Automate manual work using Power Automate - 2021 - no programming knowledge needed.

00:07 - Automate as a concept or a product. And good news is automation does not mean programming this whole thing, which I’m going to show you does not require writing a single line of code or knowing any particular language.

00:22 - Now before we go ahead one more. Thing when we say repetitive manual work.

00:30 - It can mean many things. In the context of office tools, it can still mean two things, and one of the things which we do manually and repetitively is data cleanup.

00:43 - And one word of caution, if you’re getting data into Excel, CSV, database, cleaning it up, combining it, consolidate every month, every quarter, every day, whatever that is manual work that can be automated, but that cannot be and should not be done using power automate for that Excel and power by themselves are very, very capable, and there you should use the gate and transform functionality.

01:14 - They just called power query. We’re not going to go into that data cleanup at this time.

01:20 - So. We’re going to talk about five scenarios today.

01:25 - What are the scenarios? These are the common scenarios, not necessarily all of them are practically useful in business contexts, but I’ve chosen them in such a way that it will give you the knowledge of the ingredients required to map it to your business context.

01:42 - And that’s the idea, because when you’re learning something new, you can’t start with something which is overly complex doesn’t make sense.

01:51 - Now, even if you’ve never done anything about power, automate or any kind of automation, probably you’ve already done something before which falls under automation category.

02:03 - What is that outlook rules? I’m sure everyone is aware of what is outlook rules, and maybe you have created some.

02:14 - So this is something which everyone can relate to.

02:19 - Now the typical outlook rule. The most popular Outlook rule which people create is actually the worst one.

02:27 - And I’m not going to go into that, but just let me remind you that if you are doing this, don’t do it. There is a better way.

02:35 - So the most common outlook rule people create is what when the mail comes, look at either the sender name, typically sender name and depending on who the sender is, move it to another folder.

02:47 - That’s a rule. It has two components, wakes up whenever a male comes, and then if the mail satisfies certain criteria which is coming from a particular person.

02:58 - Then it does some action, which in this case is move to another folder.

03:04 - So there is a trigger and there is an action.

03:06 - So from that point of its automation. The reason I’m saying don’t make this kind of rule is not a technical reason.

03:14 - What happens is outlook rules and most automation related activities happen automatically.

03:20 - So if someone sends you a mail and the rule runs and it goes to another folder, you have no chance to notice it.

03:28 - Also, and that mail is no longer going to be in inbox, now we’re struggling to manage the deluge of mails.

03:37 - You’re getting an inbox in the 1st place. Why complicate matters? By forcing yourself to look at 15 folders, so that’s why it doesn’t make sense anyway.

03:47 - Now, as I said earlier, there is trigger and automation.

03:51 - So trigger can be in various things and actions can happen in various applications.

03:56 - That’s the whole concept. Examples being, for example a mail arrives.

04:01 - There is an attachment and you want to detach the attachment and put it somewhere.

04:06 - It could be one drive teams, SharePoint somewhere.

04:11 - Maybe you have a Twitter handle for your company and your monitoring your Twitter handle.

04:16 - Or some hashtags which are relevant to your industry and anything comes you want to create a live database for it either in Excel or something else.

04:25 - So trigger action a more practical example would be your conducted a survey and we’re going to do this actually today.

04:32 - Conducting a customer satisfaction survey if the rating is low, then you want some action to happen immediately.

04:39 - If it’s high again some action, so these are some examples.

04:43 - So when it comes to all these tools, what are we talking about? Power automate is a part of Office 365.

04:51 - I’m sure all of you know that. So which version of Office 365 is it involved here? Not a particular version. The lowest version of Office 365 also has power automate.

05:03 - I’m talking about the business and enterprise versions, not the home version or student version.

05:10 - So basically power automate understands all the tools which are part of his platform.

05:18 - How does that work? So power automate is the orchestrator.

05:21 - It’s just sitting there and looking at all these guys.

05:24 - So what is it doing? Nothing on day one it is there.

05:27 - It is noticing all these things but doing nothing about it.

05:30 - So we have to make it do something. So this is just a representative sample of various tools in.

05:38 - Microsoft platform or Office 365 platform. So these things can be triggers or these things can be actions we will see which ones are what.

05:48 - In many cases, for example, Outlook can trigger an action as well as an action can be send a mail using outlook.

05:56 - So some are both, but that’s not all. There are 300. I don’t even know the number now it keeps on increasing 300 plus I think now third party applications where the same concept works trigger an action.

06:10 - So many of these are. Having both triggers and actions, some of them only triggers or them only I can depends on the application and then many many variations there.

06:22 - So with that, let’s actually look at the product and see how it looks.

06:27 - Now when you go to Office 365, first of all you should go to all apps or you go to allappsoffice. com, log in and then click on this waffle menu and then Scroll down and you’ll see all apps.

06:41 - Even then you may not be able to see all apps and then you click on Office 365 and then it will show you all apps.

06:49 - So when you see all apps you will get to see the entire picture of what you have and this is the first thing you should do because sometimes.

06:59 - For whatever reason, I team may not have enabled it for you, so make sure you have power.

07:05 - Automate that step number one. Now let’s go inside it and see how it looks, behaves and how to use it to our advantage.

07:23 - So when you’re going, it goes to the home tab and this may be a little confusing because it has many, many things under it. There’s a very good training built in which you can try and learn it.

07:37 - Also, self paced quick video, all of them, but let’s actually see this trigger an action fund.

07:43 - So when you say I want to create a flow, this is called a flow.

07:49 - Older name is slow now it’s called power automate because it’s a part of power platform which is or BI or apps and power automate.

07:58 - Barbie, I have already done sessions on power automate we’re doing today and perhaps will be the next event.

08:04 - I do so when I go to create. Basically, I’m saying I want to automate something.

08:09 - Allow me to create it and then we get many options.

08:12 - So this is the first thing to understand. The standard thing which I told you about something happens and then some action is taken so that something happens.

08:24 - Who’s going to monitor? That’s the job of power automate.

08:27 - Earlier we as humans would do that. For example, you have requested some quotations.

08:32 - You’re floated an RFP, and you expect some 25 vendors to respond to it.

08:37 - You are the procurement person. Your email ID is. There are a group mailbox, whatever. And then these people are going to send mail and each mail.

08:47 - Will have an attachment. And of course, that RFP deadline is for 15 days in future.

08:52 - So now every day, who is going to look at the inbox or whatever mailbox find out is anybody responded and then detach the file and put it somewhere.

09:02 - So that we can compare the codes. Now that part maybe today are doing manually that I want to automate, so that’s called the first one.

09:11 - Automated flow, which is the trigger, an action kind of flow, but need not be. That all kinds of automation is triggered based on some other events.

09:21 - Sometimes you want to trigger it. For example, I have a list of people I want to send them a mail merge.

09:27 - I don’t want to send the mail merge when something happens automatically.

09:32 - I want to decide when it happens, so that’s called an instant flow, so I. Click on something, a button basically, and then whatever I have decided happens.

09:41 - So actions I’ve defined the trigger is me basically.

09:45 - When I click trigger is. Triggering the rest of the actions and then there is schedule flow.

09:52 - For example, people have a bad habit of using Excel for keeping their task list and then they claim that Excel task list doesn’t give me reminders.

10:01 - Why doesn’t Excel task list give you reminders? Because Excel is not designed to manage task.

10:07 - What is designed to manage task outlook. Now if you put Outlook tasks, they also don’t necessarily give you reminder it’s off by default, but you can enable it.

10:17 - But never mind for whatever reason, you have some list in Excel and there is a date column there and based on that date and today’s date you want to compare if it is exceeding today’s date is more than that deadline then he should be reminded that this is delayed.

10:34 - So that who is going to trigger, I’m not going to please press that button every day an Excel doesn’t have a trigger saying I added a new row because you’re not writing tasks everyday.

10:45 - You already have a task list. You learn something to wake up and check it every day, so that’s something to wake up when.

10:54 - That is the schedule workflow. So you can say everyday I start my work at 9:00 o’clock.

10:59 - So maybe this thing wakes up at 8:00 o’clock, goes through that list, checks the deadline for each item, looks at what is today’s date, compares the two, and if it is exited then it does some reminder to me how to send the reminder we will see.

11:14 - And then we have our peer which we are not going to go into today where we have some legacy applications you want to do screen scraping that is desktop version of power, automate and business process flow.

11:27 - Also we’re not going to go into that small complex, maybe some other time. So with that, let’s understand the anatomy of how this works.

11:35 - So let’s create an automated flow. But if I go into automated flow it gets really complex.

11:40 - There are then it’s certainly going to ask you complicated questions.

11:45 - And you have no idea what to do, so don’t do this a correct way to Start learning all this is to go to templates.

11:52 - Just click on templates. Maybe there are lots of them.

11:56 - Don’t just randomly scroll. You think first of all you think which part of your day to day work is worth automating and I’m unable to be automated in the context of the platform. If for example, some kind of automation requires some homegrown application which doesn’t integrate here, that cannot be done. So.

12:17 - Let’s say we’re talking about the email attachment thing, so email is going to come to outlook, so let’s search for Outlook.

12:26 - And then what happens? See it filters all the templates which are there hundreds of templates.

12:32 - By the way, you can also submit yours. And it is actually saying wherever Outlook component is involved, I’m going to show you all the templates.

