Power Automate is the process automation service of the Power Platform. Makers leveraging the solution can build both desktop and cloud flows, but each comes with their own considerations. Though, more people are likely building cloud flows than desktop flows. And for those cloud flow makers, there are some best practices, tips, and factors to … Continue reading Power Automate: Cloud Flow | Best Practices + Tips
Power Automate
Power Platform: Understanding | Solutions + Environments
Application lifecycle management is the governance, deployment, and maintenance of applications. Even though the Power Platform is "low-code", makers should still adopt the practice. More specifically, when deploying their projects as solutions across environments. So, what are solutions and what are environments? Solutions are bundled project assets. In the Power Platform ecosystem, these project assets … Continue reading Power Platform: Understanding | Solutions + Environments
Power Automate: Lookup Table Arrays
As Power Automate cloud flows grow in complexity, makers often need to nest loops within loops. Nesting loops isn't bad, but nesting the same loop more than once is inefficient. An alternative approach, loop the content once without nesting it and build an array of objects, which creates a lookup table that can be referenced … Continue reading Power Automate: Lookup Table Arrays
Power Automate: Understanding | ticks()
For those new to working with Date and time values in computing, just note that they are measured and calculated using "the number of ticks that have elapsed since the beginning of the twenty-first century." Essentially dates and times are just large, whole numbers. And Power Automate has several available expressions to work with these … Continue reading Power Automate: Understanding | ticks()
Power Automate: Loops + Concurrency (/Parallelism)
Power Automate is versatile. As the automation engine of the Power Platform, it can connect with dozens of data sources to build repeatable work processes. And to enumerate datasets of these data sources, the Apply to each control is used to loop through the data records. But as datasets grow, expect the flows to take … Continue reading Power Automate: Loops + Concurrency (/Parallelism)
Power Automate: Date Difference
There is a lot of power in automation. And as Microsoft works to empower citizen developers, they've introduced another Date and time function, dateDifference(). This expression accepts two date parameters and outputs a string value: Figure 1 - Power Automate Date and time expression. The expression's string result is a calculation measuring the number of … Continue reading Power Automate: Date Difference
Power Automate: Error Handling | Scope Controls [try/catch/finally]
Reiterating, "high-code" error handling isn't supported in Power Automate. However, flow creators can use Scope controls and mimic a try-catch-finally execution: Figure 1 - Power Automate list of controls. To recreate the "try-catch-finally"-esque experience, add three Scope blocks to the flow and rename each: Try, Catch, Finally. Next, add the necessary actions to each Scope, … Continue reading Power Automate: Error Handling | Scope Controls [try/catch/finally]
Power Automate: Outlook Emails w/ Item Lists
There are hundreds of connectors available in Power Automate. Each connector represents a different service, and services can be daisy-chained together to create automations called "flows". Often though, flows need to send emails with listed items, reporting on the executed actions. The easiest way to accomplish this, store the items in an array variable, then … Continue reading Power Automate: Outlook Emails w/ Item Lists
Power Automate: Error Handling | Mitigation
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
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 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
Power Automate: Working w/ Arrays
The Power Platform prides itself on being low-code. While accurate, each solution requires different levels of coding. Power Automate, the low-code workflow creator, empowers developers to use variables when coding their business automations... Among the available variable types, array is a common data structure in many programming languages. For the uninitiated, arrays are essentially collections … Continue reading Power Automate: Working w/ Arrays
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