As long-time Power Platform Consultants, we often see a need for our customers to interact with external customers, partners, participants, and the general public. While we’ve enabled this capability through a series of customizations to Power Apps, we’re excited about the increased possibilities of building external-facing portals for our customers with Power Pages, the newest member of the Power Platform family.

About Power Pages

In May 2022, Microsoft announced the release of Power Pages, a standalone product within the Power Platform portfolio for creating business websites.  Power Apps portals, a component within Power Apps, have been re-envisioned and redesigned with a new user experience and enhanced enterprise capabilities. According to Charles Lamanna, CVP of Business Applications and Platform at Microsoft, “In addition to being low-code, Power Pages extends far beyond portals’ former capabilities to enable organizations of any size to securely build websites with exciting new aesthetic features and advanced capabilities for customization with pro-developer extensibility.”  A key aspect is that they are connected to an enterprise-grade platform with elastic scaling, high availability, authentication, and platform security built into the product.

Use cases for Power Pages

Although they were officially announced in May 2022, it is an evolution of Power Apps Portals and is already in existence in corporate and government entities worldwide. Leveraging Power Pages is an option to consider anytime you wish to exchange information with an external party – someone not licensed in your tenant. Some examples of how Power Pages can be used include:

  • Government Community Services: Self-service permitting, licensing, incident and outage reporting, applying for grants, and more

  • Customer Self-Service: Warranty registration, returns, support inquiries, appointments, and bookings
  • Partner Support: Supplier onboarding, sustainability tracking, inquiry management, and vendor support

  • Operations and Administrative Support: Manage programs, compliance, and reporting from affiliate organizations

  • Contractor Support: Provide access to requirements, project documentation, schedules, timecards, and more

Microsoft customer story

King County, WA, highlighted on Microsoft Customer Stories, has been a huge adopter of Power Platform, deploying over 200 solutions including several Power Pages low-code portals. The usage of Power Pages for these external portals fits King County’s “low-code-first strategy” and allowed them to go live with the websites in weeks/months versus months/years.  Some of their sites are:

  • An Employee Giving Program Nonprofit Portal
  • COVID-19 Response Management Portal
  • Scheduling Portal
  • Real Estate Transaction Portal

In today’s connected and fast-paced world, organizations need to find efficient ways to interact with external parties more than ever.  Power Pages provide us with the tools to address these needs in a more effective, secure, and scalable way.

Interested in the Power Platform and would like some assistance?

We are happy to help. Explore our Power Platform Consulting Services or reach out directly to Cathy Ashbaugh, cashbaugh@compass365.com to arrange for a complimentary consultation.

Compass365, a Microsoft Gold Partner, delivers SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Power Platform solutions that help IT and Business leaders improve the way their organizations operate and how their employees work.