12:42 - So what is it saying? Saveoutlook. com that is personal outlook like that, save Office 365 outlook which is the corporate outlook to a specified one drive folder or.

12:54 - This or this or this, so one of the components is outlook, but you’ll notice that. In all these cases, it’s not 1 icon. It’s always more than one icon because something is triggering and something is doing the action.

13:09 - So that’s what I’m saying. So in this case the first one is the trigger and 2nd, 3rd, 4th actions, for example here.

13:17 - Bill for items. So what is it saying? Email me with a list of upcoming calendar events.

13:23 - So what is this first icon? It’s a scheduled item. You say alarm.

13:28 - That means it’ll wake up every day, go through some list in calendar and then send me a notification like that.

13:35 - So one trigger and three actions like that it is saying.

13:39 - Yeah, monitor tweets and then send me a mail.

13:42 - So what you do is go to one of the templates which relates at least approximately to what you’re trying to automate.

13:52 - Click on it now. It gives you a more detailed version of.

13:55 - It shows you which products or components are going to be a part of it.

14:00 - OK, and then says alright, you have to log in.

14:03 - Generally will be logged in, but in this case not.

14:05 - Then just make sure you’re logged in and all these things are ticked.

14:10 - If it was a third party application. What happens, for example, I say Twitter? Now it’s checking how I logged into Twitter.

14:25 - I have it was not. It will ask me to log in.

14:28 - You can switch accounts, you can manage multiple and so on, so make sure when you go into a template, whichever template you go to.

14:39 - All the connections are alive. So what is it saying save email attachment to specify folder specified folder in one drive? So two components continue? Now it is already developed that workflow it is showing you already made workflow which will.

14:57 - Right now we’re trying to use it for learning purpose.

15:01 - So the first thing which is there in this is called the trigger and everything else is actions.

15:07 - So let me zoom out and show you how it looks.

15:10 - It may look a little complex but it’s not. Because there is a condition that’s horizontally spread now technically speaking, one more nice thing you should know that technically speaking, all this is available on mobile as well.

15:26 - So exactly same functionality. I can create a new flow from mobile, but as you realize it spreads visually, so it’s a little manually difficult, operationally difficult to create it on mobile but functionally possible so.

15:43 - Now what is it saying? On new mail that is the name of the step.

15:49 - Whatever step you can create a name, by default it’ll have a name, but you can rename it also.

15:55 - So good idea to do that. So their inbox obviously. And then you don’t need anything.

16:02 - If you want, then you can filter on this. So now, for example, we were looking for an RFP response and we assuming that the word RFP at least will be there in the subject.

16:18 - Or maybe there is an RFP ID which is 8-9 something.

16:21 - So now what is it going to do? Is going to monitor all incoming mails like an inbox rule, but it is going to act on it only when this filter is true.

16:33 - So that’s how they work on it. Done so, now it’s saying OK.

16:39 - Mail came then what? What do you want to do next? So condition? What is the condition? This is the condition.

16:48 - What does it say is because there could be more than one attachments.

16:53 - Remember so apply to each attachment create when condition is satisfied.

16:58 - Then it is asking you to specify a folder path which it is not.

17:02 - So you go to your. One in one drive and choose a folder.

17:08 - So I will choose a folder and now it will say whatever attachment has come in a loop.

17:13 - It is going to go and save it there, so that’s how it’s a ready made flow.

17:18 - You have to fill in the blank so little bit and then it’s done.

17:23 - Well, what is this condition? From this is another condition which says if it came from a particular entity or person.

17:31 - If you don’t want this condition, we can remove this condition, then it will apply on every email where the filter condition we have specified, which is the RFP ID and as attachments.

17:42 - Notice there’s another filter here that only males which have attachments obviously have to be acted upon, because that’s what we’re detaching and putting it there.

17:52 - When I said attaching the attachment remains with the email, a copy of that is made and put in one drive or variable.

18:00 - Now instead of one drive, maybe you wanted to put it on something else, no problem. So what do we do? We can choose another action and let’s say file.

18:15 - Now it’s saying files can be put in SharePoint also OK.

18:19 - Then you have to give the SharePoint library path like that.

18:23 - For example, you wanted to put it in teams for whatever reason.

18:27 - No problem, you can say teams and I want to send a message to teams and in that message also I can put various things.

18:36 - Select that. Multiple things can be done depending on what you need, so that’s how this whole thing works, so I’m going to go back.

18:46 - I’m not going to save this, you get the idea. So now let’s start with some real stuff.

18:53 - So bottom line, Explorer templates came out.

18:57 - Fill in the blanks, tweak them, and then learn. That’s the best way.

19:06 - So now let’s start with something which I will trigger.

19:10 - So what is this I go to create? And then I say I want to instant cloud flow.

19:16 - Basically a button and it will give you this manually trigger or flow flow button.

19:22 - For mobile it’s there everywhere. So what I’ve done here is, I’ve already created something. His guard panic button suppose I’m not coming today in the morning.

19:33 - I realize I’m not well. I need to inform my boss.

19:36 - I need to inform my assistant and I’m an active part of our team, so I need to inform my team members also that I’m not coming.

19:46 - For whatever reason, so that’s a panic button.

19:48 - So let’s edit. Now when you have something created, there is an edit button.

19:52 - There is a run button, so will go to edit.

19:55 - These floors are all listed here. Now remember after this session most probably are going to try it out very good.

20:03 - You should and you will learn a lot from them.

20:08 - But also remember when you try something it works.

20:11 - It doesn’t work if it doesn’t work, you will figure it out eventually.

20:16 - It’ll work once you are. Having a workflow which is running, obviously it’s a test workflow because you are trying it out and learning.

20:25 - Then you learn from it and then we will create real flows.

20:28 - But the problem which happens is this test flow is still alive, so it may still be awake and taking actions on the triggers we have defined as a part of learning.

20:38 - So that’s a common mistake people do. So when you create a flow which runs properly, you’ve learned it. Remember to disable it.

20:46 - So how do you disable it? Click on the three dots.

20:50 - They turn off, otherwise it’s just unnecessary running and even may have some unintended side effects which are difficult to troubleshoot because this is running silently, right? Unless you come here and notice it is running, it’s not going to tell you in any way.

21:05 - So remember after learning is over, check it off and then move on.

21:10 - So now let’s edit this. When you go to edit, you get another dialog where this thing comes.

21:16 - So trigger is this manual. If I want I can create a trigger.

21:22 - Sorry, I went to the wrong one. Panic button is what I wanted to show you.

21:31 - So manually trigger a flow. I don’t want if I wanted to, I could have said give me an input.

21:39 - And I want to initialize a variable. Why do I need an variable? Because I want to inform people something I want to tell them.

21:47 - I’m not coming today. So I want to send a mail and I want to send a message through teams.

21:53 - In both cases I will have to write that excuse again.

21:56 - Instead of that I will define it only once and later on if I had one more action where I have to repeat it, I can reuse it. So I’m just initializing a variable called message, right? And here.

22:11 - This is a little technical, but you know Boolean means true false yes, now we know that in Excel also integer is number, float is decimal number or large numbers string means text object means file image kind of thing and array which is a list of items.

22:28 - So we have to choose one of them. In this case, it’s a simple string, so I’m just saying I’m not well today, hopefully will be invertible done.

22:36 - That’s my string message. Technically, I could have said add an input here itself and I’ll just show you that an.

22:45 - Let’s call it excuse. And this when I trigger the floor, it’ll actually asked me what is your excuse today? So that’s also nice, but I’m giving you both variations.

22:59 - So now next step added an how do you add a step? I wanted to send a mail so new step I’ll just show it to you here when I send you step what you get is a very long list of all kinds of applications which can.

23:18 - Have action. Trigger we already finished, so Yep. Other than the first item, everything else is action. Now, where do you want to take action? You want to treat the fact that you’re not coming today.

23:30 - That’s also possible. So now basically it is showing you a really, really long list of what can you do now.

23:37 - Right? Yeah, see more and really go more. So. What are we supposed to do? First you choose the application or tool or whatever.

23:51 - Well, you want action to be taken, so in this case I want to do it for mail.

23:56 - So search for mail. Now you’ll notice that it’s not only showing me Office 365, showing me all kinds of mail, Gmail also, and this is a list.

24:06 - So notice just under mail category we have so many third party applications where I could have integrated this, so maybe I had something in Zendesk I could have said that I wanted to inform my team in Salesforce no problem.

24:22 - I wanted to create an outlook task for someone.

24:25 - I saw all kinds of things. What is it filtering on the word mail? So now in this case I’m choosing outlook.

24:35 - Now it is me showing me all the actions which outlook supports.

24:39 - Am I creating a contact? Am I creating an event event wins, calendar entry and so so basically I want to send a mail.

24:47 - Now of course you can. Specify names of people. I’m hardcoding the names.

24:55 - But you could have picked up your manager’s name automatically also.

24:58 - There is an action called gate manager. Now that is not very level because in the Active Directory.

25:07 - Your manager must be properly populated and many customers don’t have that properly blocked populated because the integration between the HR system and IT system is missing.

25:16 - That’s why I’m showing you hard coding. But if the manager field is there and you need manager, you can get it automatically.

25:23 - Alright, now again specify the subject. Whatever it is, and now I want to specify whatever this variable is, so that is the important thing.

25:35 - This is like a template, because every time it may be different.

