLI and Visual Studio Code to connect directly with our portal contents. Please refer to Chapter 11, Advanced Techniques with Power Apps Component Framework, Setting up Your Environments, for step-by-step instructions on how to install and configure these applications.

For up-to-date instructions on how to connect to the...