Developer-Friendly Portals

While The Portal Connector provides an easy-to-use, drag and drop interface that makes it easy to build and manage portals without knowing a line of code, our solution also includes many developer-friendly features.

In fact, The Portal Connector was built with Developers in mind. Read the full Portal Connector story here.

The Portal Connector comes with many Pro Developer Features that empower developers with the ability to customize every aspect of the Portal solution!

Fully Configurable with any CRM Data.

• Developers are not restricted in the portal solutions they deliver for their business.
• When you are configuring a complex solution for your business in CRM, you can be assured that the custom entities and fields you create in CRM can be used in configuring a portal.

• The Portal Connector solution frees your developers from being forced into using a specific framework of scripting syntax. The Portal Connector allows you to use virtually any JavaScript, CSS or HTML framework.
• With a self-service portal, you want to provide an exceptional user experience. The Portal Connector provides the ability to structure your forms in any manner you require and allows you to control the presentation of all CRM data instead of the structure and UX presented in CRM/365.

Customization with .NET Code

• The Portal Connector can be extended with .NET Code, and has an extensive JavaScript API as well as robust C# API.  Dynamics 365 Portals cannot be extended with custom .NET Code due to lack of access to Visual Studio Project Files and the hosting file system.
• Primary Configuration for end users is drag and drop, point and click. This environment provides users with a visual representation of the content being edited.
• CRM Developers can customize this further with C#, CSS, Java, Bootstrap templates or any other popular framework.
• The Portal Connector has built-in customizable content approval workflows with version rollback on pages and forms.

• For complex business requirements, you can develop custom widgets/controls that integrate directly into The Portal Connector design environment seamlessly, as if it were a native part of The Portal Connector. More importantly, developers can do it in a familiar environment and development language.
• With The Portal Connector’s widget templating system and C#/JavaScript APIs, native widgets can be customized from function to presentation in all aspects.

Hosting and Access to Files.

• The Portal Connector can be hosted anywhere, on any IIS application server or cloud hosting service. This provides a number of benefits for developers and end users.

• CRM Developers have access to Project files for custom .NET code.  This not the case for Dynamics 365 Portals which are hosted in Azure. Take control of your business data without being required to store it on Microsoft Servers.

Dedicated Environment for Configuration.

• With a dedicated configuration environment, The Portal Connector reduces the footprint of a portal solution within your CRM/365 environment from an intrusive 45+ entities down to 6 entities.

• A dedicated environment also allows developers to be creative in delivering functional elements without being restricted by CRM/365 design requirements.
• In a development world, it’s always been best practice to separate your data from your presentation. A dedicated environment means your configurations for your self-service portal are not stored along with the business data being presented by your configurations.

Cache Invalidation.

• The Portal Connector has optimized its output cache invalidation (output cache pre-compiles pages, generates html on the server and serves that html when requested by a client. When a second client requests that same page, it uses the cached version that was generated previously.)

• With The Portal Connector, when data changes within Dynamics CRM we only invalidate pages that are affected by the changed data. We do this by using dependency injection.

Customizable Responsive Design.

• Using point and click configuration tools or CSS, you can customize the mobile responsive design of the portal, with visual feedback on how the new layout will render on devices.
• You can create new rules for the responsiveness of the web portal.

• Customize how portal elements will render on different devices to ensure a consistent, mobile responsive design for end users

CRM Version Support.

• CRM Developers have the flexibility to deliver portals that integrate with older and On-Premise versions of Dynamics CRM.
• The Portal Connector supports CRM 2011 up to CRM 2016 Online and On-Premise, as well as Dynamics 365 and the Common Data Service.

• For businesses using older versions of Dynamics CRM or who host their Dynamics CRM/365 solution on premise, you cannot use Dynamics 365 Portals. The Portal Connector is the only portal option available for past versions of Dynamics CRM, and Dynamics 365 On-Premise. 

Developer Network and Resources.

• The Portal Connector provides CRM developers with access to extensive Developer Resources through our Developer Network with lots of How-To Videos and instructions, as well as a Forum to pose ideas and questions.
• We host Daily Q&A Sessions to answer questions.