Get started with Power Pages super quickly in 5 minutes

In this post I will look at how to get started with Power Pages. In this post I will guide you through the first steps that you can take with this amazing platform.

The first steps

You might ask, What is Microsoft Power pages? Well Power Pages is the new platform that Microsoft have recently launched that will help you set up your own website. Complete with option to let your clients or user login to your site.

Time to dive into the technology!

When you get started with Power Pages, all you have to do is visit powerpages.microsoft.com or make.powerpages.microsoft.com and your journey will start.

Or if you have gone through those steps already you might end up on the following screen:

You just click on the sign in or try for free links on the above page and you will get to a maker site.

If you have already create a portal before you will find the previously created portals there. If you are new to Power Apps portals or Power Pages then you might find no existing sites listed.

Create a new site in Power Apps pages

The first site that you create will create a Power Platform environment. This environment will be a trial environment. You can select the most suitable look and feel for you.

There are templates that are aimed at:

• Schedule meetings with a financial institution
• After school program registration
• Building permit application portal
• New employee onboarding checklist

And then there is also the default design template..

Each of these templates will give you a different look and feel and a different set of pages to support your solution.

In my example here I could have started with the New Employee onboarding checklist, if it wasn’t still marked as “Coming soon”.

So instead I will try the After school program regsitration.

Once you click on the Choose template there are a few more bits that you need to complete. First of all you will need to give your site a name. and then you need to think about the url that is used. This url will need to end on powerappsportals.com. Don’t worry about applying custom domain name at this stage that will come later.

You can now also choose to create a trial environment or you could select an existing environment that you have created before.

In my case I’m selecting to create an existing environment and I’ve given my site a suitable name.

However as soon I selected an existing environment the Done button disappears. Ok, we are still in preview mode, might be your first thought, however this is just down to not having a licence to create a production environment. For now I will use a trial.

Now all we have to do is wait for the site to be created and we get get started customizing the Power Pages site. Once tghe site is ready you will receive an email.

Don’t be put off by the initial screen once the environment is created. There will be a site that arrives quite soon after.

If you now try to create a new site you will probably get the following error:

You don’t have permission to create a website in this environment. Try selecting another environment from the list or create a new one. If that doesn’t work, contact your administrator.

You will just have to be a bit patient after the environment creation process.

In your trial environment you can create multiple sites. Therefore if you want to try out the different templates then that is possible. Be aware though that as you create multiple portals in one environment, you will be sharing a database across the portals. This can be both a good and a bad thing.

When your site is created the following should pop up. In my case the second site that I created succeeded before the first site was created.

And within the https://make.powerpages.microsoft.com, I manage to find the second site that I attempted to create.

Configuring your site

To get started with the final part of the site configuration I will jump into the options available on the above screenshot.

• Customize theme
• Connect a custom domain
• Upgrade

When you want to get your site into production. You will have to convert it into production within 30 days from starting the Trial. When you click on the Upgrade link you will be sent to the Power Apps Portal admin center where you will find the Convert button.

To convert a Power Pages site you will however first need to make sure that your Power Platform environment is a production environment. So yuou will need to make sure that you have your licence in place. Other wise you will get the “This action is only allowed in a production environment error message”

When you do the same within a produciton environment however you will get to see the following:

Clicking on the ‘click here’ link in the message will show you that you have a Production site set up.

Other issues

You migth during the deployment hit some more issues.

Unable to complete the set up process. Please start over

There are a few more issues that you may run into. When you create multiple sites at the same time you might get this “Unable to complete the set up process. Please start over.”

It sometimes takes multiple attempts to create the site.

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

Once the url of the site appears in the preview the site will be deployed. Notice that the preview will be generated as the site loads. Therefore if you see those yellow blocks in the preview something is wrong.

In the Power Apps portals admin center it is possible to restart the portal. This option will do a similar thing to IIS Reset. Doing an IIS Reset will make the portal unavailable for a couple of minutes and users will see a Service unavailable message.

Once the Restart has completed you should get the site to load.

More about Power Pages

More posts will follow soon!

Do you want to know about security in Power Pages? Or how to customize your Power Pages?

If you want to learn more about Power Pages then visit Power Pages – The ultimate user guide.

Continue Reading Pieter Veenstra’s Article on their blog

Get started with Power Pages super quickly in 5 minutes

In this post I will look at how to get started with Power Pages. In this post I will guide you through the first steps that you can take with this amazing

Blog Syndicated with Pieter Veenstra’s Permission