In this post, we will look at the new preview feature of enhanced data model with Power Pages. The aim of the new model is that it is lightweight, meaning creation of new websites will be much faster than existing provisioning. The data model also will contain fewer tables and solutions. But one of the big benefits of the new data model is it provides us with solution-aware Power Pages, so we can now migrate Power Pages using Power Platform solutions. Let’s look at all of these features.
To turn on the enhanced data model, go to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com and select and environment, then select Resources:
And then Power Pages sites:
Click to turn on Enhanced Data Model (preview):
Click Enable. Note the comments, “Improve site performance, reduce site creation time, and access ALM capabilities in the enhanced data model (preview)”:
It may take some time to install, and you can click on view details to see the progress:
Now let’s head over to the Power Pages Maker portal at https://make.powerpages.microsoft.com and create a new site:
Let’s choose Starter Layout 1:
And click Done:
The new site will then be provisioned:
Back in the Power Platform Admin Center, for this site we can see the data model is “enhanced”:
And in the Power Pages designer here:
What’s also changed is the model-driven app for managing the portal has changed from Portal Management to Power Pages Management:
If you’re using the pac cli to download and upload site changes, you will need to add another tag. We can see with pac paportal list -v we get the version of the portal, below it shows v2:
Now, to download and upload we need to add –modelVersion 2.
Example:
pac paportal download --path C:\Pages\ --webSiteId 2fb3826f-5915-ee11-8f6e-00224823910f --modelVersion 2
And to upload, for example:
pac paportal upload --path C:\Pages\my-enhanced-site---carl-enhancedsite-1 --modelVersion 2
The documentation talks about a migration path for upgrading from existing sites to the enhanced site coming soon.
In the next post, we will look at how to deploy Power Pages using Solutions.
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