What is Community portal

The Community Portal is a template that enabling organizations to develop low-code, and customized website. The template provides a lot of out of the box functionality, such as blog posts, forums, ideas, knowledge base articles, providing feedback, comments and ratings.

Setting up a community portal:

• To create a CFT:
  • Open Power Apps  or type (http://make.powerapps.com/) in web browser.
  • On the left pane, select Create.
  • At the middle of the screen/page, select start from template > Community.

   

• For Name, enter a name (CTF_PTL).
• For Address, enter the URL you want your user to visit to use your portal.
• Select Create. Portal creation can take about an hour.

You will see the message “Portal provisioning in progress. Your portal CFT_PTL is currently being provisioned and this can take time. You’ll be notified via Notifications pane once it is provisioned”.

• Navigate to Apps then Select Portal

We see a portal has been created for us:

Select Sign in on the top right, then enter information to register and complete the registration process:

Creating a blog in CFT

To create a new blog, in the Power Apps Maker:

• Navigate to Apps
• select the Portal.
• Select Settings

 

• Select Site Setting under portal setting window.

 

• Navigate to Blogs section.
• Select Blogs
• Select Community Blog, which is one of the blogs categories.

• Select Post tab.
• Select New Blog Post to add a new blog.

• Give a name to your blog post.

• Add descriptions to your post.

• Ensure it is set to Published then Save and close.

 

• It will now appear on our community portal:

To create a news and Announcements, in the Power Apps Maker:

• Navigate to Blogs section.
• Select Blogs
• Select News and Announcements, which is one of the blogs categories.

 

• Select Post tab.
• Select New Blog Post to add a new blog.

 

 

 

 

• Ensure it is set to Published then Save and close.

 

• It will now appear on our community portal:

 

creating a new Forum in CFT!

• go to the Dynamics 365 Portals App
• under Community module
•  select Forums,
• Select New:

 

 

• We see the new Forum created:

Creating Forums Thread

• Selecting Forums, we see a list of available forums:

 

 

 

Creating ideas in CFT

• go to the Dynamics 365 Portals App
• in the bottom left select Community
• select Idea Forum

 

Now create a new Idea under Ideas.

 

 

Creating Knowledge Base in CFT

• go to the Dynamics 365 Portals App
• in the bottom left select Portals
• Select Knowledge Articles
• Select new.
•  Save and close.

To create a new Knowledge Article, go to Knowledge Articles and create a new one and save.

Then reopen the Support Portal Issues KB

select the (…) and then select Associate Category:

 

Now in the Community Portal, you see the new Knowledge Article:

Creating Support in CFT

You can enter new cases from within the portal: