New User Community - Could it be made in Power pages?

[Jessica_MV]

Would you use Power Pages to create a community if you needed all the features listed below? We do not think Power Pages can create all of these features, are we wrong? If not, how would you do it and still connect to the D365 CRM? We are also wondering if it would be cost-effective. Last year we had 94K visitors with over 765K page views, the pricing model for Power Pages is not very clear, but it appears it would be expensive for the traffic alone, not to mention the data storage.

Requirements

Community Site
Ability to allow unlimited, open membership for everyone.
Ability to create new community memberships and assign to existing MV client accounts in Dynamics.
Ability to display site wide messages/banners in the community.
Ability to be able to manage sidebar content within forums, KB articles – ads, images, text.
Is compatible with our new licensing application – Ability for end-users to interface with the new systems to view/manage their serial numbers/passwords.
Ability to support SEO – index/no index, page titles in URLs, page meta description, tags, etc.
Ability to customize the navigation within the Community – menu bars, sidebar widgets, ads, etc.
Supports single sign on. (i.e., for the LMS and possibly the Microvellum store)
Is expandable, a platform supports our needs for the future, not just for today.
…

Knowledge Base
Ability to organize content in a nested category structure.
Ability to author articles and format page content using templates and rich text editor features – including text styles, bullets, alignment, embedded video from external sources such as Vimeo or YouTube, callouts, code embeds, etc.
Ability to manage/organize uploaded images and video content.
Ability to schedule article release dates and expiration dates.
Ability to inform members of new KB articles via “Recent Article” sections or notifications via email or portal features.
Ability to inform members of popular articles.
Ability to use search tools to find articles.
Ability to print articles, formatting the article for printing.
Ability to upload images into articles.
Ability to display the date the article was last updated automatically within article.
Ability to rate articles. “Was this helpful?”
Ability to use two-column layouts in article page templates.
Ability to navigate knowledge base categories using full-length breadcrumbs.
Ability to see related articles within articles. (Sidebar content)
…

Cases
Ability to view complete case history.
Ability to for clients view tickets across their entire organization – all users within their organization.
Ability to create a new cases using rich text – including inline images, text formatting, etc.
Ability to attach files to tickets (Up to 20mb)
Ability to for end-users to respond to existing cases in the portal.
Ability to CC people on tickets.
Ability for Microvellum agents to include knowledge base articles within tickets.
…

Forums
Ability to create a new forum post using rich text – including inline images, text formatting, etc.
Ability to follow forum categories – receive notifications when new posts are made to specific categories.
Ability to follow forum posts – receive notifications when new comments are made to specific forum posts.
Ability to follow community members – receive notifications when people you follow submit new posts.
Ability to submit forum posts as discussions, problems, questions.
Ability to indicate which response is the answer to a question-type forum posts.
Ability to sort by types of forum posts – discussions, problems, questions, unreplied to posts.
Ability to have a two-column page template that allows us to control the content used in a sidebar style page.
Ability to indicate posts as sticky – sticky posts would typically be seen in a sidebar area designated for sticky forum posts – posts that remain at the top of a list.
Ability to attach files to forum posts. (Up to 20 mb)
Ability to see new forum posts that are posted by people, organized in a “Latest Updates” or “Recent” sidebar section, area or filtering mechanism.
Ability to like forum posts and their comments.
…

Blogs
Ability to separate official announcements, news, and updates from forums.
Ability to search blog posts.
Ability to subscribe to blog content – a means to receive email notifications when new blog content has been posted.
…

Ideas
Ability to submit ideas related to our software, library products, and services.
Ability to vote on ideas.
Ability to limit votes per category among community members.
Ability to search ideas.
…

User profiles
Ability for members to upload and manage user profile image – used on profile and forum posts.
Ability for other members to access profiles of other members.
Ability to display a profile description – bio.
Ability to track and display community join date.
Ability for all profile information/fields updated by members to be synced in Dynamics.
…
Preferred Features

Ability to send messages between users.
Ability to follow individual community members.
Ability to know when people you follow are online.
Ability to provide a gamification system for members to inform other members of authority levels based on site engagement and season the site with a bit of fun.
Ability to share articles/forum posts on social media.
Ability to display more than one profile field. (i.e., general info, my bio, work history)

[nestico]

hi @Jessica_MV great post, how you list all features/requirements are amazing, and have you decided to use power pages?

I am also working on the Dynamic 365 Community power pages portal and I found so many blocks especially documentation (not detailed steps), I've searched so much but with no luck, by any chance had you achieved any of the requirements, I would appreciate if you share the solutions.

Now I am trying to figure out:

• Ability to share articles/forum posts on social media.
• Ability to provide a gamification system for members to inform other members of authority levels based on site
• Ability to send messages between users.
• Ability to follow individual community members.
• Ability for other members to access profiles of other members.
• Ability to vote on ideas. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/configure/rate-webpage )
• Ability to follow forum categories – receive notifications when new posts are made to specific categories.
• Ability to follow forum posts – receive notifications when new comments are made to specific forum posts.
• Ability to follow community members – receive notifications when people you follow submit new posts.

thanks

I found this playlist very useful by Arpit Tech talk https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJXMFihzhj53rwha4h7smb7nW-oSFWzfL 

[Lucas001]

Hi @nestico,@Jessica_MV,

really great list of requirements and well structured as it seems.

For your purposes I would say yes, most of the things could be done with power pages. Can it be done without knowing advanced coding and only using OOB Tools? From my experience with Power Pages no and for a single developer or citizin developer it will take a lot of time.

For a lot of your requirements you would need a good understanding of Power Automate, how PowerPages Caching works and can limit your experience (even thou you can bypass it), for downloading files etc. an open azure blobstorage could work.

Question would be what do you want to spend as nearly 100k users are going to cost you a lot. Depending on the amount of files, it could be that you need additional storage.

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Hope that helps.

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