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Trigger a Power Automate flow from a Microsoft Teams message
Microsoft Teams can help bridge geographic and organizational gaps through capabilities like chat, meetings, and calling, but users often ask how it can help streamline the work they do. Fortunately, Teams and Microsoft Power Automate work seamlessly together to simplify how you and your team work.

We’re excited to share a new way to use this integration to automate and simplify work, starting from a conversation in Teams. The new “for a selected message” trigger enables any Teams user to create a custom message action to start a flow from any message in Teams. Even more powerful, is that flow creators can build this capability for their entire team, so everyone can easily benefit from some automation in their workday.

Example scenarios:

Below are four great examples of how teams can automate critical processes right from chat, but thanks to the flexibility of Power Automate, the possibilities are endless. Each of these flows are available as templates for you to use or modify to fit your needs right away!

Set a message reminder

There are times you might want to be reminded of a message from a colleague or your manager at a later time, like after your Teams meeting, or before the next upcoming meeting in a week. With a “follow-up later” flow, Teams users will simply have to click the “…” on the right-hand side of a message to set a reminder and specify when they want to be reminded. The Flow bot will send a reminder and a link to the message right in Teams.

Create a SharePoint item

We all need to keep lists – whether that’s a store inventory, project status, or the plan for an event. SharePoint lists are a great way to organize information and rich file types for you and your team, and now Teams users can easily add content to their SharePoint lists directly from chat with this new Power Automate trigger. Once the flow laid out below has been created, users will be able to add critical data to their list right from the chat – for example, if they learn that new inventory has been received.

Sales teams: Convert a chat to a Sales opportunity

Creating a customer opportunity is a critical step in any Sales process, and often that opportunity starts with a conversation. So why not capture that information right from that conversation where it began.

When you build the flow below using the “for a selected message” trigger, anyone in your team can easily create a sales opportunity just by clicking the “…” on the right side of a message in Teams and selecting “Create a Sales opportunity”. Simply fill out a custom form right in Teams, and the information you enter is automatically sent to your CRM system.

Create a work item in Azure DevOps

With so much collaboration and planning happening over chat now, messages can be a great way to request or report new work items to your development team. By combining the “for selected message” trigger with the Azure DevOps “create a work item” action, you can now use the message as the starting point to create a work item. All the details from the message, such as the message contents or who the sender was can be used to provide more details as part of creating the work item.

These templates are just scratching the surface you can always create your own to fit your business needs. Check out below for specific instructions on creating custom message actions for Teams, and check back here often for updates on what we’re rolling out next!

Creating your own Teams actions

To create a custom Teams message flow, choose the “For a selected message” trigger from the Teams connector. You can even configure the trigger to collect information from the user when its run from within Teams. For instance, if the flow is creating a task, you can use the adaptive card to collect information like the title of the task and the description.

Collecting information from the user

To collect information as part of the flow, you can quickly and easily create a custom form right from within the flow editor using the embedded card designer experience.

Using message details within the flow

There are a number of message elements that are available as a trigger output for use within the flow. Some of the more useful properties include:
- Message content – The full HTML content of the Teams message
- Plain text message output – Plain text variation of the Teams message
- Link to message – A direct url to reference the message
- Sender display name, Sender id – Details of the user who sent the message
- Originating user display name, Originating user id – Details of the user who invoked the flow
Triggering the flow from within Teams

Any flow that uses the “For a selected message” trigger shows up as a message action in the Teams message over flow “More actions” menu. The name that you give the flow is what is shown in the Teams client.

Check out the “for a selected message” documentation to learn more about this new capability. Of course the examples above are just scratching the surface of what is possible for you and your team to automate, so check out the Power Automate templates for Teams and learn to build your own flows to achieve even more. We’re excited to hear about what you build!
29/08/2020
Use Power Automate to create terms in the term store
Introduction

With the introduction of SharePoint V2 REST API for Managed Metadata services, it has become very easy to create a term in term store using REST API. But what if we would like to automate things? In such cases we can use the help of Power Automate. In the automation, we would create a simple custom SharePoint list with only title field, and when a user enters the item in the list we would create a term for that particular title.

