Microsoft Power Platform · External portals
As a Microsoft Power Pages partner, we build customer and partner portals that write directly into your CRM without a nightly ETL run — business data in real time, the same data model for the outside world and employees. That is the strength of Power Pages.
The specifics
Anyone who has built a customer portal with a sync chain between web DB and CRM knows the problem: data is never quite current, conflict handling is nerve-wracking, every new data type needs new synchronization logic. Power Pages avoids that. The portal reads and writes directly to Dataverse — the same database that Microsoft Dynamics 365 or your Power Apps sit on.
Concretely, that means: a customer submits a service inquiry in the portal → the service team sees the case in D365 Customer Service the same second. A partner updates their master data in the partner portal → the account record in the CRM is immediately current. This live property is not self-evident — it's the actual added value of the platform over any WordPress or custom PHP portal with a downstream data chain.
Functional scope
Four building blocks that play a role in almost every Power Pages project — from self-service portal to public application portal.
Customers open tickets, see processing status, browse the knowledge base, upload documents. Directly connected to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Saves a huge number of service-center calls — and your service-team license cost.
Resellers, suppliers, contracting partners: self-service master-data maintenance, quote and order processing, document library, marketing-material download. With fine-grained permission logic (partners only see their own data).
Public directories, application portals, event registrations. Anonymous end users without login, data goes to Dataverse, from there into the downstream process. Classic for citizen services, non-profit applications, public search engines over datasets.
Local accounts in the portal itself (for manageable audiences). Azure AD B2C for mass-scale end-customer scenarios. External identity providers (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, SAML, OpenID Connect). Azure AD for partners and employees. We choose based on audience, compliance requirements, and scale expectations.
Use cases
What we typically deliver with Power Pages, sorted by audience and functional focus.
Authenticated area for existing customers: service tickets, service contracts, invoices, knowledge base, self-service diagnostics. Directly connected to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. Reduces service calls noticeably — and gives customers a 24/7 entry point.
Multi-stage signup process for new resellers: master data, compliance documents, contract upload, training tracking, approval workflow. After onboarding, direct access to partner self-service with lead handover and marketing material.
Search and filter portals over datasets — location search, product catalog, employee directory, service-provider map. Anonymously accessible, with SEO-friendly URLs, built-in multilingualism.
Grant applications, membership applications, event registrations, complaints. With required-field validation, file upload, multi-step wizard, automatic confirmation email. Direct transition into the downstream approval workflow via Power Automate.
What we deliver
Wireframe, visual design in corporate design, responsive layout for desktop, tablet, and phone. Component library on a Bootstrap base, custom web fonts and color tokens. We design so the portal doesn't look like a generic Microsoft template.
Which tables, which relationships, which fields are visible in the portal? Which permission logic (web roles, table permissions, entity forms) is needed for each data type? Clean permission setup is the most important security step — set wrong, the wrong customer sees others' data.
Selection and configuration of the identity provider — Azure AD B2C with custom policies for scale scenarios, multi-factor auth, password-reset flows, sign-in customization in corporate design. For compliance-relevant portals: audit logging of login activity.
For customization beyond standard: custom list views, filter logic, detail pages, custom forms with client-side validation. Liquid is Microsoft's CMS language (similar to Shopify), and we comment such that your internal IT can maintain the templates later.
License models
Power Pages bills primarily per end user per month — unusual for a portal product, but easy to understand:
The implementation itself typically starts at 15–25 person-days for a productive portal with authentication, master-data self-service, and 4–6 main pages. A fully calculated variant for your scenario we show in the License Cost Calculator.
FAQ
Power Pages is primarily a data-driven portal — the core discipline isn't the blog article, but structured interaction with a data model. What happens in the portal sits directly in Dataverse, without a synchronization chain. WordPress is superior in classic content management; Power Pages is superior as soon as business data and user actions converge.
Several options: local accounts directly in the portal, Azure AD B2C for scale end-customer scenarios, external identity providers (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, SAML, OIDC), Azure AD for partners and employees. The choice depends on audience and compliance requirements.
Power Pages bills per end user per month. For authenticated users from roughly €2 per login per month (tier-based with volume discounts). For anonymous users from roughly €75 per 100 logins per month. The implementation itself typically starts at 15–25 person-days for a productive portal with authentication and 4–6 main pages. More in the License Cost Calculator.
Yes, fully. Via Liquid templates (Microsoft's CMS language, similar to Shopify), HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be customized. Custom web fonts, custom components, JavaScript libraries — all possible. We usually build the portals with a lean custom theme on a Bootstrap base.
No. Power Pages needs Dataverse — and Dataverse is available standalone, without D365 licenses. But if you're already using D365 (such as Customer Service or Sales), the portal benefits directly: tickets, inquiries, orders from the portal land in the CRM immediately, with audit trail and service SLA.
When the portal scales to many millions of anonymous end users (license-cost question), when UI requirements are highly specific (real-time, custom animation, embedded tools), or when you need full control over hosting and performance. Then our Independent Engineering delivers the right answer — often combined with Power BI embedding and Dataverse API on the data side.
30-min initial conversation
Describe the audience, the use cases, the scale expectation — and we'll give an honest assessment of whether Power Pages or a custom web app fits.
Accompanying services
Engineering projects rarely stand alone — license logic, architecture clarification, quality gates, knowledge transfer, and follow-on operations usually run in parallel. Below are the most common accompanying services we add via discovery spikes, fixed-price sprints, or application-care contracts.
Before · Architecture
Before implementation: tenant structure, data model, security concept, integration mapping. The result is an architecture document any engineering team can continue working with — even one other than us.
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Before · CSP
Which license bundles for which users, which add-on SKUs are necessary, where you're over- or under-licensed. Sourced as a Microsoft Licensing Partner — with the option to use CSP purely for control without margin maximization.
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During · Quality gate
Independent second opinion during an active implementation project — whether we run it or another partner does. CMMI-based quality gates, risk reviews, fixed price per gate.
During · Adoption
Not the classic 2-day workshop forgotten after a week — but a dynamic learning program over 4–6 weeks with initial training, application phases, and follow-up sessions. Training matrix for roles and topics.
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After · Operations
After go-live: a plannable application-care contract with a monthly flat rate, SLA-based. Includes releases, hotfixes, extensions, tenant hardening — and continuous accompaniment instead of mere ticket response.
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After · Knowledge
When the original developers are gone, the previous partner is no longer reachable, or the documentation is stale — reverse engineering of the existing solution with a documented result: code map, data model, customization inventory.
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Strategy background · arades topic page
Why we consistently build all our apps and recommendations on a single data foundation — and when the island solution is still the better answer. 2,500 words on architecture, migration paths, and honest boundaries.
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