25:39 - So notice this is the message I have shown so.

25:43 - This is step step step step. So when you are in the 5th step whatever happened in the steps above is available to you and it’s color coded.

25:53 - Look at this color and look at this. It’s saying from a variable which are defined.

25:59 - There is a variable called message. We want to put that yes OK and then.

26:05 - What else informed Team message idea OK, manual flow. OK, and remember I created a input called Excuse it’s saying you want that that also I will put here no problem, so this is. So I can actually create a message like this.

26:26 - And then that’s it, I said, see you and now my flow is ready to run.

26:30 - So I’ve already created this step. So I’m going to delete this particular step.

26:35 - So because we already have initialized variable, inform people inform team. So I’ll delete this and I’ll show you what I have done here.

26:44 - Same thing inform people. I’m informing boss and my assistant downtime message and in this case I will also show you excuse.

26:54 - Excuses the input we took. Variable is hardcoded right now.

27:00 - So excuse I want to put the actual excuse. How do I do that dynamic content if you don’t see this drop down, what do you do? There is an option here called add dynamic content.

27:11 - This opens this drop down now as you’ll see as things become complex this list can get very very lengthy.

27:18 - So if it’s a long list you know what you’re looking for is excuse, just type it here and it will filter it out.

27:25 - Why is it this color? Because this field was picked up where in the first thing? So. This color comes from this color, so every step as a color and that generally is shown here easy to visually identify.

27:40 - So now I’ve done what I wanted to. In addition, I wanted to also put a message in the teams team where I am very acting.

27:48 - So what am I doing here? I am also active in the audit team in teams, so I’m saying in the general channel you can get a list of teams, list of channels, say show a message and I will also add the excuse.

28:06 - Where is the excuse as you know? Select all search. Done. Now, once you are done, is this safe? Also, when you’re creating some flows, the name can be very unreliably unwieldy and long, so remember, just click here and rename it to shorter logical, easily understandable names. Make sure you save it.

28:31 - Then before you do anything else, you have to look at this thing.

28:35 - This is a sort of a checking system validation system.

28:38 - What does it do if there is any error, it will show you that error.

28:44 - If there is a problem, it will show your head down, but anyway, it’s a good idea to click on it.

28:50 - It may show some warnings and now we are ready to test it so we can test it from here itself.

28:56 - But before we test it, let me show you what happened when I go back to my flows.

29:02 - This thing is there and it is available and it is turned on.

29:06 - If you don’t want it, you turn it off. A button thing is not going to invoke itself, so it’s likely to have a side effect, but anyway, turn it off.

29:18 - Alright, now let’s go in and I’ll show you how to test as soon as you finish editing and saving.

29:24 - It’s a good idea to keep testing after every stage.

29:27 - Otherwise, if you had many steps and then something goes wrong, troubleshooting becomes difficult. Now it’s saying how do you want to do it manually or automatically? This is a manual flow, so there is nothing automatic about it.

29:40 - What it is saying is if you just tested it.

29:43 - Whatever you just did for the previous days, do you want to use it? That’s how it is saying automatically.

29:49 - We have not tested. Idiot will say will do it manually.

29:52 - That’s OK, tested. Now it says OK, let me test it on the floor, but wait when you run the flow, it’s a button flow and you decided that when I click on the button it should ask me an excuse.

30:11 - OK. That is the excuse today, so I said now with this input run the flow.

30:21 - Now it says OK flow has run successfully. You want to see exactly what happened in all the steps.

30:26 - Go to Florence page. You don’t have to go there, just said, done and it’ll actually open that page.

30:31 - This is called the run page. It shows you all the steps, but you can’t edit the steps.

30:36 - You can’t see the steps it is showing you. This happened. This happened, this happened.

30:41 - If something didn’t happen, it will show Red Cross.

30:44 - That is what you troubleshoot. So now let’s see what it shows will go step by step goes.

30:50 - Here it says input. This is called Jason. Don’t get scared, get used to it.

30:56 - What is saying? If you input this OK, what happened then initialize variable is hard coded thing.

31:03 - OK, nothing, you inform people what happened.

31:07 - This was sent and this was also sent. This is HTML. Soapy means paragraph, so that’s OK. We are means Doesn’t matter.

31:17 - And then inform Team. What did I do? It went to the audit team General tab and put a message.

31:24 - So let’s see whether it actually happened or not.

31:28 - So now I’m going to go to the mailbox of my assistant.

31:32 - So this is assistant assistant. Got an email saying from Nathan.

31:38 - Not well, excuse whatever done. Now by the way, this is a new feature automatically suggested.

31:46 - Responses. This is not a more automated feature, by the way. This is an outlook feature.

31:52 - Anyway, so that’s done. Let’s see what happened in teams.

31:55 - So I go to teams. And in teams I go to teams in teams and which was the team we were talking about, audit. So we brought it Team General tab.

32:10 - And not well today. Done. So that is how the whole concept works.

32:16 - No. We are half an hour down. Are there any questions so much like this? We can wait for the questions till the end.

32:29 - There are a few questions. Will wait.

32:36 - Holler not so. Let’s go further now.

32:41 - Let’s take another example. By the way, when this happens when the flow is running, all that. What if you want to share it with someone? It’s a good idea when you create a flow, it runs properly. It’s managing the business process properly.

32:57 - All is good, but what if you’re only when someone needs to edit this workflow or something goes wrong? Troubleshooting or whatever reason you’re not available, so you can also share the workflow.

33:08 - So when you share it will say OK and some people do it.

33:14 - So within the company of course now notice.

33:19 - What is it saying you are sharing this with? Your assistant assistant can use this flow, but the context is going to be, you understand. So your login is going to be used, so if that is OK with you done.

33:34 - Otherwise, ideally you use some service accounts which are generic and not your personal account so that it doesn’t.

33:42 - Become a legal liability or it doesn’t come on your head if something goes wrong or someone else miss beers, but this is the way to do it.

33:50 - Now, if you don’t want that and you still want to share it with people, what do you do so? Again, we will go to this one called panic button.

33:59 - Will go to edit. And what is? Sorry.

34:06 - Yeah, so this is what we have. You can send a copy so everything exactly the same but not the exactly this flow.

34:13 - It’s a copy of it. Whoever opens it, they can edit it themselves.

34:17 - But if you edit something, they’re not going to get it.

34:21 - It’s a copy and it will run in their context.

34:24 - Now, if you want to send it completely as a package to someone else in the company, or maybe you’re doing this trial and error on a trial account and then you send it want to use it on a full company account.

34:37 - Then there’s another option called export as a ZIP file and when you send export as a zip file then you can import some on the other side as a zip file and then whoever imported it, that person or entity is logins and connections will be used when you import it for the first time.

34:55 - You have to re establish connections because it’s a new flow you created.

35:00 - So three ways of sharing it with people. But General principle is don’t create flows which are of business context.

35:07 - And keep them only with you. Sooner or later it will come and bite you.

35:12 - No. Let’s go and look at another one. Now we will talk about approval because that also is purely within the context of this.

35:20 - Let’s edit this. What does approval mean? I want to request something I want to send it for approval to certain people.

35:27 - They should be able to approve or reject it an I should know.

35:30 - And when did they approve ended the reject? What was the comment all that should be captured? And all this? Ideally without sending mail? Because this is what we’re doing in email today.

35:42 - So again, for demo purposes I have made it a manual trigger.

35:47 - But remember. There are lots of triggers available, so maybe I had an entry into a SharePoint list.

35:54 - There it can invoke, add something somewhere else.

35:58 - In teams I can put the message and trigger from there, so whichever trigger you want.

36:04 - Which captures what needs to be approved then that role is to start, so that part I’ve kept open by just making it manual for simplicity.

36:13 - But technically any trigger which allows you to input what you want to.

36:19 - Approve get approval for will be the trigger, but now this is the important part.

36:26 - What is it? I’m sending a manual trigger and I’m saying what am I getting an approval for? That is what I will do input.

36:35 - And then there are multiple types of approval.

36:39 - So how do you add an approval first time go to add an action.

36:44 - And there is a separate thing called approvals.

36:47 - So when you click on approvals you have multiple types.

36:51 - So let’s understand this. What I have used right now is start and wait for an approval.

36:58 - So you decide who is going to approve it. One or more people, however, their approvals or rejections going to be managed and till they do it nothing happens.

37:08 - The next step in the workflow does not happen till.

37:12 - Approval or rejection is done. So start and wait. That’s the idea.

37:16 - If you want to start the approval, do something else and then wait for an approval, then you have to do it in two separate steps.

37:24 - In this case I have chosen this step, so when you go and add that step I already added.

37:29 - But I’m just writing it once more. Now it gives me further types.

37:35 - It’s saying OK, I project multiple people, it’s assuming. But the same thing applies if it is one person.

37:41 - So assuming there are multiple people, what is it saying if you send it to three people, everyone must say approve, even if one of them says reject it’s gone.

37:51 - Or another option you send it to multiple people.

37:54 - But when anybody respond, so if there is actor approval, the workflow stops and that’s taken as the approval rejection.

38:02 - It doesn’t wait for the other person to decide again, that’s gone. Or you don’t want.

38:10 - Don’t want what you don’t want. You don’t want. Approve and reject as the hard coded actions you want to see? Yes no, maybe resubmit. Reduce the cost and resubmit so custom responses and again within custom responses option.

