Create Teams Meeting invite from Power Automate

Here’s an example of several use cases which can let you create a Teams meeting from within Power Automate based on your business use case.

In my example, I’m using Power Automate to schedule a meeting from a Project in Project Operations inviting all Team Members for a follow up!

PS: Creating an Appointment in Outlook doesn’t set the Teams call. 😊

Scenario

For example, in Project Operations’ sample Project example – I want to simply put a Teams meeting to all the Project Team members of this sample Star Piping Project.

  1. Here are my Project Team Members whom I want to send the Teams invite to.


  2. And I should just be able to run a Flow from the Project itself to send an invite to all the Team Members.
    I’m calling my Flow as ‘Teams Roundtable Meeting’

  3. And my Flow is asking me when this meeting should be. So, I’ll mention the same.
    So, I want the meeting to be on 16th Sep 2021 and start at 10:30am


    And End it by 11:30am


  4. And once the values are accepted, the Meeting should be on the Teams of all the Team Members





    Let’s see how I built this Flow.

The Flow

Now, this is subjective – in your case, this could be anything we can imagine!!

  1. I’m accepting the important parameters in the form of Dataverse (Legacy) connector [Because, this connector let’s you Run the Flow in the context of the record, the new Dataverse green connector doesn’t allow this.]

    These are the values which we filled when we ran the Flow on the Project.


  2. Further, I have some steps to retrieve the Team Members, then eventually their Email addresses (In Project Operations, you need to retrieve the Email addresses from the Bookable Resources and further – see if User record has these email addresses or not)
    Next, I’ll create a variable of type Array to collect the Email Addresses which the meeting invite should go to.

  3. Now, I’ll append all the Email Addresses I retrieved from the Team Members in the array.

  4. Now, the Array is formed with all the Email addresses separated by commas. But, we are not done yet. We need to form a string.


    So, I use Join operation to join the email addresses into a string separated by semicolon (just like how you enter in the To field of emails)


    The result will be a string of Email addresses separated by semicolon


    Finally, once all the important data is collected, we can proceed towards creating the Teams invite.

Create a Teams meeting

Here’s how you can create a Teams meeting from Microsoft Teams connector in Power Automate

  1. Look for Microsoft Teams in Power Automate

  2. Now, in this Meeting, I can set the parameters based on how I want the meeting to be created.
    I’ll fill in the information which is required for the Invite to be created.
    The Start Time and End Time need to be set in the date-no-TZ format, hence, I’ve arranged the same accordingly
    Select Calendar Id as Calendar (Other options are Birthdays and United States Holidays)

  3. The Outputs are from the result of the Join operation we performed to form the string of Email addresses to be added as attendees.

  4. Finally, you can select these optional parameters to make sure the invite is created based on your preference.

    And that’s it!

Teams Invite vs Calendar Invite

Now, if you have a normal Calendar Appointment, it’ll look like below – It doesn’t have a Join button


Whereas, the Teams Calendar Invite has a Join button on it

Caveats

Some caveats worth mentioning –

  1. In case you are planning to have Appointments created in D365 and eventually either sync it to Outlook using Server-Side Sync, the invite will not be a Teams Invite.
  2. No option to later retrieve this Outlook Appointment in Flow and convert/update it to a Teams call.

Hope this was useful!

  1. Action.ShowCard vs Action.ToggleVisibility in Adaptive Cards | Microsoft Teams
  2. Admin Center URLs under M365 – Power Platform, Teams, SharePoint, Power BI
  3. Tag a User in a Microsoft Teams post made using Power Automate
  4. Visualize Adaptive Card for Teams user action within a Cloud Flow | Experimental Feature
  5. Create a Team, add Members in Microsoft Teams upon Project and Team Members creation in PSA / Project Operations | Power Automate
  6. Task Completion reminder using Flow Bot in Microsoft Teams | Power Automate
  7. Turn Teams On / Off at Org Level, provisioning users | M365 Admin Center Tip
  8. Adaptive Cards for Teams to collect data from users using Power Automate | SharePoint Lists

Thank you!

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Visualize Adaptive Card for Teams user action within a Cloud Flow | Experimental Feature

Microsoft Teams’ connector for Cloud Flows (Power Automate), and if you are looking to use Adaptive Cards for Microsoft Teams from the connector. There are chances that you’ll see some options to post an Adaptive Cards to Teams.

I’m exclusively covering a Teams’ connector’s Action called as Post an Adaptive Card to a Teams user and wait for a response.

But, you also have an improved Adaptive Cards Action in the Microsoft Teams’ connector that let’s you save the progress of the Card in the Flow itself!

