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Ajithnair621
Advocate II
Advocate II

Queries about Portal

I have few queries about PowerApps Portal. I am a developer and have begun with developing the Portal application over the past few days and have been facing lot of issues with regards to development.

 

1. I have been getting the error in Screenshot1 (attached) multiple times during my development. I had earlier went through one of the queries raised in community and also through Dynamics docs where they had mentioned a option “Restart Portal”. Even after doing this I have been facing issues again and again.

 

2. I am getting different outcomes when I try to create a Web Page

a. Manually through the “Portal Management”

b. Manually through the “Portal Designer”.

  I had added an Entity form on the Web Page in both cases. But in case (b) when I go and check the web page through the “Portal Management” the Entity form is not available on the “Web Page”. At the same time Form is available on the Website while I browse it for testing. Is there any setting that I am missing out here? If the same was tried through “Portal Management” the “Entity List” or “Entity Form” has to be defined on the Web Page. In case (a) Even if I create the Page and try to Add it manually through the “Web Links”, the Page fails to appear after initial attempts and later gets visible after an hour or so, during which I might have performed SYNC multiple times trying to get it displayed. Is this Normal?

This activities were performed without having any Web roles defined rather with a full access view to all users.  

 

3. Even for minor changes to the form, does it parallelly affect other relating objects (like roles, Access control rules and web links) without providing any warning message? For example - does it change any other properties for these objects.

 

4. There have been Scenarios where what I see in the Preview does not match with what I see on the Actual application. For Example - I have my company logo on one of the Pages. It is visible on the Preview but the same is not visible on the website. The image was on a Page which was deleted so I moved it to an Active page (HOME). Also the name of the Company (text) was in small letters yesterday with a x for the image. Today it is visible with a bigger Text Font and still no image.

 

I felt the portal is not as flexible as Model Driven Apps for development. If someone could share their thoughts and suggestions on this, it would be of great help.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
OliverRodrigues
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

Hi 

 

1 - I can't see any attachment, can you upload again? isn't this a cache issue? 

are you logged into the portal as Admin? can you access the page <portalurl>/_services/about and clear cache+clear config? 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/admin/clear-server-side-cache#:~:text=To%20...

 

2 - again could be cache issue.. make sure always to clear config after changing portal configuration

I personally don't like making changes in Portal Studio, there are lots of limitations

By using the Portal Management app you will be more familiar with the Portal objects/entities

every Web Page has (at least) two Web Page records, one being the structure (root Web Page) and another Web Page for each language enabled in your Portal (localized content Web Page or non-root Web Page)

make sure both are associated to the same Page Template, you can use the "Default Template" or the "Full Page"

also if you are associating any Entity Forms/Entity List, make sure they are associated in the Content Web Page (doesn't really matter if they are on the root page, but they must be on the content one).. the same for any JS customization, it has to be on the content page

 

3 - do you have an example? not sure I understood

the objects are "so so" independent, what I mean is, if you change an Entity Form configuration, it won't change any other object from your Portal

but if you set an Entity Form to "enable entity permission" it will require an Entity Permission record as well, it won't create for you

and also there is no warning unfortunately 

 

4 - try getting your hands dirty by changing Content Snippets / Web Page details / Web Templates directly on the Portal Management app

the Portal Studio App (unfortunately isn't very stable yet)

 

------------

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Oliver Rodrigues


 

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4
chleverenz
Power Participant
Power Participant

Hi @Ajithnair621 ,

usually, i do not have that kind of problems (unfortunately i am too dumb to find the attchments here, so no real answer to the problem 🙂 ). A little bit about my experiences with portals:

May be you have to think about the way you work with portals. I'm not much in power apps but there you really describe the screens and the definition is immediately downloaded and shown. And usually power apps have limited, at least somehow defined, number of users.

Portals intention is to have many many many requests on a webserver and to act quick. Microsoft uses obviously a good caching strategy which really gets you down when developing things.

Using <yourportalurl>/_services/about while being logged in as an administrator in the protal allows you to clear the cache.

So, whenever you change things in the backend its usually a good idea to clear the cache that way. This removes a lot of trouble for me.