38:28 - Wait for just one response, which is something like this and wait for all responses, which is something like this.

38:34 - So the difference between a project and custom is instead of two actions potentially can have any number of actions.

38:41 - So whatever I said right now, let’s see. So let’s see first to respond.

38:47 - And now it will ask me. OK, what is the title for the workflow which you can give assigned to? This can be hard coded.

38:54 - This can be dynamically picked up based on what is their approval limit and all that.

39:00 - But let’s do it simple. I’m saying this approval should happen with two people, assistant and boss. In between the two, there has to be a semicolon.

39:09 - Remember that it puts it automatically. And then if any details you want, you can put it. But what is the detail? I already captured the input.

39:20 - What am I saying? Approval item that is the name of that input.

39:24 - So what am I going to say here a item? So if I scroll scroll scroll.

39:29 - I see item so whatever I’ve written will go there.

39:33 - That’s it. If it was coming from a SharePoint list or something else, there is a link associated with.

39:39 - I could have put it there. So right now we don’t need that link because we don’t have one, and that’s it. Now what is it going to do? Wait for everyone? So I’m going to delete this step because I’ve already created that further.

39:53 - So this is the step we just did first step or add an input and we have asked for what this approval is for.

40:00 - Then we are seeing a project. In this case we will choose first response.

40:05 - I approve this assistant or boss. Please approve whatever that’s it and then we have to check people approved or not.

40:13 - Then what do you do? Now we have to check outcome.

40:17 - So the parameter you check his outcome. Now I’ve outcome does not contain now in this case, what is going to happen? Only one response is going to come because the moment someone apros.

40:29 - What is going to happen is either approved or rejected and the workflow is going to stop even if there are 15 people, the first one responds, other 14 don’t get a chance to respond at all.

40:42 - So in that case I’m going to get only one response.

40:46 - So now in this case I can say is equal to if it is equal to what approved, not approved approve. If the responses are approved, and I expect only one response, then do this. If not, then do this now. I have not created a detailed action here.

41:03 - Typically. What will you do, whoever? Put that submit will be informed that it is done or not done.

41:11 - That’s all. How will you do that? Add an action. Send an email.

41:15 - We know the story now right now, just for debug purposes. I’m saying what happened.

41:21 - Show me here itself. So I proved that. Now notice when I approval is done apart from the fact that it was approved, we get something else. Also this purple kind of thing is the step for approval.

41:34 - So if you go to dynamic content. Notice there is a response summary, so I’m just going to add that completion date.

41:42 - I can add outcome we have already done and then we have detailed item link request date versus a date.

41:50 - Who approved it. So we definitely want that name of the approver like that.

41:56 - Again. Help you do all kinds of things and of course name of approver could be multiple.

42:04 - So whatever it is and then. 8 Honda thing. So let’s run this and see what happens.

42:11 - I’m not going to save this because I already tested it, so let’s go into edit mode.

42:18 - There is a condition. There’s a state, so I’m just going to change.

42:24 - Post Westendorf Pro and I’m going to change the condition equals to approve.

42:31 - And then we’ll run it. Where does this approval happen? The person will get an email.

42:38 - Technically it can go in teams. Also people can approve and reject on mobile or so, and they can also prevent rejecting the power automate so multiple places whatever is convenient to the person they go and approve.

42:52 - So let’s do that. And here. We will test. Now this is a manually created flow, so it doesn’t matter. So let’s in fact, yeah, let’s say I want a gaming PC.

43:16 - So now we’re on the floor. Technically, what I just put it in a text box where I come from a SharePoint list.

43:22 - It could have come from teams. It could have come from anywhere else.

43:27 - OK, so now what happens. The trend we will see what it did.

43:32 - So now what is it saying? It does not run it? I said, OK, I’ve triggered it.

43:37 - I’ll send a mail for approval, but now I can’t finish unless assistant or boss do something about it.

43:43 - So now it’s not all green tick marks, it’s waiting.

43:48 - So now if you go to save for Inbox, what happened? Assistant Garda flow message called approve this.

43:56 - Let’s see if Boss also got it. Let’s go to bosses Inbox as well.

44:09 - This is boss, Dark mode is boss and Whiteboard is assistant.

44:13 - This boss is mailbox. Most also got approved this so now notice this is email This is working on browser.

44:20 - It’s not asking me go to power automate and do something there is in the email.

44:25 - I’m not even saying reply. I’m not saying forward in the email body which is normally read only.

44:31 - I have a project but let’s say I wonder reject it.

44:35 - So. Done, I rejected it. Now what happens? Let’s see. So now when I go here notice it is not waiting any longer saying condition hoeger now it is saying whatever happened happened an notice.

44:56 - If yes this should have happened that did not happen.

45:00 - So this is not there and this one happened because I rejected it.

45:05 - So now in this what happened. I got the input call rejected, but if you look at the condition and show raw input, it actually shows you. Expression false.

45:17 - What is this expression or condition was? What if the responses approve and actually the response was not, so it’s saying it’s false, so condition is false. That’s why if no, whatever said that happened now, what actually happened in approval? Exactly that detail. Also we can see here now.

45:36 - This is the response so many approved response reject datetime very nice completion date outcome and then some technical details if you want the Jason part that also comes now.

45:48 - Right now you will basically see the outcome equal to reject done.

45:53 - Now remember this mail also went to. Assistant mailed assistant does not even opened it yet.

45:59 - Now, if assistant goes there and says approve this, what is going to happen? The moment I opened it? It says sorry you’re too late or you can’t do anything.

46:10 - Enjoy done so it’s nice, effective, simple to manage. Now let’s do this again because I want to show you where else people can approve, so notice. In this mobile phone also there is an approval step where if there was some pending approval for me, because maybe I’m a part of many flows and I get a lot of approval requests and they may get scattered in my mailbox.

46:33 - So I want to go to the single place and see what is pending for my approval.

46:37 - Of course I can search for the word approval in mailbox, but why do that when there is a nice way of doing that on my mobile itself? No need to go to browser, so go to approvals tab.

46:48 - You will see all pending approvals and job done.

46:52 - But now. There’s still see this in action. Again, I’m going to add it back to edit and I’m going to do something else.

47:01 - I’m going to test it. Again, I can put another approval thing, but we just did a test so now I can say why should I repeat the invocation of the workflow? I just did it so I say I just did it.

47:14 - Why don’t you use the one I just used again? Because I want to try it out in a different way.

47:20 - OK, no problem, so whatever input I had given earlier gaming PC the same thing will be used for this test.

47:27 - So let’s see what happens. Again, the same process is waiting for an approval and hopefully these guys should get a mail very soon.

47:45 - Another male Cam. Now. This is a project. Let’s say this person approves, but wait, I don’t want to approve here.

47:55 - I want to show you where else people can approve.

47:58 - Will this go to teams? No, this will. This will go to teams.

48:05 - So. Notice if I go to teams. I get this. What is it talking about? What is it talking about? I proved this. What is that? That’s different right now I have not sent it to teams per say.

48:21 - So. Different, but if as assistant I go to power automated on mobile as well as on server side.

48:30 - What happens? What happens? Let’s see. So how do you go there? I will just go to the waffle menu.

48:39 - This is called waffle menu by the way, over for over. And I will go to power.

48:43 - Automate as assistant. An import automate when I go to the tab.

48:49 - Or do I see? Action items I did not go there to create a new flow.

48:57 - I went to approvals and here I will see. How I received any approval requests? So let’s see what happens.

49:08 - They should have appeared here. Let me see for Boston disappeared or not.

49:13 - So let’s go to Bos. Bottom 8. And see the request.

49:20 - Action items. Approvals I don’t know why it’s not happening.

49:29 - Maybe this is Tim little slow. They should have appeared in and from here.

49:33 - Also, you should be able to manage, but anyway, in this case, let’s just go to the mailbox and finish it off.

49:40 - So now. Let’s say submit. And. No entire audit trail of all this is available, by the way, because tomorrow after six months there may be a dispute as to why did you approve this? And someone is disputing that so you don’t have to worry about it all this is eel.

50:04 - He discovery, auditing, retention. All that is happening behind the scenes.

50:11 - So now if you go back to the floor it will have finished in this case.

50:16 - Whatever I did, I did. And why did it not work? Maybe I clicked on the wrong button.

50:24 - Anyway, yeah, good idea. For whatever reason, it chose this.

50:30 - So now if I have to troubleshoot I will have to go here and look at the outcome.

50:35 - Maybe I made a spelling mistake, that’s why it didn’t happen.

50:38 - And so on and so forth. So that is about or pepper balls.

50:42 - Now let’s do something else. In this case, I’m going to say everyone must approve now what happens when I say everyone must approve? I give the same to people.

50:52 - I can’t say outcome is equal to approve because two outcomes are going to come.

50:56 - Both of them have to say yes or no. So now I have both of them, several. Still it has a pro, bro. If someone says eject, then it gets rejected. So a better way of saying that is approved does not contain the outcome.

51:13 - Outcome is going to come as what? Two peoples outcome. So I pro, approve or reject, reject or approve, reason whatever.

51:23 - Two items I want to come, so if it does not contain the word reject, that means it is approved.

51:31 - So that is what we are doing here. So if yes then consider it is approved and then do whatever you want.

51:37 - Otherwise do the other part. So that is how if it’s multiple people you have to do it.

