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This one is pretty interesting and boils down to the basics of how a web page show up in a portal. But unfortunately for consultants starting with portals, they need to directly jump into creating entity lists/ entity forms without understanding the portal structure. And sometimes even after following all the instructions, the entity list or form does not show up in the portal.
And let me take an example from real life here. The developer here wanted to configure Account list. So he created an entity list for account and then created a web page to show that entity list.
As you can see, Page template is selected as “Page with Title” which shows the account entity list – “Dashboard”
Save the web page, refresh the portal cache. But unfortunately when you browse the web page, the entity list does not show up.In desperation you restart your portal, you try creating multiple entity list but then nothing show up. But why? Before I go ahead and explain the structure of a Web Page in portal.
The above screenshot shows how a typical web page in Dynamics 365 Portals or PowerApps portals is structured. So you have multiple Web Templates which can extend each other (Web Template 1 extends Web Template 2). And then you have a Page Template based on a web template and finally the web page is based on a page template.
It’s the web template that drives the lion’s share of the content of the Web Page. So if your entity list or form are not rendering, then chances are your web template does not support them.
But how do you know if your web template supports Entity forms/ entity lists? For that I am going to open up a web template which support it.
Above is the screenshot of a web template – “Full Page” where you can see there is specific code to render an entity form and entity list. Now I guess you understand that all templates by default does not support entity list or entity forms.
So next time you find your entity list or entity form not rendering, you know where to look at.
Hope this helps!
Debajit Dutta
(Business Solutions MVP)