The ask, correct a failing Power Automate cloud flow. For months, this flow ran daily, without issue, querying a growing SharePoint Online list, but now, the Get Items action is failing and throwing an error: "The query cannot be completed because the number of lookup columns it contains exceeds the lookup column threshold." Figure 1 … Continue reading Power Automate + SharePoint Online: Get Items | Lookup Column Threshold Error
SharePoint Lists
Power Apps: Canvas Apps | Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)
The ask this time, pitch Power Apps as a low-code consideration for a few pro-code initiatives stuck in the perpetual, project backlog. Although sentiments are changing, there are still pro-dev teams skeptical of the Power Platform. A common concern, driven by much of the community skepticism, is the idea that low-code is limiting and restrictive, … Continue reading Power Apps: Canvas Apps | Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)
Power Platform: Canvas App + Cloud Flow | SPO List Config.
The ask, propose an alternative configuration option for a Power Platform solution. The maker created a Power Apps canvas app and a Power Automate cloud flow. When items are submitted, others are prompted via email, sent by the cloud flow, to open the canvas app and complete an action. Following best practice, the maker created … Continue reading Power Platform: Canvas App + Cloud Flow | SPO List Config.
SharePoint Online: Appended Comments + Canvas Apps + Cloud Flows
The ask, get the appended comments of a SharePoint Online (SPO) list item. One of the makers is working on a Power Apps canvas app and their data source is an existing SPO list. In this list, the maker has a "Comments" column with the Append changes to existing text setting enabled. Per the project … Continue reading SharePoint Online: Appended Comments + Canvas Apps + Cloud Flows
Microsoft Lists: Teamwork Management w/ Row-Level Security
Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project are both great project management solutions. Planner easily groups task items into buckets, visualizing everything for small to mid-sized teams. Project, being a more robust tool, allows subtasks, which are perfect for bigger teams and more nuanced projects. Unfortunately, both can fall short when the client asks for super secure … Continue reading Microsoft Lists: Teamwork Management w/ Row-Level Security
SharePoint Online: Understanding | Document Sets
Likely an oversimplification, but document sets are essentially collections of files and folders bundled together with shared metadata. A holdover from earlier versions of SharePoint Server, document sets aren't enabled by default in SharePoint Online [SPO], but can be enabled as a feature at the site collection level: Figure 1 - SharePoint Online site collection … Continue reading SharePoint Online: Understanding | Document Sets
Power Platform: Data Sources | SQL Tables or SPO Lists
The Power Platform is Microsoft's collection of low-code, citizen developer solutions. Being low-code, makers don't need coding experience to build their apps, bots, automations, and/ or dashboards. Even so, makers still need to decide where their data should ultimately live. For most people, SQL is typically the go-to data storage consideration. And honestly, SQL isn't … Continue reading Power Platform: Data Sources | SQL Tables or SPO Lists
Power Apps: Canvas App | SubmitForm() + SPOItem [Attachments w/ Permissions]
SharePoint Online lists are flexible as Power Apps canvas app data sources. Not quite as popular as SQL, but app makers can use SPO lists like database tables. One major perk of leveraging SPO lists, they're created ready to handle item attachments without makers needing to configure Azure BLOB storage. Still, there is a permission … Continue reading Power Apps: Canvas App | SubmitForm() + SPOItem [Attachments w/ Permissions]
MS Lists: Customize w/ JSON
Cost-conscious businesses typically have narrow profit margins. And because of that, they're likely hesitant to purchase too many third-party app licenses for their employees. Luckily though, if their employees are already licensed for Microsoft 365, then a handful of tech-savvy business users could build many of these apps in-house using Microsoft Lists. As the name … Continue reading MS Lists: Customize w/ JSON
Graph API: SPO List Items + Batch Delete
As previously explored, batching is the preferred and more efficient approach to processing a large volume of API requests. For every request, there is a call to the Microsoft Graph API and the accompanying response. With that in mind, things add up quickly as dozens, if not hundreds, of API requests are made. Batching bundles … Continue reading Graph API: SPO List Items + Batch Delete
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
SharePoint: What If… Metadata?
Metadata is baked into SharePoint. Even so, many people use SharePoint just for document storage and never explore metadata. But without metadata, SharePoint isn't living up to its full potential. What is metadata? Why is metadata important? For simplicity, think of metadata as "document tagging"/ "document categorization". With the documents tagged, search gets leveled up. … Continue reading SharePoint: What If… Metadata?
Power Apps: Recreating… Twitter
At last, closing out the Power App recreation series. Kicking things off, the first app mocked up Instagram. Nothing fancy, but the app used two galleries populated from two Excel data sources. The second app roughly recreated Netflix and again, used two galleries and two Excel data sources. However, app #2 used the Filter() function … Continue reading Power Apps: Recreating… Twitter
Power Automate: Populate SPO User Claims (multiple claims)
Power Automate can add user accounts to SharePoint Online list items. If the person column accepts a single account, then the assignee claims are passed as a string. But for multiple accounts, the assignee claims are passed as an array. Illustrating this, loop through a list of approvers, then add them all to a list … Continue reading Power Automate: Populate SPO User Claims (multiple claims)
Microsoft 365: MS Lists v SPO Lists
Microsoft Lists has been released to the wild. Is this different than SharePoint Lists? Kind of, but not really... Microsoft has a history of surfacing elements of SharePoint and creating "new" standalone solutions. Though not direct successors, but... Power Automate replaced SharePoint Designer workflows. Microsoft Forms became a substitute for SharePoint Surveys. However, things are … Continue reading Microsoft 365: MS Lists v SPO Lists