Steps to be used to create flow using Power Automate

Step 1 – Select the trigger (when an item is created) We require this flow to trigger when a new item is created in the list, so we select the trigger as “when an item is created”. Once we have selected the trigger we need to select the site collection where the list is present and the list for which we need this trigger to work,

Step 2 – Create variables (Initialize variable) We will create two variables with the step named “Initialize variable” Let us set the name of the variables as mentioned below:
1. GroupId
2. TermSetId
We will use string as the type of both the variables. We can provide the value as Group Id and TermSet Id. To fetch the Id of group and term set we can navigate to the SharePoint admin center and expand the content service section present in the left navigation and click on Term store. Click on the group under which we need to create the term and copy the “Unique identifier” field value. In the same process for the term set, we can select the term set under which we need to create the term and copy the “Unique identifier” field value.

Step 3 – REST API (Send an HTTP request to SharePoint) We will now send the REST API to create the term, for that we will add a step named “Send an HTTP request to SharePoint”. This will allow us to use the SharePoint REST API v2 for Managed Metadata service for creating terms. Site Address – We can select the site address from where we need to post the API.Method – We will Select POST as the method value. Uri
1. _api/v2.1/termStore/groups/@{variables(‘GroupId’)}/sets/@{variables(‘TermSetId’)}/children
NoteWe will use the groupId and TermSetId variables in the URI. Body
1. {
2. “labels”: [
3. {
4. “name”: “@{triggerBody()?[‘Title’]}”,
5. “isDefault”: true,
6. “languageTag”: “en-US”
7. }
8. ],
9. “descriptions”: [
10. {
11. “description”: “@{triggerBody()?[‘Title’]}”,
12. “languageTag”: “en-US”
13. }
14. ]
15. }
NoteWe have used the title as name and description of the term but we can use another field value created in the list as described.

Conclusion

Term creation is automated by using flow in Power Automate. This can be helpful as most of the users will not have access to term store but they can create an entry in the list and if the user who has created the flow has proper access to create the term, then the terms get created in Term Store.
01/08/2020
Finding your feet with Microsoft PowerApps development – Part 02
In the last post, we had a quick introduction to PowerApps. We also demonstrated how to quickly create your first app.

In this post, we’ll take a look at the app you created and how it can be used to view or edit existing data and create new items in our data source.

A look at the app

From top to bottom, the default home screen is in this app is made up of three elements:
1. Quick action bar
2. Search bar
3. Gallery of items
Quick action bar

From left to right, the icons in the quick action bar allow a user to:
1. Refresh the app gallery to show new data
2. Change the order in which items are displayed (ascending or descending)
3. Create a new item
We’ll get back to the quick action bar later.

Search bar

The search box isn’t so much of a search option, it’s a filter. In the image below, you’ll see that, after typing ‘fi’, only two of the five items in the gallery still show.

Gallery

The gallery (shown above) is a view of items from our SharePoint list and, by default this gallery shows particular details about each item, e.g., title, name and department.

Clicking on an item in a gallery will take you to a screen that shows more information about the item selected.
02/07/2020
Finding your feet with Microsoft PowerApps development – Part 01
PowerApps makes the creation of business applications significantly easier (and cheaper) than the traditional approach to app development. In this post, we’ll give you some tips to help you find your feet in the world of developing with PowerApps.

1.What is PowerApps?

PowerApps is a collection of services that allow organisations to create their own business applications, using the data that they have stored in existing services, e.g., a SharePoint list or Excel spreadsheet, without having to have app development experience.

2. Accessing PowerApps

If your organisation already uses Microsoft 365, you’ve probably got access to create and use PowerApps.

To access PowerApps, you can either go to powerapps.microsoft.com and login or select it from the list of available apps in the Office portal.

3. Creating an app

There is more than one way to create your app and here, we’ll look at the simplest way; from a SharePoint list.
1. You’ll need to create a SharePoint list, similar to below. I recommend creating a new list and using test data to avoid making changes to items in a production list.
2. Next, select PowerApps from the command bar and the select Create an app

3. In the fly-out window on the right hand side, name your app and select create

This will launch PowerApps Studio in a new browser tab.

