Power Pages Tutorials

Most organizations have a ton of internal processes that still rely on someone manually collecting information — a form sent via email, a shared Excel sheet, or a SharePoint page that kind of works but not quite. Power Pages solves exactly this problem by letting you build secure, professional, externally-facing websites — connected to your real business data — without needing a web developer.

I’ve built Power Pages sites for real clients: supplier portals, event registration sites, customer complaint forms, partner onboarding portals, and employee self-service pages. Every time, the business was surprised at how quickly a polished, functional web experience came together. That’s the power of this platform when you use it correctly.

The tutorials on this page cover everything you need — from setting up your very first site to advanced topics like custom authentication, liquid templating, Web API calls, and enterprise-level security configuration. All written in plain language, with real examples at every step.

What Is Microsoft Power Pages?

Power Pages is a low-code platform for building secure, data-driven websites that external users — customers, partners, vendors, citizens — can access without needing a Microsoft 365 account.

It was previously known as Power Apps Portals, and Microsoft rebranded it in 2022 as a standalone product within the Power Platform family. If you’ve worked with Power Apps Portals before, you’ll recognize the underlying structure — but Power Pages comes with a significantly improved design studio, better templates, and tighter integration with the rest of the Power Platform.

With Power Pages, you can build:

Customer portals — where customers log in to view their orders, submit requests, or update their information
Partner portals — where vendors or partners access shared resources, submit documents, or track deal status
Self-service portals — where employees or citizens submit applications, register for events, or check the status of a case
Public-facing websites — informational sites with forms that feed directly into Dataverse or trigger Power Automate flows
Government and community portals — citizen-facing websites where the public can apply for services, submit feedback, or access resources

The key thing that sets Power Pages apart from a regular SharePoint site or a Power Apps canvas app is that it’s designed for external users — people outside your organization who don’t have Microsoft 365 licenses.

Who Are These Tutorials For?

Complete beginners who have never built a Power Pages site and want to understand how the whole thing works before touching anything
Power Platform developers who already build Power Apps and Power Automate solutions and want to extend that work to external-facing web experiences
SharePoint developers who are familiar with web-based Microsoft products and want to understand how Power Pages compares and complements SharePoint
IT and business teams who need a secure portal for customers or partners but don’t have a web development team
Intermediate Power Pages developers who know the basics and want to go deeper into Liquid templates, the Web API, custom authentication, and performance optimization

Every tutorial here is written to be practical and hands-on. I explain what things are and why they work the way they do — not just the steps to click through.

How Power Pages Works — The Mental Model

Power Pages has its own architecture that’s a little different from Power Apps or Power Automate. Here’s the mental model that will make everything else make sense.

1. Sites and Environments
Every Power Pages site lives inside a Power Platform environment and connects to a Dataverse database. This is non-negotiable — Power Pages runs on Dataverse. Unlike Power Apps canvas apps (which can connect to SharePoint, Excel, SQL, and other sources), Power Pages reads and writes data through Dataverse tables. If your data currently lives in SharePoint, you’ll either migrate it to Dataverse or use Power Automate as the bridge.

2. Pages and Templates
Your site is made up of pages. Each page has a layout, and you fill that layout with components — text, images, forms, lists, Liquid code, and more. Power Pages comes with pre-built templates for common portal types (blank, starter layout, FAQ, etc.) that give you a starting point you can customize.

3. Tables, Forms, and Lists
The two most important components you’ll work with are:

Basic Forms — connected to a single Dataverse table, they let external users create or edit a record (like submitting an application or updating their profile)
Basic Lists — connected to a Dataverse table, they display a filtered set of records to authenticated users (like showing a customer their open support cases)

4. Security — Table Permissions and Web Roles
This is the part most beginners underestimate. Power Pages has its own security model that sits on top of Dataverse security. You control what external users can see and do using Web Roles (groups of users with specific permissions) and Table Permissions (rules that define what records each web role can read, create, update, or delete). Get this right and your portal is secure. Get it wrong and users either can’t see anything or they see everything — neither is good.

5. Authentication
Power Pages supports multiple authentication options:

Local identity (username and password stored in Dataverse)
Azure Active Directory / Microsoft Entra ID (for internal users)
External identity providers like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and any OpenID Connect or SAML 2.0 provider
Invitation-based registration for controlled access

These five pieces — sites, pages, forms/lists, security, and authentication — are the complete picture of how a Power Pages site works.

The Power Pages Design Studio

Microsoft completely redesigned the authoring experience when Power Pages launched. You now work in a visual Design Studio at make.powerpages.microsoft.com, which has five main workspaces:

Pages — where you build and edit the content of each page. A visual drag-and-drop canvas that feels closer to a modern website builder than a traditional Power Platform tool.

Styling — where you control the look and feel of the entire site: fonts, colors, button styles, spacing. Changes here apply globally across all pages.

Data — where you manage the Dataverse tables, forms, and lists connected to your site. You can create new tables, edit form fields, and configure list columns directly from here.

Set up — where you configure authentication providers, site settings, progressive web app (PWA) settings, search, and integrations.

Security — where you manage web roles, table permissions, page permissions, and column permissions.

