Power Automate is a no-code (/ low-code) workflow automation solution. Because the service isn't "high-code", developers can't create flows with traditional try-catch-finally blocks for robust error handling. But flows could be designed with "error mitigation" in mind. Otherwise, these flows will fail without recovery. To mitigate some anticipated issues, makers can use Power Automate expressions … Continue reading Power Automate: Error Handling | Mitigation
Author: Charles
Graph API: Chunky Data + Recursion
Some results are best achieved via recursion, functions being able to "call themselves from within their own code." Using the Microsoft Graph API, recursion is necessary when querying large datasets because the API responses can only return so many records at a time. Whenever there are still more records to query, the response object includes … Continue reading Graph API: Chunky Data + Recursion
Graph API: SPO Move/ Copy Targets
Microsoft 365 has a large offering of services. To script and interact with many of them, the Microsoft Graph API utilizes a central endpoint, with dozens of REST APIs, to work with files, calendars, mail, etc. Although not currently as robust as some of the legacy on-prem PowerShell modules, the Graph resources and their APIs … Continue reading Graph API: SPO Move/ Copy Targets
Power Apps: Design | Hover Menu
Power App canvas app makers often need to build menus for their apps. To create a hover menu, without using a component, just add the necessary menu controls, then select and group them. Grouped elements have properties similar to every other screen control: Figure 1 - Power Apps screen with several controls. Figure 2 - … Continue reading Power Apps: Design | Hover Menu
MS Lists: Power Automate Connectors
Microsoft Lists are powerful. Especially when they're used to organize things like project tasks, support requests, product logs, etc. But regardless of the list's purpose, lists are created for either the individual or the group. If the individual, then the list is created in that person's [OneDrive for Business] site. Otherwise, the list is saved … Continue reading MS Lists: Power Automate Connectors
Power Apps: Build a Game… !JeOpArDy
The Power Apps platform is great for building business solutions. Even so, does it have to be all for work? Luckily, it doesn't. Just as business apps are created, developers could build simple games, too. For instance, designing a "Jeopardy"-esque game... Getting started, this example uses Microsoft Excel as it's data source. The Excel file … Continue reading Power Apps: Build a Game… !JeOpArDy
MS Forms: Bulk Copy/ Paste Options
For today's mission, a request came in to use a Microsoft Form to receive training log submissions. Every team member is responsible for submitting their logs and time is measured in quarter hour increments. The big ask? Can the dropdown values span from 0.25 to 40? Yes, but typing that many options is needlessly time … Continue reading MS Forms: Bulk Copy/ Paste Options
MS Lists: Mail Merge Data Source
Mail merge is still a thing. Why? Because after all these years, it continues to get the job done. But with more businesses using Microsoft Lists, can mail merge still do its job? The short answer, yes. However, Microsoft Word can't connect to Microsoft Lists directly. If we open the mail merge data source dropdown, … Continue reading MS Lists: Mail Merge Data Source
Power BI: Dataset Intersect(s)
Power BI can pull in and analyze data from a variety of sources. And once loaded, Power BI will form data relationships wherever it can. Even so, new datasets are sometimes needed instead of data relationships. One way to create these new datasets is to use the INTERSECT() expression with dataset pairs. One business scenario, … Continue reading Power BI: Dataset Intersect(s)
Power Automate: Calculate Days in a Month
Often enough, calculating the number of days in a month becomes a developer's task when working with calendars. Back in my newbie days, my solution was creative, and it worked, but it wasn't very efficient. Instead of an elegant formula, I just parsed a date value from a string inside a Try-Catch block: try { … Continue reading Power Automate: Calculate Days in a Month
Power Automate: SharePoint ODATA Filters
Microsoft Lists is growing in popularity. As the solution is augmented using Power Automate, citizen developers should know that [SharePoint Online] is the backend of Lists. With this in mind, remember that List flows are built using SPO triggers and actions. As these lists grow in size, large datasets need to be queried and iterated … Continue reading Power Automate: SharePoint ODATA Filters
Power Automate: Copy Emails + Attachments to SPO
Closing out this story, the Power Automate flow built to copy Outlook emails to [SharePoint Online] should have copied the email attachments as well. Though not every email has attachments. Tweak the flow and check for attachments, then copy when necessary... Reviewing a previous flow run, examine an export of the tempObj variable. Take note … Continue reading Power Automate: Copy Emails + Attachments to SPO
Power Automate: Copy Emails to SPO
Once upon a time there was a very special user. This user was great at their job and worked with us for many years. Throughout the years, their job responsibilities required that they catalogue and archive legal records for the business. Unfortunately, soon enough, they were ready for new career opportunities. Now, they needed to … Continue reading Power Automate: Copy Emails to SPO
SharePoint: Modern Site Architecture (Hub v. Sub)
Microsoft is encouraging organizations to embrace Modern SharePoint. With this nudging, creating sub-sites is still supported, but largely frowned upon. Though Classic SharePoint welcomes sub-sites. Modern SharePoint, not so much. Instead, Microsoft now recommends creating all sites as their own site collection, then associating sites using hub linkage... To better conceptualize the hub idea, consider … Continue reading SharePoint: Modern Site Architecture (Hub v. Sub)
Merry New Year 2022!
Blogging has been an interesting journey. Years back, someone told me to blog for myself. Being in the Microsoft 365 space, blogging would help me document things that I worked on for future me's reference. And to no one's surprise, he was right... However, my blog has since transformed. Much of this has become therapeutic … Continue reading Merry New Year 2022!
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