4. You first app has been created

Now, you’ve created your first app. In the next post, we’ll take a look at the PowerApps Studio and how to use it to make some changes to your app.

Click here to learn how 365 Evergreen can help your organisation make the most of low-code solutions, using PowerApps.
01/07/2020
Finding your feet with PnP PowerShell part 1
Introduction

In this series, we will look at PnP PowerShell discover what it is and how it can be used to manage your Microsoft 365 tenants. In this post focus on what PnP PowerShell is, how to install at and run some simple cmdlets.

What is PnP PowerShell?

Microsoft describes PnP PowerShell as ‘a cross-platform PowerShell Module providing over 500 cmdlets that work with Microsoft 365 environments.’

These cmdlets focus primarily on:
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Planner
- Power Automate.
How to install PnP PowerShell

Before you can install the PnP PowerShell module, you’ll need to have already installed the SharePoint Online Management Shell, from the PowerShell Gallery.

You can see if you already have the SharePoint Online Management Shell installed, by open running PowerShell as an administrator.
1. From the start menu, search for PowerShell and ‘Run ISE as Administrator’
- In the window that opens, paste the below and hit the green play button
Get-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -ListAvailable | Select Name,Version
- To then install the latest version, paste the below line and hit the green play button
Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
- In the pop-up window that appears, select ‘Yes to All’ and wait for the installation to finish. If you already have the latest version, a message will tell you so.
Now that PnP has successfully been installed, you can start to remotely administer our tenant.

How to connect to your tenant with PnP PowerShell

It only takes one cmdlet to connect to your tenant with PnP PowerShell.
1. In the PowerShell window paste the below, replacing the bold caps with your tenant domain and your 365 username and hit the green play button:
Connect-SPOService -Url https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential LOGIN@DOMAIN.com
- Enter your password in the pop-up window that appears.
If you tenant use multi factor authentication, you can use the below cmdlet and enter your credentials in the pop-up window that appears.

Connect-SPOService -Url https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com

And that’s it. You’ve now installed PnP PowerShell and connected to you Microsoft 365 tenant. In the next post, we’ll look at executing some of the most common cmdlets for SharePoint Online.
28/04/2020
Build a policies and procedures hub with Microsoft 365 – Part 02
Introduction

In the previous post, we created and configured a SharePoint team site for storing policy and procedure documents and a list that will be used to track who has and who has not read a document.

In this post, we’ll create a PowerApp that will list documets that are assigned to each user.

Before we start:
- upload at least one document to the library that houses your policies and procedures
- create a task in the task list and assign it to yourself
Creating the app

Follow these steps to create a simple app that will list a user’s outstanding documents and allow them to complete an acknowledge task.
1. Go to https://powerapps.microsoft.com and create a new canvas app from blank
07/04/2020

Build a policies and procedures hub with Microsoft 365 – Part 01

Introduction

Policies and procedures play an essential role in any organisation and it is essential that employees have access to the latest documentation.

By combining SharePoint and the Power Platform, it is quite easy to create a robust solution that can mange the creation and dissemination of these documents, as well as tracking who has

In this series of posts, we will:

create a policies and procedures team site SharePoint
create site columns using the tenant-wide term store
use Power Automate to send notifications to readers and creators
create a PowerApp to allow users to acknowledge that they have read and understood the document
create a policies and procedures hub (using the PnP modern search web parts)
create a Power BI dashboard to show reports

Pre-requisites

The following instructions are written with the assumption that you have exposure to SharePoint and the Power Platform, as well as sufficient privileges, e.g., Tenant global admin, Term store admin, etc..

Create terms

We’re using the term store to provide values for the metadata in the site columns used in the policies and procedures document library.

You can always skip this step and create other types of columns, e.g., choice or lookup.

The beauty of using the term store is that the metadata can be used in sites across your whole tenant, i.e., you don’t need to replicate terms for each site collection.