For anything beyond what the Design Studio supports — custom Liquid templates, advanced JavaScript, custom CSS, or Web API calls — you work in the Portal Management app, which is the older, more technical configuration interface that still exists alongside the new Design Studio.

What You’ll Learn in These Tutorials

I add new tutorials to this page regularly. Here’s what’s coming:

Getting Started

What is Power Pages and how does it fit into the Power Platform
Creating your first Power Pages site — step by step
Understanding the Design Studio interface
Choosing the right template for your use case
The relationship between Power Pages and Dataverse
Publishing your site and sharing it with external users

Building Pages and Layouts

Adding and organizing pages in your site navigation
Using the drag-and-drop canvas to build page layouts
Adding text, images, buttons, and spacers
Using sections and columns for multi-column layouts
Building a homepage that guides users to the right place
Creating a consistent header and footer across all pages

Styling and Theming

Applying a theme to your site — colors, fonts, and button styles
Customizing the styling workspace for consistent branding
Adding custom CSS for styling beyond what the Design Studio offers
Making your site look good on mobile devices
Adding a logo, favicon, and custom page titles

Forms — Collecting Data From External Users

Creating a basic form connected to a Dataverse table
Configuring form fields — required, optional, hidden, and read-only
Adding validation to form fields
Multi-step forms — breaking long forms into manageable sections
Redirecting users after a successful form submission
Displaying a confirmation message or page after submission
Pre-populating form fields with known user information

Lists — Displaying Data to External Users

Creating a basic list connected to a Dataverse table
Filtering list results so users only see relevant records
Adding search and column sorting to a list
Linking list rows to detail pages
Using views from Dataverse to control what a list shows
Pagination for large datasets

Security — The Most Important Part

Understanding Web Roles — what they are and how to create them
Assigning authenticated users to web roles
Table permissions — Read, Create, Write, Delete, Append, Append To
Scoping table permissions — Global, Contact, Account, Parent/Child
Column permissions — hiding specific fields from certain roles
Page permissions — restricting who can see which pages
Testing your security configuration as a different user

Authentication and User Registration

Setting up local authentication (username and password)
Configuring Microsoft Entra ID for internal user sign-in
Adding Google or LinkedIn as external identity providers
Invitation-based registration — controlling who can sign up
Configuring the registration, login, and profile pages
Handling user profile data in Dataverse Contact records

Power Automate Integration

Triggering a Power Automate flow when a form is submitted
Sending confirmation emails after form submissions
Starting approval workflows from Power Pages form data
Using flows to write data to systems outside of Dataverse
Returning data from a flow to a Power Pages page

Liquid Templates and Advanced Customization

What is Liquid and why does Power Pages use it
Using Liquid to display dynamic content on a page
Fetching Dataverse records with fetchXML inside Liquid
Conditional rendering — showing content based on user role or data
Loops in Liquid — rendering a list of records dynamically
Using Liquid snippets for reusable content blocks
Web templates — building fully custom page layouts with Liquid

JavaScript and the Web API

Adding JavaScript to a Power Pages page
Using the Power Pages Web API to read Dataverse data client-side
Creating and updating records with the Web API from JavaScript
Building interactive experiences without full page reloads
Security considerations when using the Web API

Advanced Topics

Progressive Web App (PWA) — making your site installable on mobile
Site search — configuring and customizing the search experience
Custom domain — connecting your own domain name to a Power Pages site
CDN and performance optimization
Multilingual sites — publishing content in multiple languages
Integrating Power BI reports into a Power Pages page
ALM — moving Power Pages sites between environments
Governance and compliance for external-facing portals

Power Pages vs Power Apps Canvas Apps — Which One Do You Need?

This is a question I get a lot, so let me answer it directly.

	Power Pages	Power Apps Canvas App

	Power Pages	Power Apps Canvas App
Primary audience	External users (no Microsoft license needed)	Internal users (Microsoft license required)
Access method	Web browser — any device, any browser	Power Apps player or browser
Data source	Dataverse (primary)	SharePoint, Dataverse, SQL, and many others
Authentication	External identity providers, local accounts	Microsoft Entra ID / Microsoft 365
Best for	Customer portals, partner portals, public forms	Internal business apps, employee tools
Offline support	Limited	Yes (with some configuration)

The short answer: if your users have Microsoft 365 accounts, build a canvas app. If they’re external — customers, vendors, the public — build a Power Pages site.

Three Mistakes to Avoid From Day One

1. Skipping the security configuration
The most common mistake I see with Power Pages is building the whole site, adding all the forms and lists, and then trying to figure out security at the end. Security in Power Pages — especially table permissions and web roles — needs to be designed upfront. Retrofitting it is painful. Do it first.

2. Forgetting that Power Pages runs on Dataverse
If your data is in SharePoint lists, you cannot connect it directly to Power Pages forms and lists. Plan your data architecture early. Decide whether you’re moving data to Dataverse, syncing it with Power Automate, or keeping it in SharePoint and surfacing it differently. This decision shapes everything else.

3. Testing only as yourself
Always test your portal as an actual external user — either using a test account in an InPrivate browser window, or by going through the actual registration/login flow as a new user would. What you see as the site administrator is completely different from what an anonymous or authenticated external user sees. Most security misconfigurations are only discovered during proper external user testing.

Here is the list of Power Pages tutorials.