When editing a Power Apps portal, there are a couple of different interfaces that one will work with. One recurring question that I get is when to use the Studio versus when to use Portal Management.

Before I go into each, here's a high level visualization of where configurations live:

Regardless of which interface you use, Studio or Management, the configurations that you make will be stored in Microsoft Dataverse.

Portal Studio

Pages Studio is a no-code, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) designer that allows makers to create and manage website content. This is new as of late 2019 and allows makers to see their edits immediately in a Preview format.

This is your primary workspace and from where you will do the majority of your configuring, starting with creating the structure of your website. You will create and manage your web pages from here. You can then embed Basic Forms and Lists, embed Power BI reports, and even manage security. As of writing this in April 2021, this only includes Page Permissions. However, the ability to work with Table Permissions and Web Roles from this interface will be available in June and September, respectively.

The intended audience for Portal Studio is the Citizen Developer, front-end designer, and functional consultant/user. That said, developers can expand the code panel to work directly with the source (HTML/CSS/Liquid).

Learn more:

Explore Power Apps portals Studio - Learn | Microsoft Docs

Portal Management

Portal Management is a model-driven app that is deployed when the portal is provisioned, and is the original interface for portals customizations. The intended audience for Pages Management are Dynamics 365 advanced configurators, developers, and administrators.

Once the basic structure of the website has been created in Studio, more advanced configurations are going to come from Management. For example, once you have embedded a List into a web page via Pages Studio, in Pages Management you can add search functionality, filters to the list, CSS, etc. You can also modify Site Settings, create Advanced Forms and Content Snippets, specify Languages on your web pages, and much more.

As a pre-requisite to using this, I'd recommend already being familiar with Model-Driven Apps and the Common Data Model.

Learn more:

Portal Management app overview - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

While it may be possible to get by using just the Pages Studio, understanding how to navigate and use Pages Management is critical for any advanced functionality and for building an enterprise-grade portal.

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