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Site visibility in Power Pages

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  • 5 minutes to read

The Power Pages site visibility feature allows you to manage who has access to your website. You can restrict access to specific people in your organization by making the site private. If you choose to make the site public, anyone with the link will have access.

Animation that shows site visibility setting change from private to public.

Important

  • All new sites created in Power Pages are private by default. When the website is ready to go live, you can change the site visibility to public.
  • Site visibility feature is only available for websites with version 9.4.9.x or later.
  • All websites created during the preview period are public by default. To change the site to private, go to Set up workspace in design studio and change the site visibility. More information: Set up workspace
  • Be cautious when editing a public site because the changes are visible to external users immediately.

Difference between a private site and a public site

Only site makers and organization users whom the maker granted access can view private sites. Website visitors need to authenticate using the organization's Azure Active Directory identity provider to open the site. Setting visibility to private is useful if your site is in development and you wish to limit access during the design phase.

Public sites are accessible over internet to everyone anonymously or authenticated with configured identity. The website is now a production site, fully operational for the customer to use. You'll see a notification when you're editing a public site using design studio, Portal Management app, Visual Studio code editor and Microsoft Power Platform CLI.

Change site visibility

When a site is ready to go-live, you can set the site visibility state to public. You can change the site visibility state back to private anytime so that only makers of the site and selected users have access.

To change site visibility:

  1. Go to Power Pages
  2. Edit the site that you want to change site visibility for.
  3. Select Set up from the list of workspaces on the left-side of the screen.
  4. Select Site visibility tab under Security section.
  5. Select Public to make the site public, or Private to make the site private.

If you have created your site using Power Apps, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Power Apps
  2. Select Apps.
  3. Select your site from the list of apps that you want to change site visibility for.
  4. Select the ellipse (...).
  5. Select Edit.
  6. Select Open in Power Pages.
  7. Select Set up from the list of workspaces on the left-side of the screen.
  8. Select Site visibility tab under Security section.
  9. Select Public to make the site public, or Private to make the site private.

Note

Changing site visibility restarts your website causing a few minutes of delay to reflect the latest state change.

Grant access to a private site

You can grant website access to other organization users using the site visibility page when the site is private.

To grant website access:

  1. Go to Power Pages

  2. Edit the site that you want to change site visibility for.

  3. Select Set up from the list of workspaces on the left-side of the screen.

  4. Select Site visibility tab under Security section.

  5. Choose the users that you want to grant the website access to.

  6. Select Share.

    Grant site access for a private site.

Note

  • Granting website access is limited to 50 users.
  • Organization users that are part of System administrator role in the Power Platform environment where the website is created have permissions to view the website by default.

Permissions required to change site visibility

The ability to change site visibility is determined by the following factors:

Service admins who are members of any of the following Azure Active Directory roles can change the site visibility:

Members of System administrator security role can also change the site visibility when the tenant-level setting enableSystemAdminsToChangeSiteVisibility is set to true.

If the tenant-level setting enableSystemAdminsToChangeSiteVisibility is set to false, the members of System administrator security role must also be a member of an exclusive security group in Azure Active Directory that has the permissions to Manage site visibility.

Change tenant-level setting

The tenant-level setting can be updated using a PowerShell script.

Important

  • After October 1, 2023 system administrators will not be able to change site visibility when the tenant-level setting is null. To prevent this, set the value for the tenant level setting to either TRUE or FALSE.

To get the current value for the tenant setting, use the Get-TenantSettings command.

For example:

$myTenantSettings = Get-TenantSettings
$ myTenantSettings.powerPlatform.powerPages

Note

  • Tenant settings whose value is null do not show up in the list. The default value for the tenant-level setting enableSystemAdminsToChangeSiteVisibility is null, so it will not show for the first time. Once the value is set to true or false, you will be able to see the setting in the list.

To set a value for the tenant-level setting (true or false), use Set-TenantSettings command.

For example:

$requestBody = @{
    powerPlatform = @{
        powerPages = @{
            enableSystemAdminsToChangeSiteVisibility = $false
        }
    }
}
Set-TenantSettings -RequestBody $requestBody

Delegate site visibility control

When you don't want all system administrators to be able to change site visibility, then set the tenant-level setting for enableSystemAdminsToChangeSiteVisibility to false.

Now, you can delegate site visibility controls to a select set of users by adding them to a security group in Azure AD, and giving site visibility permissions to that security group.

To delegate site visibility to specific system administrators:

  1. Go to Power Platform admin center.

  2. Select Portals.

  3. Select your website, and then select Manage.

  4. In the Security section, select Manage site visibility permissions.

    Manage site visibility permission.

  5. Add the security group that contains the specific system administrators that you want to delegate managing site visibility to.

    Add security group.

After you add the security group, all system administrators that are part of the added security group can manage site visibility. System administrators that aren't part of this security group will have the site visibility section disabled.

Known issues

A Power Pages website in private mode won't work when you disable Azure Active Directory authentication. Azure Active Directory authentication is enabled by default when the website is provisioned. Change the site visibility state to public before disabling Azure Active Directory authentication.

See also

Configure authentication