See Trigger Outputs using Edit Columns in Flow Runs | Power Automate [Quick Tip]

September 6, 2022 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft Flows edit columns in flow, flow runs, Microsoft Flow, Power Automate

If you are noticed a new addition to the Cloud Flows is where you see the Edit Columns in the Flow page.

Edit Columns in Flow

When you open a Flow, you see the below –

These are your usual results of Flow Runs.
And then you open each Flow Run to see what data is passed in the attributes of the steps.
Now, here’s where Edit Columns are a useful new addition if you are using Flows around Sep 2022 time frame.
And then you get to select the attributes from the Flow itself. In this instance, I’m select name and accountid fields from the Flow.
Once your desired columns are selected, you can click Save.
Those columns and their respective values will show up. This will save your effort to go into each Flow to look at what the values are.
And from All Runs page, you can even export these to Excel if you need to.

Hope this was useful!

Here are some Power Automate posts you want to check out –

Thank you!

Adaptive Cards for Outlook Actionable Messages using Power Automate | Power Platform

November 23, 2020 priyeshwagh777 CRM with .NET Web Applications, Power Automate Adaptive Cards, Microsoft Flow, Outlook, Power Automate

Let’s take a look at how you can design Adaptive Cards for Outlook and get response from Outlook users to process using Power Automate.

Scenario

Let’s say I wanted to send an Adaptive Card to an Outlook user on their Email and ask some comment, example – A descriptive feedback and read their response back and send them a confirmation Adaptive Card.

In this post, I’ll simply read the Response in the Flow and send a Confirmation-like Adaptive Card so that you can then further decide to take required action for it based on your use case.

Adaptive Cards Designer – Initial Card Layout

You can logon to https://adaptivecards.io/designer/ i.e. the Adaptive Card designer and start building your card. Below are the high-level steps:

Once you are in the Adaptive Cards Designer, make sure you select the host app as “Outlook Actionable Messages“

You’ll see a sample already created for you which you can start working off of –
Since I want to start from the beginning, I’ll select New Card option as shown below
Now, I’ll start to design my card with the use of some TextBlock, an Input.Text to capture a response. In your case, you can choose the type of input(s) you want. (I’m trying to keep it simple for now 😊)
These controls works like a drag-and-drop behavior, just drop whatever you need.

So, I did the following, I added a TextBlock to add the title I want to show on the card and a Multi-line Input.Text to capture a response of the user I’ll send the card to in their Email.
For the Input.Text, I’ve added an id ‘answer‘. We’ll need this when we capture responses back.
Also, to make the Input.Text control as multi-line, Multi-Line option should be selected as I did below
At this point, our Adaptive Card’s layout is ready. Before we proceed we must first, create a Flow that will capture an HTTP Response and then we’ll come back here.

Flow to Capture Response

Adaptive Cards for Outlook Actionable Messages work off of the HTTP mechanism and that’s why you need a URL where you can capture the responses and send back a confirmation response back.

Let’s call this Flow as “Accept Feedback Response“

To do so, first create a Flow that Accepts an HTTP Request. You can refer my other post in order to understand how you can capture HTTP Responses – Accept HTTP Requests in a Flow and send Response back | Power Automate
Once once you save a Flow that has a trigger of HTTP Response, you’ll get a URL generated, copy it.
Next, I’ll enter the schema by clicking on Use sample payload to generate schema button on the first step above and enter the following schema since I know that’s what is to be expected from the User when they fill in the Text and submit back.
Once you click OK, your schema will look like this.
Collect the result of the above trigger in the Compose so that you can save the Flow with at least 1 Action. (We’ll come back to it later)
Next up, we will also need to setup a response Adaptive Card. This is something that the users will see when they Submit their responses.
It is mandatory to send the response back to the caller i.e. the Outlook in this case. Hence, we’ll send a Response back using Response action in HTTP and send the status code as 200 and header CARD-UPDATE-IN-BODY as true.
The Body will have the Adaptive Card which we created in step #5 above i.e. the Adaptive Card we have to send as confirmation.

Here are the details of Refreshing Cards when you send back a response to the client (Outlook user in this case): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/actionable-messages/adaptive-card#refresh-cards?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911

Complete your Adaptive Card – Add Action

Once your Flow to capture the response is ready, let’s complete the Adaptive Card to add an Action to the same.

