Microsoft to introduce PowerApps Portal with new maker experience

Microsoft will introduce its Portal product under the PowerApps brand.

PowerApps Portal will be "coming soon in public preview," according to Microsoft corporate vice president for Business Applications James Phillips, and will give organizations using PowerApps the ability to launch portals that interact with external organizations like customers and partners.

Access to a portal can be allowed through various methods including personal accounts, LinkedIn, and Azure Active Director, as well as anonymous access.

PowerApps Portal will also offer a "reimagined maker experience" including pre-built portal templates that allow for customization of forms, views, and dashboards.

The move to PowerApps comes after Portal was de-coupled architecturally from the Dynamics 365 Customer Experience apps for sales and customer service to rely only on the Common Data Service for Apps. The April release of Portal already included a "CDS starter portal".

As Portal expert Nicholas Hayduk explained on a recent MSDW Podcast episode, once Microsoft was able to disentangle Portal from the other first-party CRM apps, this move to position the offering more generally was expected to some extent.

• See also: A Brief History of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Portal: Where We've Been, and Where We're Going

Phillips also noted that as a PowerApps service, Portal will also be able to take advantage of related capabilities like Flow and AI Builder. AI Builder, which Phillips also announced today, is aimed at helping organizations apply common AI and machine learning models as part of their business processes while working in PowerApps and Flow for tasks like image ...