To create new terms in the term store:

Go to Microsoft 365 admin center
Select see all > SharePoint
Select Content services > Term store
(https://YOURTENANT-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/AdminHome.aspx#/termStoreAdminCenter)
Select Add term group

Give the term group a name (we’re using Policies and Procedures)
Within this group, create the following term sets and values:
- Business unit
  - Accounts
  - Business support
  - Finance
  - HR
  - IT
  - Operations
- Document type
  - Guideline
  - Manual
  - Policy
  - Procedure

For information about the term store, click here.

To learn how you populate the term store using Power Automate, click here.

The SharePoint team site

Now, we’ll create a SharePoint team site to store the policy and procedure documents. This site will also contain the lists that will be used to track the status of documents, e.g., who has and who hasn’t read a document.

The team site we are using is called Polices & Procedures Team (https://TENANT.Sharepoint.com/sites/PoliciesProceduresTeam).

Site columns

We now need to create the site columns (they need to be site columns to make use of the search functionality later on).

Use a good naming convention for the internal name for your columns, e.g., create a column called BusinessUnit and rename it Business unit afterwards. This prevents special characters appearing the name of the column.

The site columns we need to create are:

Name	Type
Business Unit	Managed metadata (use Business unit term set we just created)
Document type	Managed metadata (use the Document type term set we just created)
Document owner	Person or group
Published date	Date and time (Date only)
Next review date	Date (Date only)
Date assigned	Date (Date only)
Assigned to	Person or group
Acknowledgement status	Single line of text (Default value is Assigned)

Content types

Next we need to create the content types and add the necessary site columns.

Name	Parent	Columns
Policy and procedure document	Document	Business unit Document type Document owner Published date Next review date
Policy and procedure task	Item	Assigned to Date assigned Acknowledgement status

Library and list

Next, we need to create a document library (rather than using Shared documents) and a task list. We’re calling our library ‘Policy and Procedure documents’ and our list ‘Acknowledgements’.

To make things easier and repeatable, e.g., to move between environments, we have created a site design that you can download from here.

Next steps

In this post, we have configured the SharePoint team site that will be used to store our policies and procedures, as well as a list that will track who has and who has not read each document.

In Part 02, we’ll use PowerApps to create a simple canvas app that displays a list of documents for a user to acknowledge.

06/04/2020

Easily convert Word documents to PDF with Power Automate

Converting a Microsoft Word document in SharePoint to PDF is a great way to prevent further editing, but traditionally it was difficult to automate without code or a third-party plugin.

Now, though, Microsoft Flow makes it quite straight forward.

In the below tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a flow to convert documents to PDF using just six steps (with the help of OneDrive for Business).

I’m going to assume you know how to create flows and are familiar with actions, connections and dynamic content.

Creating the flow

1. In this example, we’ll create a flow from blank and use the ‘for a selected file’ trigger.

2. Then, we’ll enter the details of the site collection and document library that we want to run workflow on.

3. Then, we’ll add a new step for the ‘get file properties’ action. This is where we identify the file to convert. Use the same site address and library name as the previous step and choose ‘FileId’ from the options in dynamic content.

4. Now that we know which document to convert, we need to get the content of the document. To do this, add the ‘Get file content’ action. Use the same site address as before and choose ‘Identifier’ from the dynamic content.

5. Now we need to create the document in OneDrive for Business (you may need to set up the connection if it hasn’t already been set up). For the folder path, navigate to the folder that will store the documents you want to convert. I’m using ‘Files for conversion’.

For the file name, use ‘File name with extension’ from the dynamic content. For the file content, select ‘File Content’ from the dynamic content.

6. Next, use the OneDrive for Business ‘Convert file’ action. Use ‘Id’ from dynamic content to populate the file field. Type ‘PDF’ into the target type.

NB: The ‘convert file’ action doesn’t create a PDF in your One Drive for Business file.

7. Now the convert action file has been added, add a ‘Create file’ action. I’ve used the same site collection and document library as earlier but you can create the convert file in other site collections or libraries.

For the file name, use ‘Display name’ from the dynamic content. For the file content, select ‘File Content’ from the dynamic content.

Converting a document

1. Back in SharePoint, go to the document library that was used to create the flow.
2. Select the document that you want to convert and then select ‘Flow’. From here choose ‘Convert Word to PDF’.