Select the card body, you’ll see a button to Add an action

You’ll need to select Action.Http
Once you select the Action.Http type of Action, look at the Element Properties, you’ll need to enter the URL we got from the Flow we created to capture responses above.

Here why we chose Action.Http – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/actionable-messages/adaptive-card#outlook-specific-adaptive-card-properties-and-features?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911
Next, set the title of the Action (it appears as a button). I’ll name it Submit.
Also, select what kind of Method is to be used for the HTTP Request.
Now, since you’ve selected POST method, you will need to pass the Body. This will be the response which the user will send and which the Flow above will read it as a Response to process the information further.
Once you select POST, a Body element property will be added where you need to enter the schema and what ID of the element that information belongs to
Remember, the ID for the Input.Text was set as “answer”, we’ll put that here and then it’s Value property. These values should be enclosed in double curly brackets {{ }}.
And also, you’ll need to pass along the Header for Authorization. Read this post by Microsoft – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/actionable-messages/security-requirements#action-authorization-header?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911
Add Header as shown below

Now, as mentioned in the above post, we need to pass the property as Authorization header and leave it blank and Content-Type as application/json
Once all this is done, it’ll look like below in the card payload for the Action.Http part.
Now copy the entire Payload from the Editor and we’ll create a new Flow that will be used to send the Adaptive Card to the user.

Flow to Send the Adaptive Card in Email

I’m creating a Flow here which will be used to send the Adaptive Card. To keep it simple, I’m just triggering it using a button on-demand. Your use-case will vary.

Let’s call this Flow as “Send Feedback Request“

Wherever you need to create the Adaptive Card, you’ll need to paste the entire Payload copied from the step above in a Compose step
I’ll add a step to send an Email directly using Send Email and make sure you enable the </> part for the body.

Make sure the Outputs of the Compose we pasted above in Step #2 are enclosed in
<script type="application/adaptivecard+json"> </script>

Working

Let’s look at how this will turn out!!

Let me just Run the Flow as is so that the Adaptive Card is generated and sent to the user I intend to in the Email.
They’ll receive an email like this
And the user will submit the answer in the text box and submit.
Once they submit, the Accept Feedback Response Flow we created will be triggered
And the response is available to be read and processed further in the Compose step we created to collect it with the defined schema.
The Adaptive Card we had created to send back as confirmation (which looks as below) will be sent
Once the user submits, they’ll get the below Adaptive Card as a confirmation that their feedback has been taken.

And that’s how you can make your Adaptive Cards to function with Outlook!! Hope this was helpful.

Here are some superb posts on Adaptive Cards –

Microsoft Message Cards – The Ultimate Guide by Thomas Poszytek – https://poszytek.eu/en/microsoft-en/microsoft-message-cards-the-ultimate-guide/
Multi line Approvals with Adaptive Cards, Outlook and Power Automate by Yash Agarwal – https://www.bythedevs.com/post/multi-line-approvals-with-adaptive-cards-outlook-and-power-automate
Custom Actionable Messages with Microsoft Flow series by Rik-de Koning (3 posts) – https://www.about365.nl/category/blog-series/custom-actionable-messages-with-microsoft-flow/

Here are some more Power Automate / Adaptive Cards posts you might want to look at –

Thank you!! 😊

Adaptive Cards for Teams to collect data from users using Power Automate | SharePoint Lists

July 20, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate Adaptive Cards, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft Teams, Power Automate

Adaptive Cards is something so cool and works like magic!! I’m sure there are so many creative ways to use it.

Here’s an example – Use Adaptive Cards to gather data from Microsoft Teams Users and populate it automatically to SharePoint List.

Scenario

Let’s say, you have a set of data to collect from your employees – for instance, planning a trip (or any other event for that matter) where you have to take data from employees in order to better plan the logistics.

So, in my example, I want to plan an event for which I need to ask each employee their T-Shirt size, food preference and any allergies to be taken care of.

It’s better to let the users answer at their own accord. You simply need to create a SharePoint list and list out all the Employees whom the short questionnaire should be sent to.

Adaptive Cards (https://adaptivecards.io/)

As their website says, Adaptive Cards are platform-agnostic snippets of UI, authored in JSON, that apps and services and open exchange.

It’s a superb way to make these cards pop-up in Teams, Outlook, Bot Framework etc.

In this post, we’ll ask Microsoft Teams users to submit some info which will be automatically populated to the SharePoint List.