51:43 - So let’s save and test it. This time we will use a different thing.

51:47 - So I’ll create another thing. So I want something else now.

51:53 - I want to buy. OK done flow started it will wait for an approval.

52:05 - Thank should wait for an approval. Yeah, and now these two I should get a mail very soon.

52:12 - So let’s refresh. OK. Order this by Tesla.

52:20 - Someone does have proof. Now what should happen earlier? It could have finished it off, but now. It is still going to wait waiting for an approval, but if I go here connection approval, all that is correct, but it’s still waiting because we said both of them.

52:40 - So now hopefully Boss also has got a message.

52:43 - So let’s look at Boss. Boss mailbox.

52:49 - Inbox. Now is it waking up? Yeah, so yeah Boss got it here as well so.

53:02 - Now I click here. I get to see all the details.

53:07 - This is more structured than email. Similar stuff. Basically, choose your response.

53:12 - Approve, reject, reassign. Now why is reassign coming? Because I had not prevented it.

53:17 - I’ll show you why, but in this case let’s say reject and then.

53:23 - Now the flow will stop waiting for because it has got both the responses and it will have completed an which flow whatever happened happened.

53:33 - Now you’ll notice the responses part will contain one reject and one accept, so that is the idea.

53:41 - So if I say show more, you see there is something called responses.

53:47 - This is from assistant or did assistant, say, assistant said. Apple then there is another response responder equal to boss boss said reject.

53:59 - So these are individual responses. Now if you go below there is something called responces.

54:07 - And then you’ll get a combined outcome called.

54:12 - And then if you go to the condition. This is not happened because it got rejected and this is what happened, so that’s how you can have one person approve other person approve like that.

54:23 - So you get the idea. Now. Another thing which has recently happened is this can be done inside teams also.

54:30 - So let me also show you that part. Inviting teams also, I’m getting the notification.

54:37 - So notice I had created this. I got a notification in teams also.

54:43 - So these are the ones which I have sent. So in teams I have an approval application as well, so I had sent an approval for Pi Tesla.

54:53 - It was rejected by pause approved by this I get complete mail trail.

54:58 - So how am I getting this in teams? By default you don’t see all this in teams, So what do you do? By default teams has this menu on the left side is in dark mode.

55:09 - By the way activity chat teams calendar calls you that standard.

55:13 - Click on this and choose approvals so it’s like getting.

55:17 - Or automate inside teams because many people are realizing the primary importance of teams is it saves me thousands of emails and makes my life more structured and simple.

55:28 - Less effort, more impact. So teams is the place to be.

55:34 - Why go to? Email or go to the browser page of power automate or go to mobile in teams itself I can see this very good.

55:43 - So you three dots approvals and put it now if you want it to be always there, just spin it. And now what happens what I have sent and what I have received.

55:54 - So I have been sending this through flow because I’m logged in there.

55:58 - So I have sent these approval rejected, rejected, approved. So what does this which I have proved whatever earlier I was testing? But the other ones which we sent recently just now three o’clock onwards I’ve been rejected.

56:12 - So that’s how I get a complete audit trail of what is happening in life.

56:18 - If I receive something for approval, I will see them here, but nobody seems to have sent anything to me.

56:23 - In recent times. This you will see a three dots here where you can create a new approval request from here itself and now you can also create templates, but that’s getting rolled out worldwide so maybe in a couple of weeks or a week I will see it and you will also see it three dots next to it and there you can see templates but.

56:43 - Without going to power automate, once you add approvals here approval request can be created from here itself without creating the flow at all.

56:52 - So what do you do? You want some approval, you know whom to call.

56:57 - Let’s go to teams, add the approval tab. From here you create approval request.

57:02 - So it’s saying basic or sign design is integrated with Adobe Sign.

57:07 - Let’s do basic. So that’s my request. I choose approvers.

57:18 - So I propose again. Like we did earlier. This is simpler because it is using the teams UI complexity and clutter of the.

57:34 - Power automate UI is not there and again, basically it’s asking the same thing.

57:40 - They want response for everyone or one internal.

57:43 - It is still using that concept only and then if you want to justify something.

57:49 - If you want custom responses are here itself.

57:52 - So instead of you want to say yes no. Portal. Like that? If I want I can also add an attachment to justify.

58:02 - This is not important. This is on a multi environment scenario.

58:06 - So now I’m sending this customer response is an send.

58:13 - Now, without going to power automate whatever we just did will happen, but because this is happening in teams now, what is going to happen? Boss and assistant? Assuming there in teams now, what is going to happen to them? I’m intense, let me go to teams actually.

58:33 - So this is assistant teams and this is bosses team, so let me go to bosses steam as well and refresh.

58:40 - So instead of going to mailbox now teams is becoming the place to be.

58:45 - So if I go to activity I will see that someone is requesting something or I will get a message as well.

58:52 - Enable notifications notification also comes actually.

58:59 - See this, so now if I go to activity I will see all the pending ones.

59:04 - I want to promotion this is called an adaptive card.

59:08 - What we saw in outlook is called actionable message.

59:11 - If you are technically oriented. But finally what is happening pending response from Boston Assistant’s telling me and saying sorry I don’t have time? Yes no. Now it’s not a project.

59:23 - Yes no. Now our workflow is going to fail. No, it’s not allowed to fail because we’re looking for the word what? No, we’re not looking at that at all.

59:34 - This is a workflow within. This is nothing to do with power automate workflow we created.

59:39 - We actually did the invocation and approval everything within teams.

59:44 - So now if I go to my teams. I will get a response here saying what people have done.

59:50 - Boss said no, an assistant is still pending.

59:53 - OK, no problem. Let’s see what happened to assistant.

59:57 - This is assistant again. The person will have got some response here.

60:02 - This is pending. This is this. Now got an approval request.

60:09 - This is April now. It is also telling me that boss is already said no, OK. So done.

60:18 - So this is happening completely inside teams and very soon you will get templates which are also nice.

60:25 - Many useful regiment templates and you can create your own custom templates for your organization as well.

60:33 - Alright, so that’s that. Let’s move on now couple of things.

60:38 - I want some data to be used in the process, so let’s take an example of data.

60:45 - Talking about files. So here is the situation I have.

60:49 - I have a list of birthdays and I want to send a happy birthday message to people.

60:57 - And generally, what happens in this context is? Videos to do it in Outlook? Do you know Outlook as a feature? When you send a message, you can have an option called deley the message.

61:09 - And then you can actually say send it tomorrow morning at 12:00 o’clock.

61:13 - So it looks like you’re awake, but you were asleep whatever.

61:17 - So. What is the problem with that? For that to work, Outlook has to be open and many people didn’t know that.

61:26 - And let me actually show you where that option is.

61:29 - Maybe in life. Sometimes it is useful, so I’m going to say resistant.

61:35 - Labor Day, but now I go to options an options.

61:39 - What do I do? Dillet delivery and here I can say dillet delivery when do not deliver before whatever.

61:48 - Assuming this person’s birthday is tomorrow, not deliver before 12.

61:55 - 01 something like. Now the problem with this is this will work provided your machine was on and your outlook folder was alive.

62:05 - So if I now go to my outlook and I look at my sent items, what will I see? If I go to my sorry if I go to my inbox not sent item, it is not gone yet.

62:18 - So now it is saying it is going to sit there and it has not gone yet.

62:24 - It is going to sit there till 12:00 o’clock wherever I have delayed it and whatever.

62:30 - And if my machine is off, it’s not going to work, and so when I wake up in the morning at 9:30 that time, it is going to go, so that’s bad. So what I’ve done is I have a list of birthdays, and I’m sure you have that as well somewhere, so for demo purposes I put it person name, birthday, email ID and some custom message.

62:50 - So now what? I want to do this. This should happen automatically.

62:57 - Life long so I will just keep adding my database of birthday here and without me doing anything extra once and for all.

63:05 - People should get a happy birthday message from me at 12:00 o’clock in the morning.

63:11 - That’s a good idea. How do we do it? So first thing Excel technically this could have been in any data oriented application like SharePoint List list or database, whatever, anything which is a data oriented application which has a trigger.

63:27 - It says when a new row is added. When a new row is added to this, but we don’t want to do it when a new row is added, we’re going to populate the data whenever I feel like this thing should wake up at 12:00 o’clock in the morning, midnight every time. So this is a scheduled workflow.

63:46 - And then it should fetch the data from whatever the database is.

63:50 - In this case it’s except now of course that Excel has to be on one drive.

63:54 - SharePoint or teams cannot be on local drive.

63:56 - So I have stored it in a folder under OneDrive called Power Platform.

64:01 - Let’s remember that now let’s see the flow associated with this.

64:05 - What do I have another flow? So what does it do? The concept is same. We’re going to use exactly the same concept for mail merge as well, because what happens in mail merge will see later.

64:17 - But basically there is a list of emails involved and there is a list of files involved in birthday.

64:23 - Wish we are not attaching a file, but maybe for each person you wanted to send them the image and you had another column called the URL for the image.

64:32 - We could have done that as well. Anyway, let’s edit this workflow.

64:36 - Now this workflow I am not going to trigger.

64:39 - It’s a recurring workflow, so how do you create that? That’s a good thing to understand.

64:44 - This workflow has to wake up every day because you never know who’s birthday is when.

