Last week in Microsoft 365 – 15 Oct – 21 Oct 2020 – VLog 2

In this VLog I have covered following topics

  • 1.Building a Me-experience in Microsoft Teams by Waldek
  • 2.How to use Microsoft Teams Templates as end user and Admin – Paolo Pialorsi
  • 3.General Availability of Microsoft Graph Teams Membership API – Brian T Jackett
  • 4.Improved News / Page Publishing Exprience –Marc D Anderson
  • 5.Power Automate Desktop October 2020 update

Transcript of the video:

Hello and welcome all to series “Last week in Microsoft 365”, this is the second video in this series and we have 5 topics to be highlighted this week which I liked.

1. First one is the Building a Me-Experience in Microsoft Teams which I got to know from Waldek’s blog, as it says there is no “I” but Me in Microsoft Teams. Basically it explains how you can utilize SharePoint Framework to offer a Me-Experience where users can start their day seeing their personal information. The article explains each options in very detail. So how to do it

a. Embed a modern SharePoint page: this approach is great as it does not any coding and can be done by creating modern page with different web parts and embedding it as Teams tab

b. Build a multi tab personal teams app: this requires some coding effort but not so difficult as you can steps are quite self explanatory

c. Combine multiple web parts in single tab: This is same as before but you need to use React to combine multiple React components Link: https://blog.mastykarz.nl/build-me-ex…

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/shar…

2. Second topic is from Paolo Pialorsi where he explains how to use recently introduced Microsoft Teams templates as an end user and Admin. He walks you through all details of the how to create a template etc from Admin portal. He also explains how you can utilize Microsoft Graph explorer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YQxF…

https://twitter.com/PaoloPia/status/1…

3. So the third one is General Availability of Microsoft Graph Teams Membership API which I saw from a Tweet of Brian T Jackett, basically it is an announcement made regarding Microsoft Graph Team Membership APIs that is a newly added API which adds , removes users faster. As we can see the article was originally written by Abhishek Anand. Link: https://twitter.com/BrianTJackett/sta…

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us…

4. The fourth one is also regarding a roadmap announcement which I came to know more Marc D Andersson where we will have an improved expriences in which users needs to input mandatory fields before publishing a news or page. This is planned to be released in Oct 2020 Link: https://twitter.com/sympmarc/status/1…

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micro…

5. The last one today is related to Power Automate Desktop October 2020 update. Recently Microsoft has released Power Automate Desktop and lot of improvements will be released soon so here is a summary of all those. If you want to try Power Automate Desktop please refer to link pasted in description Link: https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog…

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powe…

Episode 1 Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mteq…

Connect with me on Twitter or Linked In and follow YouTube Channel or my blog https://twitter.com/SinhaKislay

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2nd Microsoft Flow Template – Send Push Notification & Slack Message for a WordPress post #MicrsoftFlow #SharePoint #Office365

I was able to get my second Microsoft Template published in Microsoft Flow

Template can be used from here

Send Push Notification & Slack Message for a WordPress post

Functionality in this template is quite simple, when a WordPress post is made a push notification is made and also a Slack Message is posted in a particular group

To learn how to publish a template you can read my below blog about it

How to submit a Flow in template Gallery ?

To learn more about Microsoft Flow you can read below blogs

My tryst with Microsoft Flow!

Microsoft Flow – Create from blank

Microsoft Flow – Advanced mode options #SharePoint #MicrosoftFlow

Microsoft Flow template published #MicrosoftFlow #SharePoint #Office365

So finally my first Microsoft Flow template has been published, I am quite excited about it! It took sometime for Microsoft to add in the list of templates but better late than never.

Template can be used from here

Send email and add item in SharePoint List when WordPress Post is created

Functionality in this template is quite simple, when a WordPress post is made, you can get an email and same information can be added in SharePoint List.

To learn how to publish a template you can read my below blog about it

How to submit a Flow in template Gallery ?

To learn more about Microsoft Flow you can read below blogs

My tryst with Microsoft Flow!

Microsoft Flow – Create from blank

Microsoft Flow – Advanced mode options #SharePoint #MicrosoftFlow

SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Strategy #SharePoint #Office365

This post is written as step 2 that is strategy. Step that is planning can be read here SharePoint 2013 migration to Office 365 step by step – Planning #SharePoint #Office365

Once we have filled in the excel template and also found out all issues via SharePoint Migration assessment Tool we need to formulate a strategy to find solution to issues and customizations.

As an outcome of the first step you should have a list of categorization of issues / customizations for which you need to strategize. I am listing down some if it, note that these are just examples and it totally depends on what you have done in your farm before and how much customizations have been done.

customizationcategory

For more reading about above topics and in text format use below link to download an excel Customization / Issues Categorization

Note that any solution will be based on what kind of Office 365 license you have, whether your organization will have PowerApps or Flow or not? Also whether you will have SharePoint Add-in model in place or not

If you have any questions with specific customization solution you can ask in comment section and I will try my best to provide a solution to that.

After we define a strategy for customizations we need to find a strategy to migrate data from On-premise to Office 365. This will be our third step and we will define that in next post. Before we do data migration it’s important to list down how many Web Applications we have, size of Content Databases.

In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

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How to submit a Flow in template Gallery ?

You can also submit a Flow as a template to template Gallery. Once approved it will be visible for everybody to use. What you need is a descriptive name and good description about it.

You can submit Flow created from Blank or a modified one created from template. Note that Microsoft may modify your template before it gets published.