In https://adaptivecards.io/designer/, you can design your own Adaptive Card by looking at the samples already provided on the website.

SharePoint List

Let’s say, you’ve prepared a SharePoint List called ‘Employee Preferences‘ which looks like the below. And you need to get info from them on their Allergies, Food Preference and T-Shirt size in order to prepare for the event

Power Automate

Next step, is to create a Flow in PowerAutomate to send out these Adaptive Cards to the Teams member in their Chat so that they can send back their preferences which is automatically updated in the SharePoint List.
Let’s begin –
(Before we begin, it’s up to you to decide when should the Power Automate trigger, whether on create of Each Item, or all at once when the SP List is ready. I just chose the later. So, see what’s most suitable to you.)

Let’s say my first step is to get all the items from the SharePoint List I created, called ‘Employee Preferences‘

And then, set the below preferences –
Next, I’ll loop through each of the SP items and initiate an Teams action to send Adaptive Card and wait for the response.
Now, in Adaptive Card you’ve selected for the user of the Team, I’ve used the Email field from the SP list so that I can use it in the recipient field to send the Adaptive Card to that Teams user.

And paste the content from Adaptive Card editor in Message field.
You can use dynamic data at the right places to populate you Adaptive Card wherever needed.
Finally, you can have an Update message filled in. This is shown once the User Submits back the Adaptive Card with data.
Should update card should be selected to Yes so that it doesn’t stay like that and the user knows that the response has been captured.
Then, you need to update the captured response back to the SP List.
At this point, your Adaptive Card is ready! Let’s test.

Adaptive Card in Microsoft Teams

Once this is run, the Teams user gets the below in the chat.

User receives and Adaptive Card in their Teams Chat.

Let’s zoom a little and see how it looks. Notice that we had populated the name dynamically in the Adaptive Card body.
Now, click on Fill Out information and the card will expand to expose the form
Now, I’ll fill the information as below and Submit the same
Once I click Submit, I’ll see the below message. Remember, this populated from Update message field in the Adaptive card options.
And when you check back the SharePoint List, the data has been updated in the same.

And that’s it!!
Hope this helped!

Here are some Power Automate / Flow posts you might want to look at –

Thank you for your time!

ChildFlowUnsupportedForInvokerConnections error while using Child Flows [SOLVED] | Power Automate

June 28, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate Flow Error, Microsoft Flow, Power Automate

Often times, if you are using Child Flows and but you see some unexpected while Saving your parent Flows upon adding a Child Flow, which usually look like the below

Assuming, you are aware of using Child Flows and that they can only be created inside a Solution. (Of course, that’s why you could encounter this issue since you’re able to set a Child Flow already 😊)

Reason Issue

Let’s say this is your Child Flow as shown below in Power Automate. It uses a connection for Approvals. (It could be any other connection in your case.)

Now, open Run only users section as shown below

It’ll show that my Approvals connection is relying on Provided by run-only user in Power Automate. To learn more about Run only Users, refer this post – https://www.serverlessnotes.com/docs/sharing-flows-as-owners-and-run-only-users

Now, I switch to Use this connection (<Connector>)

It’ll ask for a confirmation as per below

Once this is set for all respective connections, you’ll have no issues in adding a Child Flow to your parent Flow and saving your parent Flow!

Here are some more Power Automate / Flow posts you might want to look at –

Hope this quick tip helps!

Generate Dynamics 365 record link in a Flow using CDS connector | Power Automate

June 13, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate common data service, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Flow, Power Automate

There are several ways to formulate a Dynamics 365 record URL and make it clickable in a Flow in Power Automate.

Here’s one of the ways I follow for most scenarios – Let’s say I want to open a PSA Time Entry record from my Flow, here’s how I do it

Get record action to retrieve URL

Since this post is focused on CDS connector, I can get the D365 record link in body of Get record action for Common Data Service connector.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see this if the trigger was a CDS action, so I made a separate Get record call.

But, we’ll retrieve the same without having to select/parse body object. So let’s see –

Generating Link

First, I’ve initialized a variable that’ll hold the String format of the end URL

Now, first – I’ve appended https://. This won’t come directly using the uriHost() method

Then, the uriHost() holds the formula ‘uriHost(body(‘Get_record’)?[‘@odata.id’])‘

Meaning, get the uriHost name i.e. Environment name itself.