64:48 - So it’s the schedule. When should it be sold this creator demo? What is the repetitiveness or recurrence possible every minute? Also you can do it, don’t overdo it, but I’m showing you even every second.

65:02 - You can do something. Don’t do it unless it’s genuinely required.

65:06 - So many tardies in our case, day at what time? 12:00 AM.

65:12 - And starting today, whatever doesn’t matter, this flow will run every day done and then you created.

65:18 - That’s the recurring part which I’ve already done.

65:21 - So what do we do now? You go here. Look at the flow and now you’re already getting used to it, so it will figure it out very quickly.

65:30 - Only important part here is getting data from Excel and comparing the date.

65:35 - Because I put a date there but in Excel it is a proper date.

65:39 - So what I’ve shown here even though I added it.

65:42 - As a date, this is 21, but it should work next year also.

65:46 - So I want to pick up this date and check whether the date and month portion there in one portion is today.

65:54 - I don’t want to bother about the year. I want to compare the day and month portion of this date with what today’s date, if it is true, then I send a mail.

66:05 - So recurrence is fine, I will happen automatically.

66:09 - Then I need to figure out what is the current date.

66:12 - Yes so current date is in fact an action and today is exact current date.

66:17 - Is this function called UTC? Now? How do you do that? You click here expression.

66:23 - And you say you’re busy now. Just giving you it’s like Excel now function.

66:30 - Then I want the formatting to be only taking the DMM capital M.

66:34 - Capital M means month. NN means it’s padded with zero, so if it is June, it’ll be 06. And it’ll be a thing at the end of it, but you. This is where in UK I want the local time, so I say while you’re doing that, convert that also from whatever that to current time.

66:54 - Because I’m talking about today, my 12:00 o’clock OK done and then now we want to go ahead and figure out where is this table? That’s easy. We have an action in Excel, so if I go to excel addin action we have a next election called what Excel Online? This is personal. This is business.

67:15 - So whenever is the OneDrive and business? This means personal OneDrive and this means Office 365.

67:22 - So here we have something called what? Do you have many things in Excel? And one of the things is.

67:29 - Table, so that’s why we created a table, get tables, get, list, whatever, whatever list rows present in a table.

67:36 - That’s what we want to do, so I’ve already done. That list grows present in a table.

67:42 - Where is it one drive then you chose the folder and you chose the file and when you open the file list table, so make sure you use Excel tables.

67:53 - Now be wish has the name of the table I gave.

67:56 - I hope you know how to do that. Create a table and then go to table design and be wish.

68:02 - OK, done. Now just for demo purposes I have for the bosses birthday as today.

68:09 - Now, next time I want to initialize a variable, why is that required? Because I want to get the data from the birthday or I can just do it directly.

68:20 - Maybe multiple people’s birthdays happening now no problem.

68:24 - So what do I do here? Getting a value? Getting a variable here called format datetime because the birthday which I’m getting in Excel also needs to be converted.

68:36 - So what I’ve done is I’m showing something called birthday here.

68:41 - Right and converting it to GDM so both will match.

68:44 - So this looks a little complicated, but that’s the only way to do it.

68:49 - Of course I could have done something here and I did do that if you want.

68:54 - If you find it easier here itself, I converted it to DMM and I could.

68:58 - I use the see date directly to match it with the UTC date, but I also wanted to show her how to handle dates in Excel, so if you get dates in Excel you can handle them like this.

69:09 - Let’s say whatever is the birthday. I want to convert it and then.

69:15 - I want to use this variable birthday. And this is just for debugging.

69:21 - And finally I want to check for a birthday which I created a DMM for the current role.

69:27 - Is it matching today’s date? If it is matching then then email to whom I already have a column in my table called person.

69:35 - So notice this step which came from Excel is green in color.

69:39 - So now all the columns which are in our table will be available.

69:43 - So happy birthday. Obviously I want to have the name of the person which is in the column name.

69:50 - This is the birthday indeed. This is the text version, the email ID, so I’ve said email ID send it to this person.

69:57 - There’s the name I called them by and then whatever custom message I have for them and that’s how it is going to work.

70:05 - So if I run this now, I don’t want to wait till 12:00 o’clock.

70:09 - So when I say run manually I made some changes.

70:12 - Probably this will fail, but now mind will try.

70:17 - And then it will run and we will see what happens.

70:20 - So when I say done what is it going to do all steps, then then, then now multiple people are involved because there are many rows in the table, so it’s taking its time, goes in a loop and does it.

70:33 - So now when I go into this this part is easy.

70:36 - We got the load or notice current date. What day do nineteen 06? That’s what we converted then it got the list of rose.

70:44 - That’s OK, you know that then this is the important part.

70:48 - Condition, So what does it say? What is it saying? Is that condition through? What is the condition? That’s why I wanted to show you.

70:56 - What where we comparing input output? It was 12N or whatever trial December that did not match with 19 June.

71:05 - So this is false. So first row nothing happened then because there are multiple I can go to next.

71:13 - Again it was false, nothing happened. 3rd row. What happened? Bosses birthday is on 19th and today is 19 so both are same.

71:23 - So this condition is true. So Boss will have got a mail like this.

71:28 - So that is how this works. Let’s see everybody’s order mail here.

71:34 - It is happy birthday boss. And water. So that’s a very nice and effective, but they manage are now on the similar lines under the requirement.

71:45 - And this cannot happen normally the moment we say mail merge, we go to word an inward.

71:51 - We do mail merge. How does mail merge work? By the way, in Word it’s a process.

71:56 - You choose the people which are typically in Excel no problem.

72:01 - Then you edit the recipients and fill in the blank saying dear the name and then message from the Excel message column like that.

72:10 - The problem is when you send mail merge is finished.

72:13 - You can’t attach a file. That people always have been asking.

72:18 - I want to send a custom message that customers will get mail merge.

72:22 - But in addition I want to attach a file. For every person, different file that is not possible in.

72:29 - Word, so let’s do that, and then we’ll finish how many questions session? Do you have friends? Around 13 all.

72:47 - Yeah. OK, so we will do this now. Very much very quickly. Some part we have already seen.

72:54 - The only different part I will show you. This again mail merges. I decide when I want to do it.

73:00 - So what is the logic? I have an Excel file which contains the mail merge data which is a table.

73:06 - Nothing great. You already know that. So I want to send a file to each person.

73:11 - This is the name of the person email ID. If you want I can put a CC because that’s another request people have in Melbourne.

73:18 - I want to send a CC to someone and most importantly the name of the attachment so each person has a different attachment.

73:24 - Of course you have to store those attachments somewhere in one drive.

73:28 - So I have done that already. We have this folder called power platform attachments.

73:34 - And there that asthma is already there. So this setup has to be done before and having done that, now flow has to be invoked manually because I don’t want to send it.

73:46 - Every time, nor do I want to schedule. It is a one time mail merge.

73:50 - I want to do. So what do I do? Manual create a filename variable? Yes, because I want to capture the folder name which is in power platform attachments.

74:01 - Now I want to list rows in a table which you already know.

74:05 - Choose the folder table name. OK, now for each row or do I want to do? Whenever I have something, it automatically gets the apply to each because it’s a loop.

74:14 - You don’t have to do it, it understands. Now this is the only important different part I need to get the file path properly.

74:23 - Where is my file in one drive? Where is it in one drive? FL name? What is the full name which I created here? The first part of the name in one drive power platform in that attachment OK and the attachment name that is getting appended to the base path.

74:41 - Where did that come from? It came from the Excel file so it is going to say power platform attachments this dot PDF like that.

74:49 - So we just assemble the name here and there is action called get.

74:54 - That file meta data and the next action has to be get the actual file content and where is this ID coming from from here.

75:02 - So if I Scroll down there is an action called get file metadata which is this and one of the things it gives you is unique identifier for the file, so you need both. Now you have the file with you.

75:15 - Now you go and choose a message you already know how to do that too.

75:19 - We have the email ID certificate for. I put the name of the person and the most important part.

75:25 - Is attachment so show advanced options and then or do you do this is the name? Remember, in my bath and the names are some individual certificate, whatever. That’s because I had to have different filenames, but for individual person I’m just sending one certificate so hard coded this as certificate PDF.

75:46 - If I wanted to I could have put person name dot PDF also and then the file content comes from where this step file content get file content.

75:55 - So how did I get that? File content is the step and the file contained actually goes.

76:01 - Yeah, that’s all there is to it and people will get it.

76:05 - That is how you do mail merge from Excel data with attachments and with CCS.

76:10 - If I wanted to put the person in CC or did I do that email since if it is there it’ll go to that person as well? And the last thing I want to show you before is.

76:22 - When there is no form, how is it submit? So I have a simple customer survey form.

76:27 - I’m asking customer in Microsoft forms of course.

76:31 - But there are other third party applications also which integrate equally well.

76:36 - How do you rate my product so if it is below 4, I want something to happen.

76:42 - So let me just log in again. So I am giving our new polluting rating of 1.

76:53 - And I will assume this way, but on sistant.

77:03 - Now this is an anonymous survey, that’s why you want to capture the email if it was internal server then it will automatically pick it up from logging and saying your passenger packaging sucks.

77:22 - Whatever it is, can I give the response now? This customer service is going to go on for 15 days, but I want this automation to happen as soon as someone puts submits a form.

77:33 - I want a mail to go to that person and some internal action to happen.

