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[Step by Step] Power Apps Portal – Configure Global Search
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.
🙂
PowerApps Portal – Enable Maintenance mode
During a scheduled maintenance or due to a temporary outage, If you want to bring down your portal and display a proper message to users, PowerApps portal has “Enable Maintenance mode” option.
In this article lets see how to use ‘Enable Maintenance mode’ option.
Prerequisites:
- Subscribe to 30 days trial and procure an Office 365 account.
Steps to navigate to Portals admin center:
- Connect to Power Apps maker portal using Office 365 account.
- Create a new PowerApps portal app, if you don’t have already.
- Now from the ‘Apps’ tab, select your portal and go to ‘Settings’.
- From the ‘Portal settings’ pane, click on ‘Administration’ link.
- You will be redirected to ‘PowerApps Portals admin center’.
Enable/disable Maintenance mode:
- Select ‘Portal Actions’ tab and click on ‘Enable maintenance mode’
- You get the ‘Enable maintenance mode’ popup.
- Under Select page to be used when maintenance mode is enabled: Select one of the following values:
- Default page: Select this value if you want the default page to be displayed. By default, this option is selected.
- Custom page: Select this value if you want a custom HTML page to be displayed.
- Custom page URL: You must ensure that the page URL you provide is publicly accessible.
- I opted ‘Default page’ option and clicked on ‘Enable’.
- If you browse the portal, you would get following screen:
Notes:
- When the maintenance mode is enabled, the customers are restricted from browsing any webpages except the
<portal URL>/_services/about
page. - If you opt for ‘Custom page’ option, make sure, the custom page you provided should not contain the
x-frame-options:SAMEORIGIN
response header, else the page will not load.
🙂
[PowerApps Portal (preview)] Build your first portal
PowerApps Portals, provides ability to build low-code, responsive websites which allow external users to interact with the data stored in the Common Data Service.
Refer article for introduction. PowerApps Portals are in Preview now and lets see how to get started with a simple portal.
Perquisites:
- Dynamics 365 trail
Steps to build your first Portal:
- Login to PowerApps maker Portal
- Pick the right ‘Environment’. Refer ‘Notes’ section below to know more about ‘Environments’.
- Click on ‘Portal from blank (preview)’ link.
- In the pop-up, fill ‘Name’, ‘Address’ and ‘Language’ and click ‘Create’.
- Portal provisioning takes time and you will be notified once done.
- Post provisioning, click on ‘Edit’ which will redirect you to Portal editor.
- You get pre configured ‘Home’ page and ‘Child Pages’.
- To add a new Page,
- Either click on ‘+New page’ from ribbon
- Or Right Click , ‘Home’ and add a New Page.
- I have added a new ‘Accounts’ page and filled the details on the right side ‘Component’ panel.
- To create a new ‘Account’ form, click on ‘Form’ and choose Entity, Form and Mode from the ‘Component’ panel.
- To add a new ‘Entity List’ control, click on ‘List’ and on the right hand side, select ‘Entity’ and ‘Views’
- Note: In the screen below, I’ve added an existing ‘List’. The properties are same for new ‘List’ as well.
- To map the Account ‘Form’ with ‘List’, set properties as below
- At any point of time, to view the changes, click on ‘Browse website’ on top right corner.
- Home Screen
- Accounts Screen
Notes:
- To use the Dynamics CE entities, you have to select the CE ‘Environment’ in your maker portal, before the start of Portal creation.
- A ‘default’ environment gets created by default. If you pick ‘default’ environment, you will need to create a new Environment with CDS database.

New Environment
- We can still create Portal from the ‘Dynamics Admin Center’.
- PowerApps portal got ‘.powerappsportals.com’ as domain and regular portal will be of ‘.microsoftportals.com’ domain.
- You can still create/update portal components (i.e., Entity List, Forms, Web Templates) from Dynamics web application.
- Clear cache using ‘/_service\about‘ is still available in PowerApps portal.
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PowerApps Portal – Intro
Those who are familiar with ADX Portals which later acquired by Microsoft and came up with ‘Dynamics Portals’ SaaS offering, ‘PowerApps’ Portal is the next evolution.
- With PowerApps Portals, Microsoft merging the capabilities offered by Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portals in to PowerApps Portals.
- PowerApps Portals provides the ability to build low-code, responsive websites which allow external users to interact with the data stored in the Common Data Service (CDS).
- PowerApps Portals will seamlessly integrate with Microsoft services like Power BI embed, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft SharePoint, Azure Blob Storage, Azure AD B2C, and Azure Application Insights to enhance your portal with rich content and provide a personalized experience to your customers.
- All the components of Dynamics CE portals (i.e., Entity Forms, Web Templates, Web Forms,etc…) will be continued to available in PowerApps Portals.
- PowerApps portal uses the same ‘Liquid Template’ scripting conventions of Dynamics CE Portals.
How to get started?
- General availability of PowerApps Portal will from July 2019.
- A new App type called “Portal” will be available directly from PowerApps.
- You can subscribe here to be informed about the Public Preview availability.
Whats the upgrade path for existing Dynamics 365 CE Portals?
- All the existing Dynamics 365 CE portals will auto upgrade to PowerApps portals in coming months.
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