Rajeev Pentyala – Technical Blog on Power Platform, Azure and AI

In this article, lets learn how to configure global search in ‘Power Apps Portals’.

What is Global Search in Portals:

• Global search of portals allows you to search for records across multiple entities.
• Allows you to search across multiple columns and configure what columns of an entity would be searchable.
• By default, few OOB portal entities are enabled for Global Search. To name a few ‘Knowledge Article, Blog, Blog Post, Forum, etc…’.

So lets see how to configure global search for other entities. I am taking ‘Account’ entity for this article and you can pick the entity of your choice.

Prerequisites:

• PowerApps account. Refer here to get an account.
• PowerApps Portal. Refer link for steps to enable portal.

Once you fulfill the Prerequisites, you would get the following two Apps in your PowerApps maker portal.

• ‘Portal Management’ – Model-driven App which contain Portal related entities.
• ‘Portal’ – Portal app. I named my Portal App as ‘ExpMay2020’.

Following are the high level steps to enable global search for ‘Account’ entity.

• Add/Update Portal ‘Site Settings’.
• Create a ‘Portal Search’ view in Account entity
• Add Portal ‘Web Page’ to display the search result.
• Add ‘Site Marker’ for the ‘Web Page’
• Grant permissions to Portal Users
• Rebuild Search Index

Lets get started.

Add/Update Portal ‘Site Settings’:

• Open the ‘Portal Management’ Model-driven App.
• Go to ‘Site Settings’ and Add a new ‘Site Setting’ by Name ‘Search/EnableAdditionalEntities’ and  Value ‘true’.
  • Note: Name should be exact match. If you already have ‘Search/EnableAdditionalEntities’ site setting, make sure the Value is set to ‘true’.

• Also make sure the OOB Site Setting ‘Search/Enabled‘ is set to ‘true’.
• Add a new site setting ‘search/filters’, if not exists already. Open the record, if already exists.

• Set the Value with following pattern {YourDesiredName:EntityLogicalname}.
• In my case, its ‘Accounts:account‘.
  • Multiple entities must be separated by Comma(,) (i.e., Accounts:account,Contacts:contact)

Create a ‘Portal Search’ view in Account entity:

Open the Solution and go to ‘Account’ entity.

• Create a new View by name ‘Portal Search‘.

• Add the columns which you want to search to the view.

• Save & Publish.
• Once saved, view shows as below.

Add Portal ‘Web Page’ to display the search result:

To open and display the Account record from ‘Global Search’, we need a new ‘Web Page’ with ‘Account’ Entity Form.

• Create a new ‘Entity Form’ by selecting ‘Account’ entity and map one of the Account form. I’ve named my ‘Entity Form’ as ‘Account’.

• Create a new blank ‘Web Page’.

• Add a ‘Form’ component to the ‘Web Page’ and map the ‘Account’ entity form created in previous step.

Add ‘Site Marker’ for the ‘Web Page’:

• From the ‘Portal Management’ Model-driven App go to ‘Site Markers’.
• Create a new ‘Site Marker’
  • Name : {EntityName_SearchResultPage}. In my case, its ‘account_SearchResultPage’.
  • Page: Web Page which we created in previous section.

Grant permissions to Portal Users:

Portal User must have a minimum ‘Global’ Read access on the entity you are configuring global search for. In my case it’s ‘Account’ entity.

• Create a new ‘Entity Permission’ as below.

• Create a new ‘Web Role’ and map the ‘Entity Permission’.

• Grant the ‘Web Role’ to the ‘Portal User’.

Rebuild Search Index:

We left with one last step before we test the Global Search. Its ‘Rebuild Search Index’

• Connect to your portal. Navigate to ‘../_Services/about’ page.
• Click ‘Rebuild search index’.

Test the Global Search:

• Connect to your Portal.
• Click on ‘Magnifier’ symbol from the ribbon and type your Account to Search.
  • Note: You can Search only the columns available in your ‘Portal Search’ view added on ‘Account’ entity.

• You would get the matching Accounts as below.

• Click on the one of the Accounts link and you would be redirected to that ‘Account’.

Note:

• Refer this PG’s article for more details.
• To remove the entity from Global Search refer this article.

🙂