Introducing PowerApps Portals: powerful low-code websites for external users

Over the past year, we’ve seen incredible growth from customers and partners delivering low-code apps to employees across their organizations with PowerApps.

Along the way, customers have continually asked us: what about people outside my company? Sharing apps with external users has been the #1 request on PowerApps Ideas, with dozens of compelling use cases for working with partners, customers, franchisees, and others who aren’t part of a maker’s organization.

Today we’re excited to announce PowerApps Portals, the ability to build low-code, responsive websites which allow external users to interact with the data stored in the Common Data Service.

Starting in next month, you’ll be able to create a new App type called “Portal” directly from PowerApps. Using a simple, dedicated designer experience, makers can create pixel-perfect websites which are custom branded and allow users to interact with data stored in the Common Data Service.

With the introduction of PowerApps Portals, we are also merging the capabilities offered by Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portals to ensure that all the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement application portals gets the benefit of our simplified low code offering.

Below are the key capabilities of PowerApps Portals which we are announcing today:

Engage with your customers and partners

PowerApps Portals allow organizations to create websites which can be shared with users external to their organization either anonymously or through the login provider of their choice like LinkedIn, Microsoft Account, other commercial login providers. You can also integrate enterprise login providers using a variety of industry standard protocols like SAML2, OpenId Connect and WS-Fed . Websites can also be created for Employees who can connect using their corporate Azure Active Directory account.

Build websites easily with a new, dedicated portal designer

Use a powerful no-code portal designer to create and manage website content like Webpages, sitemaps, templates etc to build pixel perfect websites. Custom brand your website and make them responsive using bootstrap themes.

Also use familiar CDS components like model-driven forms, views, and dashboards to surface data stored in Common Data Service on your website in a few clicks.

Integrate with Microsoft services to enrich content

Integrate with Microsoft services like Power BI embed, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft SharePoint, Azure Blob Storage, Azure AD B2C, and Azure Application Insights to enhance your portal with rich content and provide a personalized experience to your customers.

Model complex business process using pro dev extensibility

Use the same professional developer capabilities of the Common Data Service platform and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Portal, including templates, code plugins, workflows, and more to extend your websites and cater to sophisticated use cases when needed.

Publicly available soon

We’re wrapping up the final stages of our private preview, and are very excited to open up PowerApps Portals for everyone. PowerApps Portals will be available as a Public Preview next month; you can subscribe here to be informed about the Public Preview availability.

Please join us during the keynote at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit to learn more about PowerApps Portals on Monday June 10. If you are attending Microsoft Business Application Summit look for our sessions, where we will talk more about PowerApps Portals and come check out PowerApps booth in the Power Platform area.