For all the regular readers of my blog you will know that I publish the Microsoft 365 Roadmap when new updates are released. Below the scenes you wont know of the little admin steps I have to do before publishing.
The main one is the date format of each post, so its got to the point now where I need to automate this and make my life a lot simpler. So heres how I changed the date format.
Create Variable
In your flow click the add button and look for Initilize variable
Enter Name for variable and select type as String
Create Loop
We now need to create a loop against the item that generates the date, click add again look for “Apply to each” then select your item
Click Add an action
Select Set Variable
Name will equal the varilable you created earlier
Value will be the source of the data value again
Modifying my WordPress Post
As you can see below I have created an expression which will be added to the title field to display only the Month, Date, Year.
As a regular contributor to YouTube with videos from the Microsoft Spotlight Podcast, I have finally decided to automate some of the tasks by using Power Automate.
From Power Automate, find the template called “When I upload a video create a WordPress post”. You will be required to connect to your YouTube Channel and WordPress site.
Under Create Post you can modify how the title looks and the content of the page. One of the key features for me is Status, as I look to modify how my post flows.
Once you have completed the above and published a video, you will have a WordPress post based on the information you provided. This is an example of mine from one of my podcast videos.
I have been recently helping a local Paintball site modernize its approach to IT through the use of Microsoft 365. In this journey, I have created a Microsoft Form which is used to collect booking information from its customers and store it into SharePoint Online via a List.
One of the asks from the site was to create a view or process which can be used to follow up with customers who haven’t paid their deposit. This is where Planner comes into play.
Using a Power Automate Flow which has already been created I did the following;
Create a “Condition” based on the Follow Date which is created in SharePoint List and if is not equal to Null
Create a task as followed;
Specify the Group ID of the Planner
Specify the Plan ID for the Planner
Provide a title that is easy to view Customer Name and Date of Booking.
Add the Follow Up Date to the Due Date Time field.
Once a new item was created via the Form this flow would create the task in Planner.
This simple configuration has helped transform how they contact customers.
I am now going to show you how to configure Power Automate to act as the schedule for publishing the messages to Microsoft Teams. It is a very simple process
Send an email when a new message is added in Microsoft Teams couldnt be any easier. Power Automate has a defined template which allows to connect with Microsoft Teams and Office 365 Outlook connectors to provide the required functionality. So from you Power Automate dashboard look for the template and press continue.
Define which Microsoft Team you would like to target and the required channel.
Define the email address you want to send the messages to
Important Note
The email address must be an active mailbox within your organisation.
Save….
The next time a message is posted, an email will be sent to the defined mailboxes.
If you are a regular visitor to my blog you will know of my passion of leverage Power Automate to notify me of the latest happenings within the Microsoft technology space and today post is no different.
Today, I am going to publish Microsoft events into Microsoft Teams and because we are using Power Automate. You are not just limited to publishing into Teams but you could even send an email, update a SharePoint list etc..
So first of all I have created a new Channel within my Organisation Wide Announcements Team as shown below.
We will open Power Automate and configure the required flow to publish the below into Microsoft Teams.
Launch Power Automate Click Create –> Automated Cloud Flow
Provide a Flow Name i.e (Microsoft Event RSS Push) Select “When a feed item is published”
Enter the RSS feed url “https://events.microsoft.com/eventrss.xml”
Select PublishDate Click New Step
Search for Microsoft Teams Connector Select Post a message (V3)
Specify your Team and Channel Populate your Subject with the Feed title Populate your Message with Primary feed link and Feed Summary.
When the first run happens it will flood the channel with all current active events but after this point you will receive a steady flow of events.
When working with Power Automate recently I was struggling being able to get the Teams and Channel IDs but with a bit of Googling I managed to work out how to obtain this information. So all that is required is the following expressions created under Data Operation
Over the coming weeks I am going to be doing Power Automate post to demostrate the ability to automate workloads within Microsoft 365. Today, I am going look at configuring an Approval process for the creation of a Microsoft Teams Channel
Configuring a SharePoint List
I am no expert when it comes to SharePoint but any expert in “Share Pint” as how does love a good drink now and then. So back on topic within your SharePoint Online Site you need to create a new list as shown in the image below.
Give your SharePoint List a name and description for future reference.
As you can see from the below, I have create a number of columns to capture the information I would like to include into the approval process.
Column Name
Column Type
Title
Title used for the Channel Name.