3. Select ‘Run flow’.

4. The flow will run.

5. Your Word document has now been converted to PDF.

Next steps

Now that you know how to convert Word documents to PDF, you can expand this flow to complete further actions, such as email the PDF as an attachment, send notifications, delete the newly created file from OneDrive, or archive the original Word document.

15/10/2019
@ mentioning people in Microsoft Teams with Power Automate
Introduction

Users have long been able to use the ‘send a message in Teams’ action but, unless people checked every channel of every team they wouldn’t know about the post.

Now though, the Team bot can post a message AND notify the tagged user, so they know there is a message to read.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to assign a task to a user and then notify the assignee, through the ‘Post a message as the Flow bot to a channel’ action (currently in preview).

Prerequisites

I’m going to assume that you have a basic working knowledge of Flow, SharePoint and Teams.

Before we start, you’ll need a SharePoint list (using the modern experience), with the following columns:
- Title
- Description
- Assigned to
- Due date
- Status
And, of course, you’ll need an account for Microsoft Flow and a Microsoft Team to post to.

Building the Flow

1. Log into SharePoint and access your list and select Flow > Create a flow.

2. From the dialog, select ‘Post message to Microsoft Teams for a selected item’.

3. Select more and then select ‘Complete a custom action for the selected item’.

4. Flow will open in a new tab (you may need to connect Flow to SharePoint and there is more information here).

5. Select ‘Continue’.

6. Give the flow a name and select save.

7. Delete the text input

8. Next, add a new action by selecting the new step button.

9. Enter ‘Teams’ in the search box and select the Microsoft Teams icon.

10. Select the Post a message as the Flow bot to a channel (preview)

11. Select the Team and Channel that you want to post to and then it’s time to create your message.

Creating the message

To get @mention to work, you only need to use a simple line of code, but I’m going to add a little bit of detail so that the mentioned user has something to read.

1. In the message field, type <at></at> and place your cursor between the > and the <.

2. In the dynamic content search box, select ‘Assigned to Email’.

3. The assignee’s email address will be placed between the opening and closing tags

4. Now the flow is configured to notify a user that they have a new message to read but, as I said, I’ll add more task information for context.

Note: I’ve also used some basic HTML to format the message to make it more readable. You can read more about HTML here

5. Now, you can return to your list and test your flow.

6. If you haven’t already done so, create a task and assign to yourself.

7. Select the task > Flow > your flow (in my case it’s ‘Post to Teams with @’).

8. Select ‘Run flow’.

9. You’ll receive a desktop notification.

10. Open the Teams channel and view your message.

Conclusion

In this article, we have looked at how to use the Post to Microsoft Teams as the team bot action to post a message in Teams and alert a user. We did this by creating a manually triggered flow on a list, notifying the assignee of the task.
15/10/2019
Why organisations manage their documents with Microsoft 365

All businesses are different, but one similarity organisations have is the need to manage its information. Commonly, this information is most commonly stored in the form of documents.

Experience has taught us that there are many benefits of implementing a document management system, particularly with SharePoint Online.

Here are some of the benefits of using Microsoft 365 for document management:

Cost benefit

If you already use Microsoft 365, you’re probably already paying the tools you need to create a document management system, namely SharePoint Online.

By using SharePoint to manage your documents, you can maximise the return on investment in moving to the cloud

Searchability

You want a wide range of options to quickly finding files. You should be able to search by the file’s name and it’s content.

Ease of use

Intuitive use is a must for adoption—the more difficult a document management system is to use, the less effective it will be.

Access documents anywhere

Consider the working anytime, anywhere culture and pick a solution that smartphones and tablets can easily access.

Integrate with other applications

Easily integrate with the programs you already use, such as your email client and customer relationship management software.

Collaborate on documents: The ability for multiple users to view and add their contributions to a single document, usually in real-time, based on permission.

Secure your documents
The system should restrict who can see specific documents, provide user ID and password management, role-based security, automatic logoff settings and audit control, certifications, and data encryption on-premise, hybrid, or cloud systems.

Contact 365 Evergreen to find out how we can help your organisation manage its documents more efficiently and securely.

09/10/2019