Then, I’ve appended options for the window to open which are mentioned below in this post.

Finally, I’ve appended the Primary Key of the record itself at the end

Options

Now, let’s talk about the options –

cmdBar = [true | false]
It’ll show the ribbon on the record. If false is chosen, it’ll be hidden
navBar = [off | on]
It’ll show the Navigation Bar on top if on. If off, it’ll be hidden
newWindow=[true | false]
This didn’t affect in my case. It anyway opened in a new tab. This could be different is the link is not opened from Email but is used elsewhere
pagetype=entityrecord
Since we are targeting a Dynamics 365 entity record, the above is used.
etn= [name of the entity]
Name of the entity
id
GUID of the record itself.

Here’s an Email that I composed to show how the URL will end up looking –

Which will result in Email like this

And open the record like this.

As per my settings in the URL I created, I don’t have the Nav Bar or Command Bar visible. It’s up to you to decide your preference

Here are some more Power Automate / Flow content you might want to check –

Hope this helps!!

Text Functions in a Flow | Power Automate

June 9, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate Microsoft Flow, microsoft power automate, Power Automate, text functions

As I was looking at some String/Text operations in Flow recently, here’s what I discovered.

Looks like there are a lot more to come, so let’s look at some initial ones.

Find text position

A pretty simple feature to find the position the Search Text starts from in a String.

Here, I’m trying to find where does ‘yes’ in string ‘Priyesh’ starts from in the given text. And the answer was 3. [Text Index starting from 0]

If the text doesn’t exist, the result is -1

Substring

Here’s another important Text function called Substring.

This will return the substring with starting index of 3 and the length of the string from the starting character.

In this case, it’ll return the string “yes”

If your Starting Position in Substring is out of the range i.e. exceeding the length of the entire string, you’ll see and error like below stating the issue.
Also, the same error will be displayed if the Length of the Substring chosen falls out of range i.e. the index exceeding end of the string.

Here are some more Power Automate / Flow posts you might want to look at

Get Count of records retrieved in CDS connector in a Flow | Power Automate

May 20, 2020May 20, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate cds connector, common data services, flow, Microsoft Flow, Power Automate, record count

In several applications, you need to know how many record were retrieved in the List records Action in a Common Data Service connector in order to take a decision.

Scenario

Typically, let’s say I know only 1 record should exist in order to take that record forward and do an action. But how do I know when only 1 record was received? That’s when you use Control

Check Count

Now, let’s say you want to want to retrieve Accounts and know how many were returned (Perhaps, you want to proceed only if at least 1 or more were retrieved)

This is my List Records action and I’ve named it as Get All Records.
And just to display how many records are retrieved, I’ll use a variable. Usually, you would use this in condition (which we’ll get to in a bit)
So, in the expressions to set the Variable, under Dynamic Content, I’ll write –
and write the below expression
which is set to the variable
And here are the results. I have 101 Accounts

Using it for comparison

This is one of the typical use cases where you want to proceed only if you have at least 1 record –

Here are some more Flow related topics you might want to take a look at –

Hope this quick tip helps!

Number Formatting in a Flow | Power Automate

May 13, 2020September 26, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft Flows, Power Automate flow, Microsoft Flow, number format, Power Automate

Quite obviously this is one of the most common asks in Flow to format a number. Here are some ways to do so using Format number Action in Flow (Power Automate).

This is available in Format number action in a Flow in Power Automate. This is available in Number Functions connector.

Commas and Decimals

For a standard simple number, you can simply denote by # and commas or other symbols where needed. Here, I won’t select any locale.
And it would render into this –

Phone Number

US phone is an example where it is denoted by brackets and dashes in between. I’ll select English (United States) (en-US) in the locale among others. So, my format would be.
And the resultant phone number will be set as below

Currency Input

For currency, this is what I did –

Added ₹ followed by ##,###,###. I’ll select English (India) (en-IN) in the Locale field.
So even though my number value i.e. (50000) is in thousands and not hundred-thousands as I covered in my format, it’ll consider the correct format used and my output will be –

Here’s where you can look at other ways to format numbers –
1. Standard numeric format strings
2. Custom numeric format strings

If you’re looking for some more posts on Flow / Power Automate, I’ve written some in the past. Check these –

Hope this helps!