Team Name
Name of the Microsoft Team
Description
Description of the new Channel
Justification
Justification for the request
Configuring Power Automate
Create a new Flow from the SharePoint List > Automate > Power Automate > See your Flows
Click New > Automated from blank. Provide a Flow name, i.e. “Request – New Microsoft Teams Channel Provisioning”,
Select your Site Address and List Name as shown below.
Modify the Start an approval in line with your requirements, for this post I have included the layout I have created for my own tenant.
We now need a Data Operation in order to gather the Teams ID which is required to identify the Teams where the channel will be created.
Create Filter array which looks at the Teams List based on the Team Name against the entry in the SharePoint List.
Next step is to create a channel with uses the apply to each array.
We have now completed the flow, so let’s go and create the request. As shown below.
This will now generate a request to create the team channel automatically in the background and as you can see all the new Project Channels have been created.
Over the coming weeks I am going to be doing Power Automate post to demostrate the ability to automate workloads within Microsoft 365. Today, I am going look demostrate how I take RSS feeds from Microsoft Blogs and distrube to Microsoft Teams / To-Do. If you have been following my blog for a while you will know I am a big avocate for bringing code important data from Microsoft into Microsoft Teams. As an Architect working within the Microsoft 365 stack, there is always developments, releases and updates coming from Microsoft.
So how do we handle all this information from multiple sources into Microsoft Teams.
So as you can see from below, I have a Microsoft Team called “Microsoft Blogs” in this Teams. I have seperate channels for the areas I am most interested in;
For the purpose of this post I am going to be looking at the Microsoft Security and Compliance Blog. This is a blog that I follow today and generates the most noise. So I am going create a new channel called Microsoft Security and Compliance Blog within Microsoft Blogs Teams.
So first of, make sure you create the Channel where you wil be publishing this data. Next we need the RSS URL, so if you click on the RSS button it will open a new tab with the required URL in the address bar
Provide a new for the Flow and select When a feed item is published
Enter the URL for the RSS Feed
Specify the Team and Channel you would like to publish the message. In my message I am providing a link to the Article, the date is was published, the Title and Summary of the post. The reason for this is so that if I am on the move, I can synchronize the content of the blog post to Microsoft Teams or even Microsoft To-Do so I can continue to read on the move.
When there is a new blog post published you will receive a message into your defined channel, just like the below
Why not To-Do?
So as I mentioned, I also push the blog posts to Microsoft To-Do. The reason for this is so I can close the To-Do item once I have read the article so I never miss any important updates.
You dont even how to stop there if you dont want to. You can leverage what ever connector you want in Power Automate to publish the data.
Over the coming weeks I am going to be doing Power Automate post to demostrate the ability to automate workloads within Microsoft 365. Today, I am going look at configuring an Approval process for the creation of a Microsoft Teams Team
Configuring a SharePoint List
I am no expert when it comes to SharePoint but any expert in “Share Pint” as how does love a good drink now and then. So back on topic within your SharePoint Online Site you need to create a new list as shown in the image below.
Give your SharePoint List a name and description for future reference.
As you can see from the below, I have create a number of columns to capture the information I would like to include into the approval process.
Column Name
Column Type
Title
Title used for the Team Name.
Description
Single line of text used to store the project description.
Visibility
Choice with the following options: “Private” and “Public”. Indicates if a team should visible to non-team members.
Owners
Person or Group with Allow multiple selections enabled.
Members
Person or Group with Allow multiple selections enabled.
Justifcation
Multiple line of text used
Configuring Power Automate
Create a new Flow from the SharePoint List > Automate > Power Automate > See your Flows
Click New > Automated from blank. Provide a Flow name, i.e. “Request – New Microsoft Teams Team Provisioning”,
Select the SharePoint “When an item is created” trigger and click “Create”.
Select your Site Address and List Name from the drop down lists
Create a Start and wait for an approval condition. I have populated the below with information that I required within my own tenant.
Select Apply to each condition and select responses
Select Responses Approver response is equal to Approve
This section is now a bit more complex as I have decided to include an email notification if the request was a approved or rejected. If you follow the screenshot below you will see that I am using the SharePoint List items to provide Team Name, Description, Visiability fields and leveraging the list to include information into the email notification. You dont need to add email notifications into your flow but this is how you would do it.
Now we need to apply each Owner and Member to the new Microsoft Teams and this is completed as followed.
We have now completed the flow, so lets go and create the request. As shown below.
This will now generate a request to the approvers email address and when they click approve the team will be created as shown below with all the Owners and Members you defined.
