When working with Power Pages (formerly Power Apps Portals), managing your updates properly is crucial to ensure a stable and secure user experience. This includes understanding how to publish changes and implement rollback strategies in case of errors or unexpected behavior.
Here’s a comprehensive step-by-step breakdown of the process, best practices, and technical guidance on how to manage publishing and rolling back changes in Power Pages.
1. Understanding the Power Pages Publishing Model
Power Pages uses a staging model for site changes. When you make edits using the Design Studio or the Portal Management App, these changes are not immediately visible to site visitors until they are published.
Key Points:
- Draft Mode: Changes are saved but not live
- Publish: Pushes changes to the live site
- Unpublished Changes: Can be previewed within the Design Studio
2. Making Changes Safely
A. Using the Design Studio
- Open your Power Pages site
- Make edits to web pages, forms, lists, layouts, or styles
- Save your changes
These changes are saved as drafts. You must publish them to reflect them publicly.
B. Using Portal Management App
- Navigate to
Portal Managementfrom Power Apps - Modify components like Web Pages, Web Templates, Web Files, or Site Settings
- Save and publish manually
Important: Some components require a manual cache clear or publish all to appear live, especially if edited outside the Design Studio.
3. Publishing Your Changes
From Power Pages Design Studio:
- Click on the Publish button at the top-right
- Confirm the action
- All draft changes will be published to your live site
From Portal Management App:
- Go to Web Pages
- Open the page you edited
- Set Publishing State to
Published - Save & Close
- Click on Sync Configuration from the site record
4. Using Solutions for Controlled Publishing
To manage changes across environments (like Dev → UAT → Prod), use Solutions:
Steps:
- Create an Unmanaged Solution in your Dev environment
- Add the necessary portal components
- Export and import the solution into your target environment
- Once validated, Publish Customizations
This helps maintain version control and rollback options.
5. Rollback Strategies
Mistakes happen. Here’s how to recover.
A. Undo Drafts in Design Studio
- If unpublished: Simply discard or reverse changes
- Click Page Versions to view history
- Revert to a previous version if available
B. Use a Backup Site or Exported Solution
- Regularly export solutions with portal components
- If a published change causes issues:
- Import a previously exported solution
- Overwrite or update the broken components
C. Manual Revert
- Edit affected pages manually to their previous state
- Use Dataverse Audit Logs to track who made changes and when
- Compare and revert fields or content
6. Best Practices for Change Management
| Best Practice | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Use separate Dev, Test, Prod | Prevent untested changes from affecting users |
| Work in solutions | Enables versioning and controlled deployment |
| Maintain regular backups | Helps in rolling back major updates |
| Document changes | For traceability and auditability |
| Use source control (optional) | Via ALM tools like Azure DevOps or GitHub |
| Use Application Insights | Monitor errors post-publish for quick rollback |
7. ALM and Source Control Integration
Power Pages supports Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). You can integrate it with Azure DevOps or GitHub for full CI/CD pipelines.
- Track changes in source control
- Push changes via pipelines
- Automate rollback by restoring earlier commits
8. Publish All vs. Selective Publishing
Publish All Customizations (from Power Platform Admin Center):
- Pushes all pending changes to the site
- Useful after mass changes
Caution: Can unintentionally deploy incomplete drafts.
Selective Publishing:
- Only publish specific web pages or settings
- More controlled and safer for live sites
9. Tools for Troubleshooting Post-Publish Issues
- Portal Checker Tool: Finds configuration issues
- Browser Dev Tools: Inspect scripts, layout, responsiveness
- Application Insights: Analyze errors, failed requests
- Dataverse Audit Logs: Find out who published what