The other point is (even when i dislike it): when editing things like snippets (for example the navbar left snippet is usually used for the logo) or content, use frontsideediting as this will immediately be reflected on the portal (beeing logged in as an admin shows a box for editing content like snippets, copy, sometimes summary, weblinksets , and may be more)

I never encounter "interferences" while working with entity permissions, roles or access control rules. Nevertheless: you have to understand the way it works. Assigning roles or permissions can have unwanted outcome. This does not mean, that the entities are changed, but they are interpreted diffrently.

For example: avoid using diffrent entity permission for read and write and assigning both to a specific webrole. Keep things simple and create an entitypermission like "read/write for myportal xy entity" and assign that combined permission. I had a lot of "debugging" on permissions where the diffrent permissions added up to cryptic things. 

 

So, to wrap it up: yes, portals are diffrent from power apps despite of the highly same name 🙂

 

Beware of caching

 

Do not mix too many things in development, choose a main path and use it.

 

Hope this helps,

  Christian

Have fun,
Christian
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OliverRodrigues
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

Hi 

 

1 - I can't see any attachment, can you upload again? isn't this a cache issue? 

are you logged into the portal as Admin? can you access the page <portalurl>/_services/about and clear cache+clear config? 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/admin/clear-server-side-cache#:~:text=To%20...

 

2 - again could be cache issue.. make sure always to clear config after changing portal configuration

I personally don't like making changes in Portal Studio, there are lots of limitations

By using the Portal Management app you will be more familiar with the Portal objects/entities

every Web Page has (at least) two Web Page records, one being the structure (root Web Page) and another Web Page for each language enabled in your Portal (localized content Web Page or non-root Web Page)

make sure both are associated to the same Page Template, you can use the "Default Template" or the "Full Page"

also if you are associating any Entity Forms/Entity List, make sure they are associated in the Content Web Page (doesn't really matter if they are on the root page, but they must be on the content one).. the same for any JS customization, it has to be on the content page

 

3 - do you have an example? not sure I understood

the objects are "so so" independent, what I mean is, if you change an Entity Form configuration, it won't change any other object from your Portal

but if you set an Entity Form to "enable entity permission" it will require an Entity Permission record as well, it won't create for you

and also there is no warning unfortunately 

 

4 - try getting your hands dirty by changing Content Snippets / Web Page details / Web Templates directly on the Portal Management app

the Portal Studio App (unfortunately isn't very stable yet)

 

------------

If you like this post, give a Thumbs up. Where it solved your request, Mark it as a Solution to enable other users find it.




If you like this post, give a Thumbs up. Where it solved your request, Mark it as a Solution to enable other users find it.

Power Pages Super User | MVP


Oliver Rodrigues


 

Ajithnair621
Advocate II
Advocate II

Thanks for your suggestions and responses to my queries - @OliverRodrigues @chleverenz 

 

<portal>/_services/about - I had not come across this before. I tried it once now and I am able to clear the cache.

 

I will continue with the experimentation and develop considering all your suggestions. I did not find the Portal Studio App interesting. Portal Management was much better with respect to the development Part (Well organized, Structuring is a bit confusing till we get a hang of it). I will try to get my hands more Dirty.

 

With regards to Point 3 in my initial POST - There was a scenarios where I removed a Page through the Portal Designer but it was still visible to me in the Navigation since it was present inside the Web Link sets with out any web Page (I can't understand why the web link was not deleted when the page itself was deleted). Due this, the New page (with a new name using the same entity form) that I added was not visible in the menu item. After I managed to remove the Old Link from the Web link Sets, the new page was visible.

 

@chleverenz - You are not Dumb. Seems to be a upload issue at my end. I had uploaded the image, when I tried to edit the POST I saw only a RED cross there. I have added the screenshots again to the main POST.

 

With Regards to the Permission - I need a Permission for Read and Read & Write. But both of these will be assigned to 2 different users so I guess Creating separate Web Access Control Rule and Entity Permissions would be the right approach.

OliverRodrigues
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

Don't forget to mark the answer as verified, this will help other users looking for similar issues




If you like this post, give a Thumbs up. Where it solved your request, Mark it as a Solution to enable other users find it.

Power Pages Super User | MVP


Oliver Rodrigues


 

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