Also, I found this effective for only 1 Action from the Microsoft Team’s Adaptive Card related actions. Not others.

Adaptive Card to Teams User – Regular

So, if you see the below –

With the above Adaptive Card, you’ll need to work in https://adaptivecards.io/ and paste the Card payload here and then save it. Also, you can’t visualize it within the Flow step itself.

Turn on Experimental Features for Flow

  1. Look for the Gear icon in Settings and look for All Power Automate Settings


  2. If the Experimental Features show below is turned Off, please turn it on.

Adaptive Card with Experimental Features On

  1. Now, if you select the same Action from the Power Automate step

  2. You’ll see the Step Action having the below details.


  3. Once you click on Create Adaptive Card, you’ll see the Designer itself in the Flow Steps which you can create the Card on the fly within the Flow and save the same as well.


    Hope this helps!!

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

  1. FormatDateTime function in a Flow | Power Automate
  2. Formatting Approvals’ Details in Cloud Flows | Power Automate
  3. Trigger Conditions not working in a Cloud Flow? Here’s Why | Power Automate Quick Tip
  4. Read OptionSet Labels from CDS/Dataverse Triggers or Action Steps in a Flow | Power Automate
  5. Save Adaptive Cards work using VS Code Extension – Adaptive Cards Studio | Quick Tip
  6. Adaptive Cards for Outlook Actionable Messages using Power Automate | Power Platform
  7. Parallel Branching in Cloud Flows – Isolate Response dependent Step Actions in parallel branches | Quick Tip
  8. Using outputs() function and JSON Parse to read data from missing dynamic value in a Flow | Power Automate
  9. Using triggerBody() / triggerOutput() to read CDS trigger metadata attributes in a Flow | Power Automate
  10. Call HTTP Request from a Canvas Power App using Flow and get back Response | Power Automate

Thank you!!

Create a Team, add Members in Microsoft Teams upon Project and Team Members creation in PSA / Project Operations | Power Automate

Let’s take a simple use case where you need to have a Microsoft Team created in Teams and have the Project Members added to the Microsoft Teams’ Project Team.

You can simply do this using 2 simple Flows in Power Automate

Scenario & Setup

If you are a PSA Customer, you would want to create a Team in Microsoft Teams based on what Project it is and then add Team Members of the Project as Team Members in the Microsoft Teams’ Team you created.

Let’s look at a Simple example of how you can do this. And further, you can enhance the implementation yourselves based on whether a Project becomes Inactive, or someone is to be removed from the Project Team.

I’ll be creating 2 Flows for this purpose –

  1. One that will create a Team in Microsoft Teams upon Project Creation and
  2. Other, will add Member to the Project’s MS Team upon addition of the Team Member in Project in PSA/Project Operations.

Create a Team for the Project

Let’s look at the first scenario where you can create a Team in Microsoft Teams once create a Project in PSA.

  1. Flow to trigger off of a creation of a Project.
    |
  2. Now, search for create a team in the next step to find a Microsoft Teams connector’s Action to create a Team in Microsoft Teams.


  3. Assign the Name of the Project and Description of the Project for easy understanding. You can make the team Private which is ideal to keep users’ Teams cleaner and also keeps Project discussions isolated if that’s the need.


  4. Once a Team is created, I’ve created a field on Project record to hold the MS Teams’ ID for other references.

    Add a step to update the Project back with the created MS Teams’ ID like this

    And in that, I’ll update the Created Team’s ID

  5. Now, fetch the Project Manager’s User record in CDS (PSA, basically) so that the User’s ID can be used to make the Owner of the Team you are creating.

  6. Next, you need to add Members to the Team. Look for add a member to the team and you’ll find Microsoft Teams’ action which you can use.

  7. Here’s how the Add a team member looks like.

  8. Now, this is a little tricky. Since you don’t get the Dynamic Values right away in this Action, click on Add a custom item.

  9. In Add a custom item, you can add the Team ID of the MS Team you just created for the Project in step #3 above.

    Once you add it, it’ll look like below

  10. And for the User’s AAD ID step, set the System User’s (fetched in #5)

    Add Azure AD Object ID

  11. Now, the last step looks set.

Add Members to the Project Team

Let’s work on the other scenario with other Flow. This will be on trigger of a creation of a project Team Member.

  1. This second will fire off on creation of a Project Team Member. Hence, the trigger on Create of a Project Team Member.

  2. I’ll get the Project record since I need the MS Teams ID which is a custom field we created to store the MS Team’s ID on the Project.