To submit first you need to create a Flow first, you can learn how to do it from this post Microsoft Flow – Create from blank . Once done select “Done” and then you will see option to Submit to gallery.

submiastemplate

submittogallery

Once clicked you need enter good description and submit it. If Microsoft think it’s worthy enough they will make it available.

descriptiontemplate

Microsoft PowerApps and Flow together #SharePoint #Office365 #Flow #PowerApps

Microsoft PoweApps and Flow can work together so let’s see an example and how they can be applied together.

We have already seen how to create an Microsoft Flow in another blog post Microsoft Flow – Create from blank and also how to create a simple PowerApp in this blog PowerApps first look! Create a simple PowerApp .

Process of attaching a Flow with PowerApps is a bit different, creating a flow is kind of same as before, you can create a Flow from blank but this time you can do it from PowerApps URL https://web.powerapps.com/ , look for Flows in left menu and create a Flow with option “Create from blank”. Since we have already dealt with this topic, I have already created a Flow just remember that Flow should be created from PowerApps site else it will not show up.

Here are some screen shots how you need to do, we are using the ApproveClaim list we created in earlier post and idea is to create a PowerApp to add item using the Flow.

createblankflowpowerapp
Create MS Flow from Blank in PowerApps

powerappflow
Enter Flow name and Click New step

powerappflowaddaction
Add an action, what we will do to allow user to make entry in list item

powerappflowcreateitem
Select the trigger that is SharePoint – Create item

askpowerapps
Enter SharePoint URL and select the List name, After that al fields will show up, click in the text box and in Advanced section select “Ask in PowerApps”

powerappfilleditems
After selection it’s done and click Create Flow

savedflow
Once Saved Flow will be visible in Flow section

Once the Flow is created, we will start creating the PowerApp, since we want to Add a Flow to PowerApp we need to use Visual Studio on Windows and not the web version. Option to add Flow is not available in web version.

So go the Studio, Click New and create App from Blank with Phone Layout.

newappoption

Once selected open canvas will be opened and using Insert tab Add three TextInput and button as well    onselect

Now we can add the Flow, select the button and in Action tab select “Flows”, it will show the available Flows. Select the Flow and add for this button

powerappswithflow

Once added it will be shown as below, note that we have to add 3 Textboxes as we have 3 inputs in our Flow. Most important is that we need to enter formula for OnSelect event for the button, basically we need to enter 3 parameters for the Run method which are our text boxes and property is Text.

onselectedit

Once done Save the PowerApp with proper name in The Cloud. It will be available on web under Apps section

flowlist

Now you can run it and input the text fields and click button, this will save the item to the List ApproveClaim

runpowerappflow

So that’s it in this post we have seen how we can create a Flow and associate it in a PowerApp. Our example is quite simple we use the Flow to create an item but you can understand how easily it can satisfy different business needs to implement various bussiness logic.

 

 

 

Microsoft Flow – Advanced mode options #SharePoint #MicrosoftFlow

Microsoft Flow User Interface is quite simple and intutive but it still gives you an advanced mode to write scripts, we are going to have a glimpse of it.

Advanced mode is available when you have applied condition.

msflowconditioneditconditionmsflow

One example is below, lessorequals is the conidion, Budget is the column name and 100000 is the compare value

@lessOrEquals(triggerBody()?[‘Budget’], 100000)

More complex conditions can be written using Workflow Defintion Language.

More examples

@contains(triggerBody()?[‘Budget’], 100000)

Bascially advanced mode needs to be used when you want to satisfy multiple conditions as User Interface only allows Single condition

One example is below, here we are matching Tweet text with multiple hashtags which uses an OR condition

@or(contains(triggerBody()[‘TweetText’], ‘SharePoint’), contains(triggerBody()[‘TweetText’], ‘Office 365’), contains(triggerBody()[‘TweetText’], ‘OneDrive’))

In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter

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Microsoft Flow – Create from blank

Microsoft Flow is a powerful visual workflow creator which helps to create processes and tasks. User Interface is simple and intuitive, let’s see an example

In this example I am going to create Flow from Scratch and not use any template. Template usage has already been shown in another Post.

Example we are going to implement is quite simple, user will add a item with Budget and Description. Based on the budget we will send email to different set of users for approval.

First step is to create a simple list with column Title, Budget (Currency), and Description (Multiline text). To create flow from scratch click menu “See your flows” and not Create a flow as it will ask you to select a template.

budget

Here you can see all your flows and also create from blank, click on it and you will get to flow creation page, next step is to select a trigger for the Flow. You have ample trigger points available but in this case we will select List item creation

craeateflowfromblankbudgetemail

Now you need to enter your SharePoint site URL and select the list for which you want to create flow and add next step which will be a condition in case but for yourself you can select any step as per your needs.

flowaddcondition

Here we added a condition that if Budget is greater 100000 Kr then send email to another person and if less than to send another person. There are mutiple things happening here, you add condition and you also look for actions based on that. You can also Dynamic content like column values from List like Budget

dynamiccontent

Since we are trying to keep it simple our flow is done and we will Create flow on top to publish it and then we can see it in action

You also have some options of Advance edit and also add further conditions, apply to each , do until and a new scope which we will explore in another post.dynamiccontent

Once create click Done and your will flow is ready to use.

Now let’s see this in action!

Add a new item which has budget more than 100000 Kr. Once added I should get email on my Gmail as described in Flow.

newitembudgetbudgetemailsent

Wallah! I got an email and also unsubscribe option is already added which is kind of cool!

You can also how your flow in doing my going to My Flows and see details if it has succedeed. If you clock information icon on right you will see more details, also click on any flow which has run and it will show which steps has been a success or failure.

So that’s it for now, you can see how easy and intutive is to create Flow.