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

[Conax]

Another disovery from this exercise is that, once a user registered on a portal, then he gets access to all portals in the same environment. This could be a 'gotcha' in some circumstances.

[Lucas001]

Hi @Conax, 

unfortunately that seems to be the case yes.

The reason is that you have only one contact table where the users are created once registered. Meaning that every PowerPage can be accessed by the people. 

We currently create an environment if two pages does not belong to each other and accounts should not get access.

[Fubar]

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@Conax wrote:

Another disovery from this exercise is that, once a user registered on a portal, then he gets access to all portals in the same environment. This could be a 'gotcha' in some circumstances.

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The work around to this is to not use the Authenticated User web role setting and only use Assigned Web Roles, and then lock down everything to Web Roles (as Web Roles are site specific).  But would be nice to have "Login Enabled" per site.

Also, log your Environment Copy and not being able to reestablish a Power Pages site as a bug.  This is something that whilst it does not happen every day, customers often request.

[Conax]

Thank you @Lucas001 for your response.

I was just going to ask why you didn't use Web Roles instead of creating new environments, when Fubar posted his suggestion.

I guess all depends on which way the organisation likes.

[Conax]

@Fubar Yes that can be a good workaround. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Fubar]

A little bit more regarding the Pages/Portal activation - note the below was done using XrmToolBox's Portal Records Mover to make a copy in a different environment

• For the Dynamics 365 based templates / Power Apps Portal (Sites that appear in the Portal Management App), you should be able to select from the Manage->Edit screen - but only where site being Managed is the same Type (i.e. if your new site is a Power Pages site you will not see the D365 based Power Apps Portal site listed)
• For Power Pages, the move gave me a Power Pages site that was inactive.  When I clicked the Reactivate, it prompted me for a new url (as the old one was taken by the site before I moved it), it may have also given me an Accept popup (or the Accept could have been later). After it was reactivated I could Preview etc and the site was available.

(The dropdown may also be picky about if they are not the same Model Enhanced/Standard)

For both types of Portal/Pages I have the dropdown visible in the Manage->Edit screen (but the Power Pages only has itself in it). If it is missing, I am wondering if this is due to your user not having the correct privileges for the newer environment or your user is not the owner of the Site; alternatively maybe it could be a version issue with the Power Pages Core (check to see if there is a later version available)

[KH_2437]

Having the same issue with restoring an environment. Ran into an issue with my power page site on an UAT env and couldn't fix it so decided to restore from an env backup.

First thing I noticed is that a new portal that I had created post the backup time was still there to my surprise but the site detail from dataverse was missing, as it should be given that dataverse was restored from a time before its existence.

I also now have the site can't be accessed error. Works fine in the studio but sync and preview won't work. Oddly it wouldn't render at all at first, but then I edited the style and saved. Now it gives me the Access Denied: You don't have the user rights to view this page.

[KH_2437]

Not sure how it happened but I have my site back after the restore, maybe it took time to sync in the background. The only action I did was to update the Website Authentication Key in the admin center - in desperation. Not sure if it that contributed. 

[Conax]

I tried to update the Website Authentication Key which did not bring back the UAT site, unfortunately.