A portal is a great place to acquire customers, educate and support. The portal enables you to expose Dynamics 365 data to the internet. With a Dynamics 365 subscription you get one that’s easy to set up. In this blog I’ll explain:
- The different types of portal available
- How to set it up
- How to design one
- How you could link it to Dynamics 365 – Managing cases
We’ll do this using out of the box functionality. I agree this can limit what you can do (up to a point, Microsoft are releasing more and more great features) but it does make you more update/upgrade ready. This reduces the impact on users
Portal types
Deployment options
All based on D365 technology and includes workflows etc. You can add/ remove functionality but the options below give you an idea of what’s ready out of the box.
- Customer self service – Has a template dedicated to manage cases/incidents.
- Employee portal – Has a template ready to manage contact info out of the box
- Partner portal – Provides account management functionality
- Community portal – Has surveys, forums and knowledge base management out of the box
- Custom portal – a blank portal with no templates
What’s the cost?
If you have a Dynamics 365 tenant, you get one portal instance free of change with your subscription. You need to have at least 10 Full User licenses (app license or Enterprise Plan licenses) in order to get the Free Portal. Here’s more detail about licences
Setting up a portal…
Lets not reinvent the wheel, I’ll hand you over to the brilliant Megan Walker to show you how:
How do you design the portal
More detail on how to do this can be found here. However, here’s the basics when it comes to editing the portal.
The content editor bar is where the magic happens. It allows you
- To bring up all the child web pages so that you can sort their order, edit or delete them
- Edit the structure of the page you’re on including adding Jscript for the more techie
- Delete a page
- Add a variety of new items including a child
- Page
- File
- Forum
- Shortcut
You can also do some quick editing within the page. Hover over the area you’d like to change and select edit
This opens a window that enables you to make the changes.
The portal page is updated once you’ve saved your changes.
This video provides a bit more detail on how to configure the portal (thanks to CRM Tip of the Day)
How does this link with Dynamics 365?
The great thing about the portal is the fact that contacts are managed within Dynamics 365 out of the box. So you can allow new users to register on the portal, creating a contact within Dynamics or you can provide current customers with credentials that allow them to log in.
This authentication and level of access is all managed from within Dynamics making it secure but also providing a link that allows your customers, staff etc to self serve. The savings this can achieve are obvious but how does this wizardry work? Here’s a short video I put together to show how they can work together to create a case
How can people access the portal?
The portal can be accessed using any device that has access to a web browser. You just need the url that’s created when the portal is initially set up.
Reporting
As well as linking Power BI portal interactions can also be tracked from within the product itself.
Need help? Here’s how I can support your Dynamics 365 journey:
- Provide you with FREE Dynamics 365 modules that users love (Once you’ve registered) –#D365forhousing has already delivered several great modules (see above) including complaints, lettings and ASB
- Support your implementation of Dynamics 365 – Deliver an application that’s adopted, delivers a return on your investment and doesn’t break the bank. My focus is Outcome, not Income.
- Provide ongoing support – I’ve teamed up with a Microsoft partner to deliver a great service as your system grows.
If this sounds good, or you’re not sure where to start please get in touch.