    Again, you can do this easily if you know how to get related records. I’ve done an extra step for simplicity.


  3. Now, the next step is to retrieve the Bookable Resource‘s Record. In turn, we’ll retrieve the System User record associated with the Bookable Resource record on the Project Team so that the System User’s ID can be used.
    Just because I need the Azure AD Object ID (User) entity, I’ve written a fetch XML on the Bookable Resource entity to go and get the User record’s Azure AD Object ID. I’ll need this to map it in the step where we’ll add the Member to the Project’s created Team.


    My step to retrieve Bookable Resource + System User’s Azure AD ID looks as below. Make sure you select the Bookable Resource GUID reference from the trigger i.e. the Creation of the Project Team Member record to ensure we only get 1 record.

  4. Then, I’ll simply generate a Parsed JSON after the above Step so that I can get to select the required attribute to select in the Team’s Add a Team Member step (Because the related field is not available for Dynamic Values) (In case you know how to directly write using outputs() function, that should be good enough too!!)


  5. Now, add the Team Member to the Project’s Team in MS team. Again, as mentioned above in the previous Flow, use the Add a member to a team Action from Microsoft Teams connector to do so.
    Now, add the Team’s ID in the Team field.

    On the Team field, you’ll need to Add a custom Value like we did in the previous Flow.



  6. And for the final step, in the User AAD ID for the user to add to a team step, you can pick the parsed Azure ID field from #4 above.

  7. As soon as you select from Parse, the Flow step will be converted to Apply to each. But that’s because we used List records which returns multiple values. Even though Apply to each is applied, this will logically run only once anyway!!

  8. Now in the user AAD

Working

Now’s let’s see all this in action.

  1. Let’s create a Project in PSA. Notice I’ll enter the name and the Description since we are creating a Team in MS Teams and that’s what we are filling out. Notice that MS Teams Project ID is blank. Our Flow will populate that once a Team is created in Microsoft Teams.
    Notice that Joe Danny is the Project Manager on the Project, he will be the Owner of the Team we are creating in MS Teams as per our first Flow.


  2. A Team like this will be created in Microsoft Teams.

  3. Also, notice that in the Project in PSA, a MS Teams Project ID will be populated too.

  4. Also, notice that Joe Danny is the Owner of the Team since Joe is the PM on the Project.

  5. Now, let’s add 1 more Team Members to the Project in PSA. Now, I’ve added a new Team Member Priyesh in the Project’s Team.


  6. That team member also get added as Members in Microsoft Teams in the Project’s Team. This is from out second Flow we created to add the Team Members to the created Teams for a PSA Project.


Here are some more enrichments you’ll need to do to handle some scenarios –

  1. Separately handle if a Project is Canceled/Deactivated for some reason.
  2. Remove Members from an MS Teams if they are removed from the Project.

Hope this was useful.

Here are some more posts about Project Service Automation (PSA) in Dynamics 365 / Microsoft Teams that might be helpful –

  1. Cancelled Bookings Imported in Time Entries in Dynamics 365 PSA issue | [Quick Tip]
  2. Task Completion reminder using Flow Bot in Microsoft Teams | Power Automate
  3. Change Booking Status colors on Schedule Board for Field Service/PSA [Quick Tip]
  4. Additional columns in PSA v3 Schedule view
  5. Check Managed Solution failures in Solution History in Dynamics 365 CRM
  6. Modify Project tab’s view in Schedule Board in PSA v3 | Quick Tip
  7. Update Price feature in D365 PSA v3
  8. A manager is required for non-project time entries, absence, and vacation error in D365 PSA v3
  9. Time/Expense Entry Rejection comments in D365 PSA v3
  10. PSA v3 View Custom Controls used on Project form

Thank you!!

Task Completion reminder using Flow Bot in Microsoft Teams | Power Automate

We can be a little creative and put Flow Bot to use in Power Automate’s Microsoft Teams connector! Let’s look at a use case where you can use it to make sure Task Reminders can be handled in a friendly way.

An Open Task

Let’s look at a typical Task in Dynamics –

  1. Let’s say there’s a Task set to Joe to have a meeting with Adam which looks like this in Dynamics.

  2. In this example, I’ll ask if the user forgot to mark it as closed since the time has passed.
  3. If the user is reminded that they actually worked on it but forgot to close, they can simply click on Mark as Complete right from Teams and not bother about going into Dynamics to close it.