Call a Dynamics 365 Action from Flow [Bound and Unbound Actions] | Power Automate

May 4, 2020May 5, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Power Automate action in dynamics 365, bound action, cds connector, common data service, Microsoft Flow, Power Automate, unbound action

Ever wondered how to call an Action from a Flow using the new Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector? There are 2 actions to perform this –

Here’s a quick post to demonstrate that and the difference between Perform a bound action and Perform an unbound action in the CDS (Current Environment) connector.

Note that the connector used here is Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector which is available only if you are creating a Flow inside a Solution, not outside.

Check more on this connector here – Selecting (Current) in Environment in Power Automate CDS connector and why it matters

Unbound Action

Bound Action meaning calling an Action in Dynamics 365 that is bound to any one entity i.e. which is not a Global Action

In this example. I’m creating a Flow that will call a Bound Action which runs on Account entity.
And the InputName field shown above will simply take a string field and reflect the same as it is in Output
Now, I am using Perform a bound action Action from the Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector as shown below-
Once you select Perform a bound action, you’ll need to select what entity the Action is tied to with the following properties –
Entity Name: Name of the entity the Action is bound to
Action Name: Name of the action (not Display Name)
Item ID: Guid of the record of that entity. Typically this is dynamically retrieved from other operations above this step (I’ve simply hard-coded one)
Parameters: In my example, I’m passing a parameter called ‘InputName’ and I’m passing a string called “Account Name”
Operation-Now, once my Bound Action is executed, I can see the below results which it will return i.e. OutputName field after composing with InputName inside the Action
Further, you can use the following Output from the Bound Action i.e. the Response or the Output parameters the Action is sending.

Unbound Action

Unbound Action meaning calling an Action that is not bound to any entity in Dynamics 365 and is set to None (Global)

In my Unbound Action, I am simply passing InputName through to the OutputName field as is.
Now, I’ll use Perform an unbound action from the Actions in Common Data Service (Current Environment) connector
Once you select this action, you simply need to select the name of the Action from Dynamics 365 itself (Again, not Display Name) and pass along any Input parameters for the same, if any.
Operation – Now, once you execute this, the Action will execute and give you a response as below
Further, you can select what you want to use from the response of the action step i.e. either the Response itself or the Output Parameters, if any.

Here are some other Power Automate / Flow posts that might interest you –

Hope this simple example helps explain the actions!

Switch-Case in a Flow | Power Automate

April 29, 2020 priyeshwagh777 Microsoft Flows, Power Automate Microsoft Flow, Power Automate, switch case

Some of the common operations / decision making one wants to perform in terms of programming is definitely switch-case!

Here’s how you can do it in power automate

Scenario

To keep things simple, I will simply reflect the name of the OptionSet value in a variable in Flow –

1. Here’s my OptionSet called Account Type with values Customer [1], Vendor [2] & Partner [3]

1. My Flow will be called on update of Account record’s Account Type field change

1. I’m simply using a variable to store the value of the selection made on the field.

Using Switch

Now, let’s get to the important part –

1. If you search for Switch under Control, you’ll see as below

1. This will first ask you what the Switch should be on, in this case, it’s the Account Type value to be selected from the dynamics values

1. Now, I can start entering the Cases one by one as shown below and setting the variable I created above. For value in Equals 1, I’ll set variable as Customer
  
  Clicking on the + [Plus] sign in between Case and Default will let you add more cases.

1. Finally, once all the cases are entered, the Flow will start looking something like this from a hawk-eye-view with the Default case appearing in the end.

Working

Let’s look at how Switch-Case would work –

1. I updated the Account Type field with Vendor

1. Switch on the Account Type Value (selected from Dynamic Values) will reflect the value of 2

1. And Case 2 will execute simply reflecting what is stored in the variable. Rest of the cases will not run

Pretty Easy! Hope this helps!

Edit Columns in Flow

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Scenario

Adaptive Cards Designer – Initial Card Layout

Flow to Capture Response

Complete your Adaptive Card – Add Action

Flow to Send the Adaptive Card in Email

Working

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Scenario

Adaptive Cards (https://adaptivecards.io/)

SharePoint List

Power Automate

Adaptive Card in Microsoft Teams

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Reason Issue

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Get record action to retrieve URL

Generating Link

Options

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Find text position

Substring

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Scenario

Check Count

Using it for comparison

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Commas and Decimals

Phone Number

Currency Input

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Unbound Action

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Scenario

Using Switch

Working

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