Entity setup on Dynamics365 Portal and Provide Portal Access to a Contact?

How to Setup Entity on Dynamics365 Customer Service Portal and Provide Portal Access to a Contact from portal?

There was a requirement where Account’s Primary Contact (Company Admin) can create Contacts (Employees) from portal. Company Admin can grant access to the employee. Employee can take actions as per the roles assigned (Configured while granting access though workflow) after having access to portal. Company Admin can revoke the access if needed.

So Let’s see the first part of the requirement on How I setup the portal so that Employee can be created from the Portal?

Following are the steps taken to implement this requirement:

Create Employee from Dynamics365 Customer Service Portal:

• Create Employee Entity List on Contact Entity in CRM (Login > Portals > Entity List) as per the snapshot below.

• Create an Employees Webpage which will show the list of the records (with the views configured on Entity list page.

• ·        Attach the Entity List on Employees Web-page as shown below. 

•  Create Web Pages for Creating Employee and Employee Details page and attach them with the entity list.
• We created specific views in CRM for Contact entity which will be shown on Portal. These views were mentioned and configured in the Entity List definition as shown in image above.

o   Web Portal: Active Employee

o   Web Portal: Inactive Employee

• Now for each Web Page, we created respective Webform and Entity Form. There were Configured on the Webpage. Following is the example of Employee Create page.
  

• Then we created a Start Step for Employee Create Web Form which was attached on Employee Create Web Page.
• Following is the snapshot of Employee Create Web Form which has a field called “Start Step”. This defined that what cation can be performed from Employee create page. In Create form, we will have Insert action to create the employee record, so we created a Start Step with Insert Mode.
• We have created a separate form on Contact entity in CRM which will be used to Create/Edit/view employee records.

• To access the Employee details page (Edit mode/Read only mode) from portal after creating the employee, repeat the same process as above.
• Create Employee Details Web Form and Employee Details Start Step in Edit mode.
• After Setting up Entity List, Webpages and Web Forms, I created 2 Entity Forms i.e. “Employee Create” and “Employee Edit”. Note here that I have named Employee Edit instead of Employee details because I am using Create form to create Employee and Edit form to View or Edit the information. Following is the snapshot of how I configured Employee Create Form.

• Following is the snapshot of Employee Edit page.

• With these above configurations user can create Employee and view/edit it. Make sure that Entity Permission has been defined on that entity in CRM.
• Please refer the snapshot for Entity Permission I had setup.

Let’s move to the second part of requirement to Grant permission to employee to access the portal.

• To implement this requirement, I have written a workflow. Following is the snapshot of the real time on-demand workflow written on Contact Entity. Please refer the snapshot below.

•  While configuring above I have kept these fields blank in workflow.
• Set Security stamp and Password Hash Attribute Name.
• Temporary Password was provided which (same password) will be sent to all the employee after granting access though the above workflow.
• Once I have workflow ready, I have attached these workflow on Employee Entity List.
• To attach the workflow, Go to Entity List and then under Options click “+Workflow” as shown in image below.

After clicking “+Workflow”, it opens up a section as shown in image below. I provided the values as mentioned in this snapshot.

This will Grant the access to the portal.

 So to Conclude below are the components I have created to meet this requirements.

1. Created 1 Entity List
2. Created 3 Web Pages i.e. Employee (For List view), Employee Create and Employee Details.
3. Created 2 Web Forms. i.e. ​Employee Create and Employee Details
4. Created 2 Entity Forms i,e. Employee Create and Employee Edit
5. Create 1 workflow and attached on Enity List.

For more details and detailed learning, use the following links.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/C/69C7ABEA-5457-4B63-876F-F4F3B63495EC/Administrator's%20Guide%20to%20Portal%20Capabilities%20for%20Microsoft%20Dynamics%20365.pdf

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/portals/provision-portal