77:38 - So let’s see. Customer response survey. Now, in this case, it’s a trigger driven thing.

77:44 - So when are responses submitted? So how did I do that in this case I go to create.

77:50 - In this case it’s an instant automated flow and now how to search for what kind of trigger I will get for forms? Now I’m not getting anything.

78:00 - Oh yes, Microsoft forms when a response is submitted.

78:03 - That’s what I’m doing here. So if I go to the flow itself, the first step is the trigger.

78:09 - This is a completely automated. I don’t have to look at every response when it comes.

78:16 - So now what happens? This is the flow which form.

78:19 - I may have multiple forms, I just choose the form.

78:22 - That’s easy. Now all the form data is here, so I get the response detail.

78:27 - That’s the particular response which someone submitted, and then I look at what they submitted.

78:33 - So notice in this dynamic list what am I getting response? Right now only response, but when I go to condition, obviously I was asking many questions so when I go here notice I want to inform someone I want to send an apology email.

78:48 - Customer, So what do I do? I know when I go here from the dynamic content I get all the data which I had asked in the form.

78:58 - So these are response details. Responders email all of these things.

79:03 - I’m getting life so that is how I can work on it and take action.

79:08 - Now what is this condition here? Notice in this condition what am I asking? This is where I’m getting all the questions which I’ve answered and what am I choosing here? How would you rate our product and that response can be 12345 so it is not for whatever.

79:29 - Then I want to send this so now I’ll send an apology email to the customer saying sorry.

79:36 - In addition I’m going to create a task in planner and I’m also going to send a message to department head in this channel.

79:45 - So like that three actions an if it is good then terminate the flow and send a thank you mail.

79:53 - To the customer, so that’s how it works. So now in order to test it, what should we do? Let’s submit a response and try it out.

80:04 - Submit the response OK. Well, I just did it right.

80:08 - So now if I’ve already done this, has it run properly? Let’s see.

80:13 - So go back, don’t change anything. Now it actually gives you.

80:17 - Run. History is very important. Two minutes ago I just filled the form.

80:22 - It has actually run. Earlier I was manually doing it with trigger, but now it is automatically run.

80:27 - That’s the whole idea. So if I want to see what happened, you just go here. Now I’ll show you, I’ll step by step what it did, so I did get the response details and all that and here you will see all the concept number one was given.

80:43 - Packaging improve packaging all of that and whatever was the condition and this part rain.

80:49 - An it does send a apology mail and all that.

80:54 - So I will have gotten Apple’s email and we will see in teams which team team, demo channel Palog. So let me do that.

81:02 - Teams and teams teams demo channel called Palog Notice this is already come so all kinds of multiple actions can be taken so that in a nutshell is how power automate works. So I’m sure there are a lot of questions.

81:20 - Let’s take them to summarize. How are you going to go ahead with this? First, just play with it.

81:26 - It used to it as I said using templates. There are lots of them.

81:30 - Explore there’s a lot of learning content. There is self paced learning from Microsoft.

81:36 - Absolutely free. Use that, there are some very well guided demos there, and while you’re exploring all this, there’s a lot to explore because there are 300 plus applications.

81:47 - Each one will have 10 triggers, 10 actions, so too many things.

81:51 - But now you have to map them to your requirements.

81:54 - Don’t just say I do this repetitively. Let me just find solution for that.

81:59 - Just keep exploring, maybe by looking at a trigger, an action. You may notice that this is something I’d not thought of, but now it is worth automating.

82:08 - So don’t just go by what you think. Is your use case? Explore the features and find the needs behind those features.

82:16 - Templates part I’ve already shown you. So explore and learn if you want to do RP there is RP as well, but we will not go into it today.

82:26 - But how do you do that? I will just show you once so you go to.

82:31 - Create and in this case you go to the desktop one and when you say that it is going to ask you to install the RPA tool and then what does it do? It says launch the power automate desktop app if you don’t have it, it’ll say get that installed.

82:48 - The package of the app. Install it once it is installed, it will also allow you ask you to add an extension for edge and then use it on desktop.

82:58 - This is for screen scraping, desktop legacy application automation and so on.

83:04 - So that is about RP. So now let’s take questions and chase him.

83:08 - I’m sure has some announcements as well for you.

83:13 - Yes, yes. The feedback from England in 2013.

83:21 - Please click on the feedback link and share it.

83:24 - Share us your feedback about the session. OK question. Questions yes.

83:34 - How to enable power automate in Office 365 account? I think and do it, and then there’s nothing to be never really.

83:43 - If you have Office 365 you should have it. If not, talk to ID.

83:48 - Is it necessary to have Office 365 power getting power? Automate yes. Because power automate on its own, will automate what it needs something else to automate, so it’s not working in isolation, it needs to know who you are.

84:04 - So authentication happens where in Office 365.

84:07 - OK, next how to show different Microsoft database tables data using power automate? Yeah, so I showed your dropdown if they had multiple table.

84:20 - It looks for the list of tables. I might be only four minutes left as per the official time, but I’m going to handle all questions and you will get the recording containing all Q any.

84:32 - So don’t worry. I have a lot of time to answer all questions because you have taken the trouble to ask them and it makes sense to include the Q&A as a part of the base video.

84:43 - So not only you anybody else who watches the video or you share it with someone else, they also get their figures answer.

84:50 - But if you have to leave at 4:30 for whatever other engagements, by all means, you can do that.

84:56 - You will get the video anyway. So to explain what he was asking or that earlier question if I go to excel.

85:05 - What is the action? Excel kicked. List Excel table. Is the action now how does that work? First year to give the location.

85:16 - Typically it is one drive, SharePoint something, then whichever is the document library.

85:20 - Me means my wonder. In fact, what is the folder path? I’m mail merge excel. If there are multiple tables, it would have been listed here.

85:30 - That’s all. Now wait one more option when you get dates from Excel, even though you see dates as proper dates in Excel, that’s due to formatting in Excel.

85:46 - And when it comes here, it may or may not be in the correct format.

85:51 - In power automate a format called. Serial number will come, so it’s actually the number which Excel stores behind the scenes, which is number of days from 1st Jan 1990 and then none of your date comparisons will work.

86:05 - So this is a very important thing when you get data from Excel table.

86:10 - Chose this and then all the functions related to date conversion and all that will work properly.

86:16 - Next can we automate an Excel file and send for levels of approval? Yes, what I showed was.

86:29 - Mystic, would you know by Brule morph sophisticated is possible, dynamic approvals can be created.

86:35 - Serial or parallel can be done and it also integrates with the good old SharePoint workflows as well.

86:42 - So yes. Depending on some conditions, you can choose people. For example, there is a quotation of whatever there is an amount in Word, and if the amount is less than this order, US labs basically so you have a table somewhere which says between this.

86:56 - To this this person. So what do you do? You put that data somewhere.

87:01 - Get the value, then look up that table whether it is in SharePoint, excel, you know it, get the name of the person and then put it as the approver.

87:10 - So yes, dynamic things work. Need more clarity on expressions.

87:18 - Yes. So expressions is a language which works in the context of like we had a requirement where birthday.

87:27 - I put it as date but I only wanted the day and month component.

87:32 - Now, even if I had done that in Excel, Power automates to understand it so that it needs the language.

87:39 - Where is this language? I will send you the link also later, but there is a reference guide.

87:47 - You can also put this. Let me just put this link in.

87:52 - This event chat as well or even to Q&A, so all of you will get it right now.

87:59 - So this is the reference of all the functions which are available.

88:03 - Most of them are simple if you know Excel. Similar function is just that the syntax may be different.

88:10 - Alittle an you may have to. There’s a very limited space there so we have to struggle with it initially but will get used to it.

88:19 - So this is the link. This is how it works, there are.

88:23 - Lot of types of functions, string functions collection logical conversion like Excel and some specific workflow functions.

88:33 - And all this is HTML and Jason base. So there are some extra functions that you may not have seen in the context of typical Excel next.

88:46 - Can we see how we could do the automation between on premise third party applications and cloud applications? So if it is any application for it to integrate with power automate, it has to have a power automate connector.

89:01 - And there is you just search for create power automate connector.

89:05 - You will get the link. There’s full documentation of even a homegrown application.

89:10 - If you want a power automate connector to be created, how to do it? If you have a third-party application or some source software as a service application.

89:22 - Most probably it will have. Uh. Existing connective tronic and request your vendor to do that.

89:34 - Can we share power BI dashboards to an email via power automate? Yes you can. So basically power automate as an action for power.

89:46 - Be I so just explore power be I look at the actions you will know.

89:51 - So for those who want to know, this is how you create custom connectors, or absolutely if you have the source code of the application, whatever platform it is on, technically it is possible. I will also paste this link here.

90:06 - Next next question. Please show me on mute.

90:23 - Diflo where triggers when activity is done and will show next activity information.

90:30 - R. What is activity? You’re saying there is an action plan.

90:35 - Where is that action plan? So this question is a little ambiguous, so I’m assuming there is a list of activities in a particular order, and when one of them is done, the next one. So assuming the data is in Excel or wherever else.

90:51 - Whenever you’re processing this, you may have to go and there will be a status column, so you go from top to bottom.

90:58 - Look at the first status, which is not done and that becomes the next action point.

91:05 - This is a generic answer. It will work with any list which is chronologically or serially listed.

