Help Desk · advanced
Employee Self-Service Portal on Power Pages and Dataverse
A secure employee portal where staff sign in with their work account, submit IT and facilities requests, track status, and read announcements — backed by Dataverse tables, Power Automate approvals, and role-based access that shows managers only their team’s requests.
Project overview
Enterprises hand junior admins exactly this kind of portal to maintain and extend, and Power Platform skills carry a premium in help desk and IT operations postings. Building one from scratch proves you understand data, security, and workflow together, not just ticket handling.
Real-world use case
A company replaces a shared inbox with a portal: requests get a category and owner automatically, managers approve equipment over a cost threshold in one click, and leadership sees volume and turnaround on a dashboard.
Tools and technologies
- Power Pages
- Dataverse
- Power Automate
- Entra ID Authentication
- Power BI
Skills you can demonstrate
Low-Code Application Development, Data Modeling, Role-Based Access Control, Approval Workflows, Service Catalog Design
Build roadmap
- Design the data model
Create Dataverse tables for requests, categories, comments, and assets. Draw the relationships before creating anything — changing them later is painful. - Build the portal
Create a Power Pages site with a request form, a "my requests" list, and a request detail page with comments. Keep the design simple and mobile-friendly. - Add authentication and roles
Enable Entra ID sign-in, create the three web roles, and configure table permissions. Test each role in a private window and confirm the boundaries hold. - Automate assignment and approvals
Flows that assign an owner by category on create and route high-cost requests to the manager for approval, with reminders and escalation. - Add the manager and agent views
A team queue for managers and a work queue for IT agents with status updates that notify the requester. Announcements on the home page. - Report and document
A Power BI page on volume, turnaround, and approval times, embedded in the portal for leadership. Document the model, roles, and flows.
Ways to extend the project
Embed the Copilot Studio agent from hd-8 in the portal so users can ask a question before they open a request, and log which questions led to requests anyway.
How to showcase your work
- GitHub: A solution export, the data model diagram, the security role matrix, and screenshots of the portal from each role’s point of view.
- LinkedIn: Walk through one request: employee submits, manager approves from email, IT closes it, employee sees the status change. Under a minute.
- Resume: List the platform pieces: "Built an employee self-service portal on Power Pages and Dataverse with role-based access and automated approvals."