About the delivery
ProsessPilotene delivered Power Pages for Norec, the Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation (2023).
Norec used D365 Marketing and its associated Event module to manage and make projects, exchange programmes and events available to stakeholders, allowing them to register via the portal’s forms. The portal’s strength was its integration capabilities, mirroring all the information entered for each event and displaying all events set to “Live” in a card view.
Norec’s frustration stemmed from the need to duplicate work: creating an event in D365 and taking it “Live” so that registration became available on the portal, then replicating the information and adding further event details on the website. Since the website served as the primary source of information for Norec’s stakeholders and their projects, Norec had to link every event on the website to D365’s OOTB event portal, which appeared inconsistent with the design of their website.
The motivation and rationale behind the delivery of Power Pages was therefore to replicate Norec's website as closely as possible, both in terms of visual design and functional navigation and usability, so that visitors would notice the transition between websites as little as possible. Power Pages was also intended to be ‘integrated’ with the event module to the extent that it reflected all the information Norec wanted to make visible to visitors. This included information and features that did not exist in the event module or the associated portal at the time, requiring further customization and configuration of the event module and flows.
The main objectives were to enable Norec's users to enter all the necessary information in one place (the Event form in D365), and for this information to be displayed/mirrored in Power Pages when they clicked “Go Live” for the event. Like the OOTB portal, the Power Pages portal was also to include overview page(s) for all projects and events set to "Live". The overview pages were to be designed as a “Card View”.
Norec divided its events into three categories, and wanted an overview page for each category in addition to an overall overview page.
When a visitor clicked through to an event, all the necessary information about the event was to be displayed below a header image sourced from a custom image field in the event form in D365, and the registration form (marketing registration form) for the relevant event was to be available for registration.
To embed the registration form directly on the Power Pages page for a specific event record, flows had to be created to update the web address field with the event ID, as well as a flow to populate the URL field for every event in D365.
Other minor customizations were also made to the portal, such as a navigation bar that matched the website and linked back to the correct tab on the website.
This delivery used Power Pages to replace D365 Marketing's OOTB event portal for outbound marketing. Due to the limited customizability of D365's OOTB event portal and the limited options for replicating Norec's website, it was decided to use Power Pages to create a portal that matches Norec's website in both design and UI.
Value creation
- From double/triple work to a single workflow
- A highly customized event module
- Automated sharing of projects and events
- A more consistent user experience for Norec's stakeholders
- Opportunity for Norec's stakeholders to explore and register
The solutions
- Power Pages
Area and keywords
Portal
Limitations
- Norec primarily used outbound marketing, which is not suitable for a Power Pages solution for an event module and associated sign-ups/registrations.
- Power Pages has become much more customizable, but Norec's requirements for replicating its website, in addition to the ability to customize the portal for Norec's users, proved somewhat challenging. The Power Pages portal required such extensive developer customization that it would be difficult for an internal Norec user to further develop and manage the portal without equivalent expertise.
- Previous solution architecture and choices in Norec's CRM made by other consulting firms were not always compatible with meeting Norec's needs when creating the event portal using Power Pages.
- D365 Marketing was undergoing significant changes and updates, including major deprecations, which made it challenging to establish a sustainable solution for a Power Pages integration with a module undergoing necessary but vaguely defined changes.