News
Discover how you can build a powerful Microsoft Power Pages to build external user accessible portals to access and submit information.
Power Pages is a vital part of the Microsoft Power Platform. It will help you build secure, responsive websites without needing deep coding skills.
We’re going to walk through five interesting Microsoft Power Pages examples to show you how this user-friendly, low-code platform lets you create custom websites and external user portals much quicker than it would take to build a traditional website.
To view some real-world examples of Microsoft Power Pages, check out our vlog.
Microsoft Power Pages is a low-code platform within the wider Power Platform that allows organisations to build secure, external-facing websites. It’s a tool that can be used to share information with audiences, customers or otherwise, while maintaining control over data.
Power Pages is designed to work alongside other Microsoft tools, allowing businesses to create connected digital experiences that integrate with their internal systems. Microsoft Power Pages is often used to build customer portals, booking platforms, and community websites. Below, we’ll demonstrate how Power Pages can be applied in real-world scenarios to streamline processes and give users a greater experience.
Power Pages can vary widely depending on what your organisation wants to achieve. The flexibility of Power Pages allows businesses to create tailored digital experiences, whether for customer portals or application processing systems.
The following examples highlight how organisations are using Microsoft Power Pages to improve efficiency and give users better access to a range of information.
The first example I’m going to talk about is the ability to have a community. A community does require a login essentially so you could have logins for people. They can be a whole host of different things. They could be an email address and password that you have specified or the customer or they specify themselves. It could be things like Facebook authentication or Google. So, if they've got a Facebook account something like that, they could authenticate to this portal using those accounts. We can configure the user interface and experience and then the information they have access to Depending on who they are depending on what level of membership they maybe have. It would also be possible to allow members to use a search bar to retrieve information. Things like published blog articles, forum questions, ideas, cases, knowledge articles, and they can search all of the content. It is worth noting that Microsoft Power Pages are not included in your standard Microsoft 365 licenses. You will require an additional license. You can find more information and the current Microsoft Power Pages pricing by clicking here. Communities built with Power Pages provide a centralised knowledge area and the ability to interact with other members of the community. So, people can ask questions and work together to get latest information.
So below we have an example of a default out of the box Forum that is built into Power Pages. It does not look fantastic as it’s just this is just the standard of the way it looks.
It does look a little bit 90s if I’m honest, but it is just the default template before we have customised or branded it.
All the ones which we have really put together for production use for our customers they look way slicker than this, but this could be a forum where people go in and ask questions and support each other.
You can tag a post within a community with several post types including whether it’s discussion, if it’s a question, or whether it’s a problem.
A post can also contain attachments that might be sharing more information or provide visual information about the question they are asking.
There is also the ability for other members of the community to vote for answers to suggestions. So very much like how Reddit works, where you could post an idea and then people could upvote it.
It makes it much easier for people to see afterwards and find answers quicker without ending up with duplicating posts.
The other thing about membership portals or I should say any type of Microsoft Power Pages portal is that when you authenticate a user, they then have a profile. So they have their own profile page they could configure. There are standard fields that typically everyone includes like profile picture, name and email address along with other contact information. They could even reset their own password in here if they wanted to. You also can give them different bespoke fields in here and then allow the user themselves if they wanted to configure it. They can answer certain questions you've predetermined for them but something which I find useful and a lot of the membership type portals we have worked on would allow for configuring preferences. Valto built out a Power Pages portal for an organisation which do a lot of events. So you pay to be a member of that Club and there was a lot of events. For example, like Christmas parties, summer parties, networking events things like that and then they wanted to give their members the ability to choose preferences to say Okay, which parties would you likely attend? So that way that they can configure the automated emails which go out afterwards which are inviting people to come to those events It could be newsletters.
Here’s another example of a power page now, this one is around permit applications. So, again take all these examples, by the way with a pinch of salt I’m, not saying you have to use this for permanent applications and things like that but we’ve worked with a lot of organizations which have used similar functionality for the ability to process information.
There was one recent customer that we worked with it was essentially applications that people were submitting for something to be reviewed.
The particular process previously involved people physically having to put documents on a CD and then post that CD to a particular part of the UK government for them to review.
We helped them fully replaced with a Power Pages interface, SharePoint and Power Automate.
Which allowed people to go in submit the information that they need to submit all that information was then stored inside of Dataverse and the documents within SharePoint.
It could then be properly processed. We even had retention policies which was clearing up that data after a period and things like that made it so much easier for people to process that information. As a result a process that would take weeks or months was cut down into days.
Let’s move on to another example. Now this one was a proof of concept that we put together for a private school. It is something which is essentially booking but again take this with a pinch of salt you could use this for booking all sorts of things doesn’t have to just be events It could be all sorts of different things.
But essentially what this was used for is a college that was a private school and they had additional courses and classes and things like that, which allowed people to book on to. Now, this is a good example of responsive design. So, I’m just going to change this to simulate being in a mobile phone view.
Microsoft Power Pages includes a range of templates that can be used as a starting point when building portals and websites. The templates provide pre-configured structures for common use cases such as customer self-service portals and community hubs.
While these templates are effective and offer a useful foundation, most organisations will customise them to suit their branding and to provide an experience that is best suited to their users. This is where Power Pages becomes particularly useful, as it allows businesses to move beyond cookie-cutter templates and create fully tailored digital experiences that their audience will love.
Microsoft Power Pages are often chosen by organisations that want to create bespoke web experiences without investing in complex traditional development. And, because it integrates directly with the wider Microsoft ecosystem, businesses can connect external portals with internal systems such as Dataverse, SharePoint, and Power Automate, which enables more efficient, visible data handling. It also provides built-in security and authentication options that allow organisations to control access to information while still delivering a seamless user experience.
As a Microsoft Power Apps solution architect, I have seen great benefits from Microsoft Power Pages.
We transformed a government application process from mailing physical CDs to a digital workflow using Power Pages, SharePoint, and Power Automate, reducing the time from weeks to days. Additionally, responsive booking systems for educational institutions have shown the versatility of Power Pages, allowing easy access and management on various devices. These examples illustrate how Microsoft Power Pages can enhance productivity and user experience across sectors.
By creating your business applications with Power Apps it keeps all of your data safely secure inside of Microsoft 365 whilst and allowing you to easily access it.
“We work with organisations across many sectors of different shapes and sizes from 10 to 100,000 employees.”
Contact our team today!
Explore how SMEs can use Microsoft Model-Driven Apps to create affordable, custom CRM-like systems. Learn how to manage customer data, track sales, automate tasks, and access powerful reporting—without the high cost of Dynamics 365.
22 January 2025
Explore the differences between Power Apps and Power Automate and learn how combining them can deliver powerful, low-code solutions for businesses. Discover how these tools work together to streamline processes and improve efficiency.
21 January 2025
Discover how to efficiently use the UpdateContext function in Power Apps to manage context variables, optimise memory usage, and enhance app performance. Learn best practices and practical examples for Canvas Apps.
21 January 2025
