Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Power Automate


Microsoft Power Automate is a no-code/low-code iPaaS solution that’s part of the Microsoft Power Platform line of products (it was called Microsoft Flow until 2019). As its name suggests, it helps IT save precious time by automating repetitive manual tasks. It’s also an excellent tool for streamlining your business processes and ensuring productivity.


With Power Automate, you create automated workflows between apps and services—including Microsoft 365, of course—to easily synchronize files, collect data, and schedule notifications. In this article, we’ll present six workflows that serve as perfect Microsoft Power Automate examples to simplify your IT admin life.


The Power Automate flow creates an automated approval process whenever a new document is uploaded to SharePoint, aggregating and automating all approvals. This is the perfect solution to avoid your team sending you a message manually whenever they need to request permission for a document upload.


With this flow, you can automatically receive an approval request from your team members via Teams whenever a new document is uploaded to SharePoint. You can also automate a notification to team members when the approval is completed. Here’s how to create it:

Step-by-step instructions

  1. From the Microsoft Power Automate menu, select the Templates section.
  2. Search for the template “Start approval for new documents and notify via Teams”.
  3. In the smaller box, connect SharePoint, Teams, Approvals, Office 365 Users, and Outlook to Power Automate.
  4. In the SharePoint box, fill out the site address and the library where the file will be created.
  5. In the Teams box, determine the team and channel where people will be notified.
  6. Create the notification message or go with the default one.
  7. In the Approval box, create a title for the process and select the approval type (either if all notified people should approve the file or just the first to respond) and the assignees.
  8. In the Condition box, set up “Response is equal to Approve”.
  9. In the final Teams box, set up a notification for the approval/rejection of the document by choosing the team and channel to receive it and customizing the message to be sent.


How Does Microsoft Power Automate Work?

Automations are either started manually, scheduled, or triggered by an action. These automations, called Flows, can occur in the cloud (Cloud Flows) or locally to a device or VM (Desktop Flows). While Cloud Flows run in remote Microsoft datacenters (the same ones as Azure) and don’t require an interface, Desktop Flows are accomplished through a more traditional robotic process automation (RPA) capability. The cloud- and desktop-based solutions are built to work together and address the many diverse needs of organizations.

Here are the automation tools inside of Power Automate:

·         Cloud Flows:  Automations managed from your web browser that can be started manually, triggered, or scheduled. These are the best method to incorporate third-party cloud services, APIs, and AI Builder


Cloud Flow Designer

·         AI Builder:  A highly advanced, AI and machine-learning-based optical character and image recognition tool that can be incorporated into solutions to extract, categorize, and process files. Though this isn’t technically a piece of Power Automate, it is a feature unique to the Power Platform and can easily be incorporated into Flows.


AI Builder Homepage


·         Desktop Flows:  With this flow, users can automate an interface on a desktop or VM by recording their screen, and the visual flow designer will automate mouse and keyboard clicks. Desktop Flows are dependent on the interface of the device or VM they are running on and are considered Power Platform’s “pure RPA” solution. Anything you can’t solve with Cloud Flows can be solved through Desktop Flows; some good examples include intricate data manipulation and legacy technology like green screens. Desktop Flows can be triggered or automated via Cloud Flows through their Unattended Add-On functionality.

Desktop Designer

·         Business Process Flows:  A method to automate people processes. Display the required steps for a specific business scenario via a model-driven app to a user every time it occurs. Cloud flows can be incorporated into these steps as well. For example, when a user marks a stage of the Business Process flow “complete”, an automated email is sent to their manager for approval. This allows your users to focus more on the quality of their work and interactions and less on the nitty-gritty details.

·         Process Advisor:  Feed Power Automate and other process data into this tool to discover bottlenecks, efficiencies, and new automation opportunities you might not have thought of.

Automate Anytime and Anywhere

In addition to web and desktop, Microsoft Power Automate’s diverse solution suite allows you to expand your automation capabilities to Microsoft Teams and mobile devices.


