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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Pages / Authenticating Externa...
Power Pages
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Authenticating External Users on a Portal

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Posted on by 196

Hi, 

 

I am creating a suppliers database for our business using a model driven app, that has to go through a few layers of approvals before a supplier is added. Current process is :

 

1. users requests new supplier

2. Record created in Contacts entity with the basic request information

2. supplier is sent a form (Jotform this is due to the complication of the form) to fill in part of this form supplier uploads documents like certs/iso's etc (these docs are stored in sharepoint i have enabled document storage for sharepoint) 

3. Supplier form received and results populate remaining fields in the Contacts entity 

4. Approval to 4 or 5 different departments dependent on what is required. 

5. Once approved that supplier is active in the database and able to be used and searched for by anyone in the business. 

 

The next stages of this is we'd like to be able to have the supplier be able to login to a portal and see there details and upload new documents if there certs or isos have expired. 

 

My question is how do I get a supplier to authenticate against a record that already exists in the portal? I know you can use the Contacts entity to authentic logins, but things I've read seem to mean that the supplier would create the record when logging in, but i need them to be created first and then auth'd against their record. 

 

One key thing is we are not using Dynamics 365


Is this possible at all? 

 

Thanks

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  • Verified answer
    joe_hannes_col Profile Picture
    1,843 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

    Hello @mousman85,

     

    It is possible to create a contact first and then associate an identity with this contact. To do this, you

    1. Create the contact
    2. Send an invitation to your contact, either manually or through an automated flow. This will create a new entry in the "Invitation" table.
      You can find more information on inviting contacts here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/portals/configure/invite-contacts
    3. When your contact uses the invitation code and redeems it, they have to sign in using an Identity Provider you set up. Once the invitation code was used, a new entry in the "Invite Redemption" table is created.

    And voilà - your supplier employee has created a link between their identity and your Dataverse contact.

    If you are using D365 or not should be irrelevant in your case.

  • mousman85 Profile Picture
    196 on at

    This sounds much simpler than I imagined ! 

    My process would be then once the supplier has past all the approval stages and its state is changed to active, have an automation (power automate) send them an invitation email to sign up. This would keep it all in-line and wouldn't require a change in our current process. 

     

    Can the identity provider still be any of the supported ones? This is the final bit I need to get my head round, as I know there is quite a steep cost for authenticated logins, which I'm assuming can't be avoided as I need the supplier to authenticate so I show them only their data?

     

    Thanks! 

  • joe_hannes_col Profile Picture
    1,843 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

    Hello @mousman85,

    Great idea using Power Automate to automate this process.

    Yes, you can use any of the supported identity providers. If you want to restrict access to data based on the identity of the user, there is no way around using authentication. As you are probably aware, the security model of portals is based on a connection between an account/contact and a row (entry) in your tables (entities). If you want to leverage the security model, you have to identify if the current user is associated with a contact, and you'll have to use an identity provider to achieve this.

    So no, as far as I know there is no alternative to using the login-based licensing model in your scenario.

  • mousman85 Profile Picture
    196 on at

    Thanks for the reply, this is what I thought when it came to authenticated logins. I know you can purchase 100 logins a month, do you know if these reset each month or, once 100 people have logged in it is tied to those 100 people? I don't think we'll have lots of logins, but not sure if I need to allow for 1 login per contact? 

  • joe_hannes_col Profile Picture
    1,843 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

    Hello @mousman85,

    The login capacity is per month. If you have unused capacity in month 1 (e.g. 10 unused logins), they will not carry over to month 2. This means that at the beginning of month 2, you will have 100 logins available, not 110.

    Logins are counted like this (excerpt from the Licensing Guide):

    joe_hannes_col_0-1624373222614.png

     

    This means that if you have one user that logs in every day of a 30 day month, you will need 30 logins for this one user. If a user does not login within the 30 days, no login capacity is consumed for this user.

  • joe_hannes_col Profile Picture
    1,843 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

    If you are interested in licensing of the Portals, you can also check the FAQ on docs.microsoft.com: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/powerapps-flow-licensing-faq#portals

    And you can find the current licensing guide here: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2085130

     

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