Flow

Here’s how I constructed the Flow. It could be different in your case. I just wanted to put an example out –

  1. My Flow runs on Recurrence. Once a day to check whether any Tasks are left Open in the past 4 hours. Then it could be tasks from the previous day or anything older than 4 hours. (Not being stringent here 😊)
    Next, I’ll get all Tasks which are open over past 4 hours. Using Fetch Xml Query as I was comfortable doing that.

  2. Furthermore, in the Fetch Xml, I’m using Link Entity to get related data. I’ll need the record Owner’s Email address and I’m fetching it from User’s entity.

    To understand how to also read related records and use them as variables, you can follow Sara Lagerquist’s post on the same with a superb explanation – https://saralagerquist.com/2019/11/25/how-to-avoid-the-get-record-action-to-retrieve-related-data-in-power-automate/
  3. Post that, I’m Parsing JSON so that I can use fields later on in the Flow to put in the Flow Bot.

  4. Now, since the Get All Tasks will get all open Tasks from the system which may belong to other users too, an Apply to Each will open up to now treat each of these Tasks as a different Flow Bot message.
    This will loop through all the Parsed results from the step above so I can easily use fields from the Task

  5. Next, is the important step. In Microsoft Teams’ connector, you’ll find this Action called as ‘Post a choice of options as the Flow bot to a user’.
    As the name suggests, this Action can post buttons as choices to the user in their chat and capture responses. Simple!

  6. This Actions will demand the following details. My Flow bot card looks like this

    Now, the Options Item 1-, 2 etc. are the places where you can provide what all options the users can get to select.

    The Recipient above should be the email address of the Teams user who should get this Flow Bot. Hence, I had selected the FetchXML query above to get the Email address from the Owner of the Task itself and parsed it to select as a field in here.

    Finally, what should be the Message inside and the Headline. Which obviously will be read by the user to understand what the message is about. Hence, Description of the Task and Subject in them respectively.
  7. Later on, based on the response of the user, if they click on
    I’ll go ahead and mark the Task as Completed in Dynamics.

  8. And just set the Task record to Completed state.

  9. And that’s it. Yours can be even more basic or complex depending on how you want to use it.

Flow Bot

Now, every once a day according to above scenario, my Flow Bot will post the below message to the user’s Teams chat.

  1. You’ll see this card posted in the chat.

  2. Now, you have two options, Mark as Complete and This is Pending. Let’s say the user wants to Mark the Task as Complete. So selecting either of the options, you’ll get place to add Comments.

    I’m NOT doing anything to the passed comments, but you can do so based on your use case.
    Also, I’m NOT doing anything when the user clicks on This is Pending.

  3. On clicking Submit, the user sees as below and the buttons go away.

  4. And when you check the Task in Dynamics, it’ll be marked as Completed.

Hope this is useful to get your going! You can use this in several use-cases to capture something from the user through their Teams chat and update and forward it to other systems.

Here are some more Power Platform, Flow, Teams posts you might like to check –

  1. Using triggerBody() / triggerOutput() to read CDS trigger metadata attributes in a Flow | Power Automate
  2. Adaptive Cards for Teams to collect data from users using Power Automate | SharePoint Lists
  3. Send a Power App Push Notification using Flow to open a record in Canvas App | Power Automate
  4. Accept HTTP Requests in a Flow and send Response back | Power Automate
  5. Call HTTP Request from a Canvas Power App using Flow and get back Response | Power Automate
  6. Terminate a Flow with Failed/Cancelled status | Power Automate
  7. Pause a Flow using Delay and Delay Until | Power Automate
  8. BPF Flow Step as a Trigger in CDS (Current Environment) connector | Power Automate
  9. Generate Dynamics 365 record link in a Flow using CDS connector | Power Automate
  10. Loop through array of objects in a Flow & Create records in CDS | Power Automate
  11. Using Parse JSON to read individual List Records in Flow|Power Automate
  12. Call a Dynamics 365 Action from Flow [Bound and Unbound Actions] | Power Automate

Thank you!

Turn Teams On / Off at Org Level, provisioning users | M365 Admin Center Tip

Here’s a tip you’ll probably need. You can quickly turn Teams On/Off at the Org level.

Typically, if the Teams is not enabled at the Org Level, you’ll see this error message

if you click on the Enable Teams button, it’ll take you to this Microsoft Docs page – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/office-365-set-up?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5003911

Turn Teams On or Off at Org Level

To skip searching through the Microsoft Documentation on turning Teams On at the Org Level, do the following –

  1. Go to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, then look for Settings, expand it. Then, go to Org settings


  2. Now, look for Microsoft Teams in the list of Services. Click on it.

  3. Once the Teams’ Settings open, you can see that you can either enable the Team On or Off for all Users. Also, you can manage Guest Access as well.

