What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

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Posted on by Suresh_Satti

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I have been coming across this phrase "portals" quite often since i started learning CRM. I am fairly new to Dynamics CRM and with my bit of research i found CRM portals to be a added layer on top of CRM to present data in a much graphically dynamic web content. Is that all portals all about? I mean it is a great feature but besides adding adding the contents on the a well presented website, does portals do anything else? Please help me understand how CRM portals benefit and if i can still use CRM without portals.

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Suresh_Satti 205 on at

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RE: What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

Thank you all for your insights and time to respond to my question. It was very helpful.

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Mahendar Pal 45,095 on at

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RE: What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

Hello,

Let's say your customer want to see what you are doing with Cases that they have registered ?? you can't give them access to your CRM right, that's where we can use portal and give access to our customer, we (CRM user) can expose data to portal, implement security with just using tradition way to manage user login and password.

It's just a simple example, but portfal offers much more functionality and can be used for different purpose based on your business requirements.

Hope it will help you.

Thanks

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RaviKashyap 55,410 Moderator on at

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RE: What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

Hi,

Mainly you use CRM within your organizations. Portals are they way to expose your CRm to your customers & partner so that they can interact with your CRM system directly.

The user of portals are basically the contacts in your CRM.

Best example of portal being used is the Customer Service. Assuming you are an organization which sells something. You have implemented CRM to manage your customer's. You also have service section in your CRM where you create support/ service cases for your customer's. Now cause your customer's doesn't have access to your CRM, they must email/ phone you to log a case whereas if you implement portals, you can give them access to your portal and from there your customer's can directly create cases.

In short and in simple terms, giving your CRM access (but in restricted way) to your customers.

Hope this helps.

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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RE: What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

There are several types of portals that are available to use within CRM, such as Partner Portal, Customer Portal or Community Portal.

When installing Portals on your CRM instance, Microsoft sets up an Azure web site that is connected to your Portal. The Portal content is dynamic so that the web site queries the Dynamics CRM data to get and display your web site content.

In addition to regular Portal data (such as web pages and web page content), you can also display data that is related to particular entities in you CRM environment as pages, lists and forms to view or capture data.

You can set up security for your portal, so that sections (or all) of your portal are restricted only to particular users.

Well, that's it in a nutshell.

You can refer to the following links for more information:

docs.microsoft.com/.../administer-manage-portal-dynamics-365

blogs.technet.microsoft.com/.../using-portal-capabilities-in-dynamics-365-crm

Hope this helps.

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ARIFNIIT 1,391 on at

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RE: What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

Basically portal is used for customer login to display customer data. you can use portal as a self service portal. you can use portal for marketing to capture lead.

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Ak Negi 320 on at

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RE: What exactly is portal functionality? Does it give an added layer on Dynamics CRM to present content better?

Hello suresh

Yes you can use CRM without portals as well. Portal is just a website kind of thing for Presnting CRM data to web. Any person who is not a licensed CRM User can access portal and hence indirectly can view CRM data(as CRM allows) just after register on portal .Also there is no limit of Users for portal as it gets authentication via Contacts.

Thanks

Arun singh Negi

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