Power Pages Portal in copied environment shows access denied

[Conax]

I have been doing some testing around environment/portal migration today. One of the tests is like this:

1. Created two brand new developer environments, called them Conax DEV and Conax UAT.
2. In Conax DEV, created a new Power Pages portal using the Starter 1 template. Added a simple table. Added some pages to display List and Forms for the table.
3. Copied the Conax DEV environment over to Conax UAT.
4. After the environment copy is completed, the portal shows up in Conax UAT as Inactive.
5. Reactivated the portal in Conax UAT and gave it a different URL when prompted.
6. Received email saying site is ready. But when browse to the site, got error message "Access to ***.powerappsportals.com was denied. You don't have authorisation to view this page.

Have tried to restart the site in Admin Centre, and tried shut down the site then start the site, but still can't access the site. Does anyone know how to fix the site in UAT?

Thank you for any suggestions.

Kind regards

Conax

[Lucas001]

Hi @Conax,

As it seems you want to copy your power page.

Maybe it's not needed to copy paste your entire envr. Could you try creating a pipeline and use that one to move the page from DEV to UAT?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope that helps.

If the post solves your problem, please mark it as solution. If it helps, consider a thumbs up.

[Conax]

Hi @Lucas001 

Thank you for your suggestion. However, the purpose of this test is to see if the Power Pages portal can be migrated property together with an environment migration, so I do need to copy the entire environment.

Kind regards

[Fubar]

What happens when you try to use the Designer? and can you go Designer, then Sync, then Preview

Also if going via the Designer doesn't work, what method did you use to Copy the portal (CLI, Solution, Configuration Data Migration Tool, Portal Records Mover)

[Conax]

For this specific test, none of the tools you mentioned was used. The portal was copied together with the environment. After that, the Designer can show the copied portal, but Sync and Preview could not bring up the portal. I heard portal cannot be migrated together with enviroment. Maybe this is the reason. But now I wonder how other people periodically refresh UAT data from Production, without destroying the existing UAT portal...unless when they say 'refresh', it's not the same as environment copy?

[Fubar]

I haven't had to do a Power Pages one yet that was an Environment Copy. 

For the slightly older Power Apps Portal after the copy of the environment you would go and setup a new Portal for your environment, and part of that setup you would get the option to select the existing portal - it would then setup a new portal with the correct  Website and Binding record for your existing site

Following the old logic, I don't know if this will work, but if you set up a PowerPages site the same as what you did for the original (same type/template etc), then:

• go to the Admin Portal (not the Maker portal, link in the top right of the maker)
• Select your Environment
• Select Resources->Power Pages
• Select the Site you setup and then Manage It
• Then Edit
• You should then be able to select your old Site from the Dropdown

[Jerry6]

I got exactly same error. We opened Azure AD login, but the 403 error occurs before login pop up.

@Conax Have you found the solution?

[Conax]

Unfortunately no solution yet, if a straight copy of the environment that includes the portal.

I feel that if Microsoft work just a little bit harder then they should be able to get this working. Reason for saying this is that the copied portal has been set to inactive automatically, so if they add some proper processing when reactivating the portal that should fix the problem.

[Conax]

The original (DEV) site in Admin Centre does have the dropdown for Website Record.

The copied environment however, does not have that dropdown.

Oh well....😅😅😅

[Conax]

After countless tests, I have come to a conclusion that if an environment is copied over from another environment, then it is no longer possible to create portal properly in the copied environment, until the environment is reset.

My tests include:

• Copy from env A to env B including a portal in env A. The protal won't run in env B. New portals created in env B also won't run.
• Portal config exported from env A, then portal deleted from env A. Then env A copied to env B. then import the portal config to env B. Portal on env B won't run. New portals created in env B also won't run. Reference https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/admin/migrate-site-configuration?tabs=CLI
• Portal config exported from env A. Env B reset. Import portal config to env B. Portal will run. But this means all data on env B are gone with the env reset.

Quite disapointing.