The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Platform Enhancement Discussion October 2019

PowerApps Portals provide low-code tools to build responsive websites that connect an organization with external customers or partners. It provides the ability to create a new portal which can be accessed by internal users, anonymous external users or by authenticating external users with LinkedIn, local logins, Microsoft accounts and other identity providers.

Microsoft has revealed pricing approach to access the PowerApps Portals with tiers for external users & new PowerApps per app and per user plans for internal users.
 

Recently, Microsoft has announced the introduction of PowerApps Portals as part of PowerApps Portfolio and made it available for Public Preview. In this context, it is important to understand the definition of PowerApps Portals and its benefits relative to Dynamics 365 Portals.

PowerApps Portals Simply Defined…

PowerApps Portals is the successor of Dynamics 365 Portals created for offering external customer-facing experience to organizations without requiring deep technical expertise to do so. As aforementioned it’s a part of PowerApps portfolio wherein PowerApps users can easily provision a portal instance from the same maker portal experience which they used to build apps using the PowerApps low-code/no-code solution.

With PowerApps, customers and partners were able to deliver low-code apps to their employees across the organization but were restricted to extend the accessibility to external users. But, thanks to PowerApps Portals using which they can now build low-code, responsive websites which allow external users to interact with the data stored in the Common Data Service (CDS). Since Common Data Service is the underlying data platform for both Dynamics 365 and PowerApps, it allows organizations to deploy a PowerApps Portal to compliment an existing D365 instance or simply create a standalone offering on top of it.