Power Pages: Design & Templates

Introduction to Power Pages Design

Power Pages is Microsoft’s solution for creating public or authenticated web portals connected to Microsoft Dataverse data. The site design is managed through Power Pages Studio, a graphical environment that allows you to build pages, configure layouts, define visual themes, and set up data access. The goal is to deliver a consistent, accessible, and optimized user experience across desktop and mobile devices.

The Power Pages runtime is based on Microsoft Azure, but configuration occurs entirely within the Power Platform context, with no need for direct Azure resource management. All layout, design, and content information is stored in Dataverse as metadata, enabling centralized and version-controllable management.

Main Components of Power Pages Design

• Power Pages Studio: the visual designer for creating and modifying page structures, sections, and multimedia content.
• Themes and styles: predefined sets of colors, fonts, and visual components that ensure consistency and accessibility.
• Responsive layouts: grids and containers optimized to automatically adapt to different screen sizes.
• Liquid templates: a templating language based on Liquid that lets you dynamically customize page content.
• Portals Web API: an API that allows interaction with Dataverse to implement custom logic on the client or server side.

These elements together make it possible to create complex user experiences with a low-code approach, while still allowing extensions through custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Power Pages Studio and Layout Customization

Power Pages Studio provides an intuitive graphical interface for building websites visually. You can add sections, columns, forms, and dynamic components by selecting from various preconfigured layouts. Each section is fully customizable and can include images, tables, or forms connected to Dataverse data.

Main features of the designer include:

• Creating and managing pages and subpages.
• Defining shared headers and footers.
• Configuring access controls based on roles or external authentication.
• Real-time preview of changes for desktop and mobile.

The system supports predefined templates to accelerate site creation, but also allows saving and reusing custom layouts for future projects.

Themes and Visual Branding

Themes in Power Pages define the overall visual identity of the portal. Each theme includes color combinations, typography, buttons, and navigation components. You can start from a standard Microsoft theme and modify it to match your corporate branding.

Main theme settings include:

• Primary and secondary color palettes.
• Fonts for headings, subtitles, and body text.
• Styles for buttons, links, and forms.
• Spacing and margin management for better readability.

Customizations can be applied directly in Studio or through advanced CSS resources stored in Dataverse as Web Resources. These allow fine-grained control over visual details while maintaining compatibility with Microsoft updates.

Responsiveness and Accessibility

One of Power Pages’ primary goals is to guarantee a responsive and accessible design for all users. With a flexible grid system and adaptive components, portals automatically adjust to smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Microsoft ensures full compliance with WCAG and ARIA standards, providing an inclusive experience for users with disabilities.

To optimize responsiveness, it is recommended to:

• Use fluid layouts with percentages instead of fixed pixels.
• Ensure proper color contrast for readability.
• Test keyboard and screen reader navigation.
• Include descriptive alt text for all images.

Layout and content changes are automatically propagated across all site versions, minimizing visual inconsistencies.

Advanced Customization with Liquid and Web API

For advanced scenarios, Power Pages supports the Liquid templating language, an open-source engine that allows conditional logic and dynamic display of data from Dataverse. Liquid can be used in pages, content snippets, and web templates to create personalized experiences.

With integration of the Portals Web API, you can interact with Dataverse directly from the portal, performing secure read and write operations. This combination extends standard portal behavior with custom logic while maintaining Power Platform security and governance.