91:11 - Actions which depend on the next action depends on the previous one being complete.

91:17 - Next I have forms for login generation where users will fill and submit and a flow will trigger a male or a team notification for his boss approval.

91:28 - Sometime Boss says he hasn’t received any email or notification.

91:35 - Yeah so. Mod install the power automate app on the mobile and teach bosses how to go to the approval tab that simplest more convenient and doesn’t take extra effort because Boss is working on the desktop on email there to go to another browser instead of that mobile.

91:56 - Is there just finished off so mobile is good for high volume approvals? Also ask everyone now not just boss to put that thing in teams.

92:07 - Teams is the place to be, so go to everyones teams, put approval there and life is good.

92:16 - Next is this possible? Is it possible? To power, automate to read a male subject male body and save in one drive.

92:28 - Yeah, why not? Why not? Create a file, put the mail and subject and put it.

92:37 - Next one is can we automate web applications? Yes, absolutely you can automate web applications.

92:45 - I’m assuming this is an RP question, so maybe there is a software as a service application or your ERP or your homegrown financial accounting or tally or so.

92:56 - Whatever your banking and based on that, you’re currently copy pasting something, scraping that data and doing manually.

93:04 - Absolutely possible. There is a web scraping as well as desktop scraping tool available within this.

93:13 - Very, very sophisticated that srpa basically.

93:17 - Robotic process automation. Is it possible to regenerate MISD using SQL and Sender’s email? Yeah, technically yes, why not, but then scaled by itself is not going to generate a mice in the form of a report.

93:35 - You will use a reporting tool, right? Like or be I excel tableau whatever.

93:40 - They all have actions for power automate. Next question is, can we use approvals without outlook? Absolutely I showed you. You can directly go to power automate and say approval.

93:58 - You will see it on mobile. You’ll see it in approval tab in teams as well so.

94:04 - No need. For notification on mail. Next question, does power automate store all the details of approvals and rejects for future reference and whether audit trail is available yet? It really is absolutely available for everything including date, time, dilay, everything. And how does it accept? How does it manage approval and rejection? Depends on the mode. If you had one person, then if if he has had five people and only one person has to respond whatever the first person responds will be accepted and remaining four will not get any chance.

If you have sent it to five people and say all five after respond, then all five have to approve.

94:50 - Only then it will get approved. If anyone of them rejects, it is considered rejection.

94:56 - It’s all or none. So if let’s say I sent it to five people, first person approve is waiting for remaining for second person rejects, then it gets rejected and the other three can’t do anything.

95:09 - That’s how it works, thanks. Can we customize the sender email ID? Yes, of course it’s dynamic.

95:19 - OK, exact difference in terms of use cases for power automate an powerapps examines.

95:28 - Exact difference in terms. Hey Dan, powered up. Power automate is behind the scenes.

95:36 - It’s working automatically. Powerapps ISM mobile app you create.

95:41 - So if you have created a data entry list which contains 60 columns and you want the form to be created.

95:48 - That form you create for data entry in powerapps.

95:52 - So perhaps in a very simplistic way, is the fastest way to create mobile applications? And what does mobile application have? It has textboxes, dropdowns, radio buttons, interaction submit cancel. So that is the job of power apps.

96:09 - Now, maybe you had a recording power apps and then when it is submitted it may invoke a flow in power automate.

96:17 - That’s how it works. Gather data in powerapps.

96:21 - Act on it in parameter. Is it possible to attach files using patterns like approve or reject? Yes, absolutely. I showed you.

96:34 - In fact when I go and choose approval when I am doing an approval in the edit menu, there is an option where.

96:43 - Start and wait for an approval. Short ones options item link and it will notification attachment so I can actually attach files as well.

96:55 - In fact, I showed you in teams that I was creating an approval.

96:59 - I could attach files there. Now whether attachments are allowed or not is not an approval issue, it’s very are triggering it.

97:06 - So if it is SharePoint. Our email or sorry yeah, even if it comes as an email, there can be an attachment no problem.

97:13 - So it depends on where it is triggering. If that supports attachment approval, can attach those attachments as a part of the approval email.

97:25 - Next in our acquired automation project, Progress Master Excel is dynamic, being updated by multiple people in the department.

97:40 - Yeah, that’s fine, no problem. As long as the Excel file is open in the context of power, automate how many people updated it with no consequence.

97:54 - Next, OK is many to one or an one too many.

97:57 - One trigger many actions or vice versa possible in the case of flow.

98:04 - There is always one actions can be many. You can’t have multiple triggers.

98:10 - If you have multiple triggers, then you need multiple flows.

98:15 - Is this power automate the basis for blockchain technology? No.

98:22 - There’s nothing to do with blockchain, although some blockchain platforms may integrate with this.

98:26 - Location is a completely different concept.

98:31 - OK, how do we attach a file when we initiate the approval and how does the approver see before they approve or reject? Yeah, so I’ll give you an example now if it is Excel, it’s not a structured way to get gathering data, so if you’re really wanting to automate things when someone adds an entry.

98:50 - Then use SharePoint list. So this is a list.

98:52 - So notice I have created a list which says product packaging, quantity status on. Now if I add a new record here, I can add it in two ways.

99:02 - This is a across SharePoint. When I say new is going to email form here which is basically asking me the same thing and there is an attachment option.

99:11 - That’s how you accept attachments if you try to do it in Excel is not going to work because in a given row in Excel you can’t attach then you’ll have to find the path, store the file somewhere it’s very dirty, so if attachments are involved within lists.

99:30 - Wait so when I put this entry with or without attachment, how do I create the flow? I go to integrate or automate and create a flow.

99:38 - Now when you create a flow notice what’s happening, it already knows who is the trigger.

99:44 - Who is the trigger this list. So when I go to this new flow now what is it saying and showing me different templates of what I want to do? So maybe I created approval request.

99:56 - Right, so when I click this, it is actually going to use that template SharePoint approval and then it will create a flow for you and notice it is already included.

00:06 - Approval. Obviously people out of informed and there is a SharePoint list in Word, so it’ll nicely give you a template and then you customize it next.

00:18 - We have project progress Master Excel 3 separate reports can be visible from the same excel.

00:24 - By hiding or unhiding specific rows and columns by adding or removing specific filters.

00:29 - Each of these three reports to be sent to the customer on specific day of the week.

00:34 - Can I automate this auto report generation and sending my outlook on specified date and time of each week to configure list of separate email list with three separate standard email body formats.

00:48 - Yes, technically possible, but you are. Are trying to do things which excel is not designed for.

00:55 - Well. Basically what you need is scheduled reports which are nicely available in a very sophisticated manner in Barbie High Heels Barbie I and I’m assuming your reports are paginated reports which is also available in power be I don’t use Excel for what it is not intended to.

01:14 - Then you have to do 10 times more work and it is still be person dependent and cumbersome.

01:19 - But technically, yes, whatever you said is possible, but a very complex float with too many if conditions.

01:26 - Too many filters and too many areas prone to error will happen.

01:29 - Use the right tool for beer. What if my boss doesn’t have Office 365? Yeah, this can include external people.

01:39 - Also, they’ll get an email. They will get there, but I’m not all that.

01:46 - What is Adobe sign in approval app? Put up sign in is like any other DocuSign Adobe sign where you want someone’s digital signature.

01:55 - This is a third party provider so obviously it’s not.

02:00 - By Microsoft, but it integrates with the Microsoft platform, but it’s a separately paid product, so you have to go to auto sign, subscribe for it, and then if there is a proper document scanned document contract and then people want to sign it.

02:15 - With the E signature, then that workflow can also be included.

02:23 - OK, can we create an approval flow using SharePoint without outlook? Yeah, absolutely.

02:30 - That’s what I showed you in the list. What I did this is SharePoint List is SharePoint in any SharePoint place you can go and say integrate or automate or automate will decide what happens when an entry is added or apps will create a nice looking form for it which you can submit on paper.

02:49 - On some browser or on mobile. OK can we integrate this automation tool with SFP? Stop yes, absolutely. Is there paint? It’s very well with it, and even if it doesn’t, there are some custom forms which are highly configured for your environment.

03:13 - You can use the RPM feature to scrape specific fields from ASAP screen, an invoker flow if you want.

03:21 - OK, in the approval teams example, if my boss had said no to my leave request, would my assistant or other members of the team be able to see it? Yes, absolutely. Whether they will be able to say a project depends on whether you said one person or multiple.

03:38 - But even if he had said only one person an was rejects it, others can’t change that, but they can see absolutely.

03:49 - OK, I have a list of files need to check if the record of the value is present and write the output to a single file.

03:58 - Sure, that’s possible. You just had to learn the correct syntax in that.

04:04 - Or automate reference. Find the right functions and just do it.

04:10 - OK, next question is will I be able to read data? For example both the details from your example from an XML instead of Excel.

04:20 - Absolutely. In fact XML is simpler. XML Jason those kind of formats are natively supported.

04:30 - OK, that’s all that we have for today. Very nice so.

04:39 - Shall we close? Yes, we have shared the feedback link in the announcement in the Q&A panel.

04:48 - Please do click on the link and give us your feedback.

04:52 - Thank you. Great so thanks a lot for all of you for attending.

04:59 - Asking a lot of questions I see. Even we have exceeded almost wise 20 minutes and we still have 141 people.

05:07 - Thank you for your patience as. .