Portal Management
Entitlement to Portal
Any subscription with 5 or more Dynamics 365 licenses is entitled to one portal add-on at no charge. Team Member licenses do not count for the requirement.
It seems that although this is a contractual obligation, it is not enforced (does this mean that if you get the portal add-on and then go below the 5 licences the portal is not removed?)
Portal Components
There are two components to a portal solution:
- Solutions – which are installed in a D365 instance
- Website – the portal website which is hosted in Azure and managed by Microsoft
Install portal for first time
To install a portal for the first time, including the website:
- Navigate to the Dynamics 365 admin center
- Click on the APPLICATIONS tab
- In the list of applications, click on Portal Add-On and then click MANAGE
- Follow the steps in the configurations pages
Add more features to a portal, that is install another portal solution
Relink Azure portal website to a different D365 website in the same instance and in a different instance
Delete portals completely
Portal development – sandbox or production – copying portal data
Shoud I design my portal in my production or sandbox instance. If I chose sandbox how do I move it from the sandbox to production.
Is it possible to buy a reduced price portal for development work? Portal Add-On has a list price of $500/month (when I last checked)
According to Colin Vermander:
We follow a standard practice of developing on a sandbox and then promoting to test and then promoting to production.
You can connect one portal add-on to multiple instances (how?) Or does he mean that you can relink a portal from one instance to another.
XRM Toolbox has a portal data mover tool
Delete Azure portal website and reprovision
Solutions without a portal
Portal solutions can be installed in an instance even if a portal is not associated with the instance.
Update Portal Components
This Microsoft article describes the process for updating portal components
Portal Reset Cache
The portal about page (yourPortalURL/_services/about) shows a reset cache button (as well as other information) for signed-in users with site admin privileges.
Trials
Portals can be added to Dynamics 365 trials.