Portal capabilities for Dynamics 365 FAQ

There are many commonly asked questions about what Dynamics 365 Portals can do and how certain functionality can be achieved.. This document covers many of those common questions and their answers.

• How can I get a portal subscription?

A portal subscription can be acquired through two means:

1. We provide 1 portal addon with the purchase of certain types and quantities of Dynamics 365 user license. Details are present in Dynamics 365 pricing and licensing guide. It is important to note that you only get 1 portal addon with user licenses even if you have bought multiple types or quantities of valid licenses.
2. Additional portal subscription can be purchased by purchasing a Portal Add-on subscription. This subscription is an addon subscription to Dynamics 365 and is available to be purchased if you have appropriate Dynamics 365 licenses.

• How can I change Portal Type and audience after a Portal is provisioned?

After provisioning a portal, you can change the portal type and audience by following the steps listed here.

• How can I change a Portal’s Base URL (i.e subdomain of microsoftcrmportals.com URL) once a Portal is provisioned?

After provisioning a portal, you can change base URL of the portal by following this documentation.

• How can I delete a Portal completely once it is provisioned?

Each portal is comprised of two parts:

1. Portal host – This is the website which runs the portal code.
2. Portal solutions – These are the solutions installed in your Dynamics 365 organization when a portal is provisioned

To delete a portal completely requires deleting the portal host as well as uninstalling the portal solutions from your Dynamics 365 organization.

To reset the portal host, follow the steps listed here. It is important to note that resetting the portal host doesn’t affect the configuration done in your Dynamics 365 organization.

To delete the portal solutions, you will have to delete solutions from the Dynamics 365 solutions area. You can navigate to the Solutions area within the Dynamics 365 web application by clicking Settings and then clicking Solutions. The order in which portal solutions should be uninstalled is provided here.

• We recently moved our Dynamics 365 organization from one geo/tenant to another. How do we handle Portals connected to our organization?

When you move your Dynamics 365 organization from one geo/tenant to another, associated Portals to that organization will not move automatically. Also since your organization is moved, a portal associated to that organization will not work and will throw an error on startup.

In order to associate your portal again to the relevant organization, you can follow these steps: 

a. You should reset your existing Portal host from the existing tenant/geo by following steps mentioned here.

b. This step will delete your associated Portal resources and the Portal URL will not be accessible after the operation completes.

c. Once your existing Portal is reset, then you need to go to your new tenant (or to new geo of existing tenant) and provision a portal available there.

• We recently did a restore of our Dynamics 365 organization from an old backup, and now the Portal connected to that org is not working. How do we fix it?

When a dynamics 365 organization is restored from a backup, there are various changes which are done in your organization which can break your Portal’s connection with the org. Follow these steps to fix it: 

• If the organization ID is the same after the restore operation and Portal solutions are also present:

1. Go to the Dynamics 365 online Administration Center.
2. Click the Applications tab.
3. Select your Portal and click Manage to open the Portal Admin center.
4. Click Portal Details.
5. Change Portal State to Off and then click Update.
6. Once this completes, change the Portal State back to On and then click Update.
7. Once both steps are done, your Portal would be restarted and will also create a connection with the org again.

• If the organization ID is different after the restore operation or Portal solutions are deleted from your org:

1. In this case, it is better to reset the Portal using steps mentioned here and then reprovision it

• We recently changed the URL of our Dynamics 365 organization and our Portal stopped working. How do we fix it?

When you change the URL of your Dynamics 365 organization, your portal will stop working because it cannot identify the Dynamics 365 URL anymore. In order to fix this, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Dynamics 365 online Administration Center
2. Click the Applications tab
3. Select your Portal and click Manage to open the Portal Admin center
4. Click Portal Actions.
5. Click Update Dynamics 365 URL and go through the instructions.
6. Once done, your portal will restart and will start working again.

• When accessing my Portal, I see a generic error page. How can I find error details?

Whenever a server error occurs while trying to render the portal, a generic error page is shown to end users along with timestamp and Activity ID of that error. Portal administrators can configure their portal to get the actual error details which are helpful in debugging and fixing issues. You can use one or both of the following options:

1. Disable the custom error page

​​​​​​​This will turn off the custom error page and will allow you to see the complete stack trace of any error when navigating to that page. Follow these steps.

NOTE: It is advisable to use this only when you are developing a portal. Once your portal is live for your users, you should enable custom errors again.

1. Enable diagnostic logging

This will allow you to get all the portals errors in an Azure blob storage. To enable this, follow the steps described here.

When you enable diagnostic logging, you can search for particular errors which users reported by using the Activity ID shown on the generic error page. That Activity ID is logged along with the error details and is useful to find the actual issue.

• How can I use a Custom Login Provider on my Portal?

Dynamics 365 portals supports any custom login provider which provides support for standard authentication protocols. We support OpenIdConnect, SAML2, and WS-Fed protocols for any custom IDP. Oauth2 is only supported for a fixed set of known IDP’s. More details on how setup an IDP configuration are listed here.

• How can I get new Portal releases in my sandbox Portal first before it gets applied to production?

Any Portal release is done in two phases, Early Upgrade and GA (General Availability). During the Early Upgrade phase, we only upgrade portals which are marked for early upgrade. In order to get the new Portal release in your sandbox (dev/test) environment, you can enable your Portal for “Early Upgrade”.

More details about the process can be found here.

• How can I use a vanity domain name with my Portal?

You can enable your portal to use a vanity domain name inplace of standard microsoftcrmportals.com domain name. To do this follow the steps provided here.\

• How can I remove an entity from Global Search?

See Remove an entity from global search

• How can I rebuild the search index?

See Rebuild full search index