Microsoft Power Pages has recently become a stand-alone product joining the Power Platform series. Its primary goal is to enhance productivity by allowing users to seamlessly create websites through developer tools such as Visual Studio Code, or by using little to no code at all.
A seamless, low-code environment
Power Pages is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform offering a secure, low-code environment for creating, hosting, and managing modern business websites. Regardless of your coding experience, Power Pages allows the rapid, enterprise-grade design and configuration of websites across web browsers and devices.
Power Pages utilises data that already exists in the Microsoft Dataverse.
Streamlined authoring experience for creators
Power Pages simplifies the process of building websites. Power Pages offers a range of business-need templates to choose from and customise, alongside a basic default template.
You simply pick the one you’d like to use, and then enter a name and web address for your website and pick an environment. In this case I’m using a trial environment, but you can also select an existing environment. This is where the website will be hosted. When you’re ready, click Done at the bottom of the page.
Design and customisation studio
Users can build and customise powerful, modern websites without worrying about having to write any code at all. The new Design Studio provides the following:
- Pages workspace: intended for the creation and customisation of webpages
- Style workspace: apply overarching themes and styles to the website
- Data workspace: create Microsoft Dataverse tables
- Set up workspace: administration and site management
Advanced developer capabilities
Using Visual Studio Code and Microsoft Power Platform CLI (Command-Line Interface), professional developers can extend the functionality of Power Pages by collaborating with other teams to create powerful business websites.
Built-in security and governance
Power Pages comes with built-in security features so you can have confidence that your business information is kept safe. Organisations can enable access to their business data to users, both internal and external, through authorisation rules. They can also allow users to access site content anonymously. You’re also provided with support for modern Transport Layer Security (TLS) crypto standards (TLS 1.2) and Azure DDoS Protection.
As Azure App Service hosts Power Pages, it comes with International Organization for Standardization (ISO), System and Organization Controls (SOC), and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance.
Power Platform integration
Being part of Microsoft’s Power Platform series, it goes without saying that Power Pages is deeply integrated with other Power Platform components.
- Dataverse: Securely store and manage business data, and implement it into your Power Pages through forms, charts, tables, dashboards, and other model-driven constructs.
- Power Automate: Used for automating workflows, it can be applied in Power Pages for plug ins, automated cloud flows, or to interact with data and events going in and out of your Dataverse.
- Power BI: Creates visually accessible and interactive insights from data. Integrating it into Power Pages provides access to visual components such as dashboards, reports, and tiles.
- Power Virtual Agents: Fosters the creation and publishing of AI-driven chatbots. You can add these chatbots to your Power Pages website to interact with external visitors.