Check Teams Provisioning Access

Post the above, there might be a few users or new users who might have been Teams provisioned through their licenses.

Here’s how you can check it –

  1. Use this link to check if Teams has bee provisioned to the users or not – https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/teamsprovisioning

  2. If not assigned yet, make sure you enable Microsoft Teams for the users by going into their Licenses and expanding Apps section.

    And then, look for Microsoft Teams

  3. Teams should then be enabled for Users.

Hope this helps. Here are some more Office 365 / Microsoft 365 Admin / Teams related posts you might want to check –

  1. Adaptive Cards for Teams to collect data from users using Power Automate | SharePoint Lists
  2. Adding a Canvas PowerApp to Teams
  3. Import multiple Users in Office 365
  4. Office 365 Admin: Quickly Enable Multi-factor authentication for users
  5. Create new Sandbox and copy Production over to it in PowerPlatform Admin Center
  6. Restrict User Access to a D365 instance using Security Groups
  7. D365 Quick Tip: Audit User Access in Dynamics 365 v9 CRM

Thank you!

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

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.)

  1. 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 –


  2. Next, I’ll loop through each of the SP items and initiate an Teams action to send Adaptive Card and wait for the response.

  3. 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.


  4. You can use dynamic data at the right places to populate you Adaptive Card wherever needed.


  5. 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.


  6. Then, you need to update the captured response back to the SP List.



  7. 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.

  1. 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.

  2. Now, click on Fill Out information and the card will expand to expose the form

  3. Now, I’ll fill the information as below and Submit the same

  4. Once I click Submit, I’ll see the below message. Remember, this populated from Update message field in the Adaptive card options.

  5. 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 –

  1. ChildFlowUnsupportedForInvokerConnections error while using Child Flows [SOLVED] | Power Automate
  2. BPF Flow Step as a Trigger in CDS (Current Environment) connector | Power Automate
  3. http://flowPause a Flow using Delay and Delay Until | Power Automate
  4. Generate Dynamics 365 record link in a Flow using CDS connector | Power Automate
  5. Text Functions in a Flow | Power Automate
  6. Loop through array of objects in a Flow & Create records in CDS | Power Automate
  7. Get Count of records retrieved in CDS connector in a Flow | Power Automate
  8. Number Formatting in a Flow | Power Automate
  9. Call a Dynamics 365 Action from Flow [Bound and Unbound Actions] | Power Automate
  10. Setting Retry Policy for an HTTP request in a Flow | Power Automate
  11. Switch-Case in a Flow | Power Automate
  12. Make HTTP request from Flow in Power Automate

Thank you for your time!

Adding a Canvas PowerApp to Teams

Let’s take a look at how you can simply export the Canvas App from your Organization and import it to Teams. And you should be good to go!

Exporting Canvas App

  1. Assuming you are an Admin and you have Owner/Co-Owner rights to the App, you can click the ellipses part on the App and look for Add to Teams option.
    addToTeams
  2. Once done, you can check on the right hand-side to see some details and Download the zip file of the Canvas App when ready
    downloadApp
  3. And that’s it, it gets downloaded like any other Model Driven/Canvas App solution file.
    downloaded

 

Importing App to Teams

  1. Now, you can import the same as a custom App in Teams. Navigate to the Apps section and look for Upload a custom app in menu as shown below.
    uploadACustomApp
  2. Now, chose the Org you want to import the solution file to. In my case, it’s just one organization, you may have multiple.
    selectOrg
  3. A dialog box will pop up to ask you to select the solution file, navigate to the saved location and pick the file.
    selectSolution
  4. And you’re ready. The App has been imported. You can see it in the Apps section under Built for CFT 146.
    findAppOnTeams

 

Adding App Per User

Each user needs to add the App themselves in order to be able to access it.

Also, remember that the user who is adding the App should have rights to access the App itself i.e. the App should be shared with those users.

Let’s say Kuldeep is another user in the CFT 146 Organization. He can explicitly search for the App and add it as below –

  1. Go to Apps, then look for the area, Build For <Org Name> and then look for the App that was imported.
    Attendees AppfindAppOnTeams
  2. Click on the App, and the dialog box will provide with a button to Add to Teams, along with other details mentioned alongside.
    clickAdd
  3. Once added, it will appear next in the left navigation menu and you can simply run it by clicking on it.
    appRunning
  4. In case the user doesn’t have appropriate rights on the App, they will see this message when trying to open the App in Teams.
    errorInAccessing

Hope this helps!! Happy 365ing!