Monitor incoming emails

 Exercise - Monitor incoming emails - Training | Microsoft Learn

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, November 10, 2016


SharePoint Tutorials for Beginners, Developers, Designers and Administrators

SharePoint Tutorial

Sites

A SharePoint site is a web site that contains pages, add-ins, web parts, lists and libraries. You can create a site for an organizational unit like a department or division, a project, a document, a process and anything else that you may want to store data, information and knowledge about a particular thing.

sharepoint sites

Site Collections

A site is contained within a site collection. All site collections contain at least one site at the root called the root site which is simply a SharePoint site. A site collection will usually contain many more SharePoint sub sites other than the root site. For example, in a typical organization’s intranet the root site will store and display information about the organization as a whole and then there will be sub-sites for each department.

site collections

comparing sites and site collections

Permissions

Permissions are given to users to be able to read, edit or have full access and they’re propagated down to all the individual site components such as lists and libraries.

site access

Lists

A SharePoint list is comprised of columns and is used to store rows of data in much the same way as a spreadsheet in Excel.

lists

Columns

A column can store a wide variety of types of data and some of these include text, numbers, currency, date/time, lists, yes/non, SharePoint users and managed terms among others.

In addition to columns a list can host folders and those folders can host sub folders going many levels deep, not unlike the file system on your computer. And like a file system you may add rows into anyone of the folders.

Views

Every list will have a default view of the data which is usually in tabular mode but other types of lists can display different types of views as in the case of the project list. The project list’s default view is the Gantt chart view. A view is comprised of the columns you want displayed, filters for which rows you want displayed, settings for how you may want to group the data and the sorting of the data. A list can have many views which can be public to everyone or private to the user who created it.

Permissions

Permissions are automatically inherited from its containing SharePoint site but can be overwritten by breaking the inheritance in the permission settings of the list.

Parts

When a SharePoint list add-in is created, SharePoint will automatically create a part for it so you can add it to any page within the site. This part can be referred to as an app part or web part. The part will show a condensed view of the list and depending on settings allows the user to add rows directly to the list without having to go there directly.

Forms

A lists add and edit forms can be modified through SharePoint Designer and can also be replaced by InfoPath forms.

forms

Workflows

Workflows can be created and added to a list to perform any number of actions based on any number of conditions through SharePoint Designer.

Libraries

A SharePoint library is used to store files and everything written about the SharePoint list applies to a SharePoint library.

Columns

After uploading the file the columns are used to tag it. For example, a resume or CV can be tagged with a location and skills column. The more columns a file has to be tagged the better results the SharePoint search engine will return when users perform searches.

Versions

Another feature of libraries is the ability to have multiple versions of the file by being able to check it out and check it back in. When a file is checked out no one else may modify the file until it’s checked back in.

adding a document library app

Parts

SharePoint parts are self-contained components, sometimes referred to as widgets in other systems, which are added to pages to provide content from lists or libraries, content from outside systems, or provide some type of functionality like a birthday reminder or image carousel. These parts are called add-in parts or web parts in SharePoint.

Add-ins can be downloaded from the public SharePoint app store, added from the internal catalog of apps which can be used to deploy internally custom developed apps or are created automatically when a list or library is created.

A part will have many types of settings that be configured to customize its output or function. All parts share a common set of setting that include title, height, width, chrome state, chrome type among others and will contain settings unique for the part.

To edit a part you must be in page “Edit” mode and a down arrow will appear in the top-right corner.

Pages

SharePoint pages are stored in libraries just like any other type of file. When a SharePoint team site is created a “Site Pages” library is automatically added and the pages in it are used for users to interact with the site.

To add text or parts to a page click the “Edit” button in the “Page” tab of the ribbon located at the top of each page. You can add and remove pages like any other file in a library.

Posted by at No comments:

SharePoint Training

SharePoint Tutorials for Beginners, Developers, Designers and Administrators

SharePoint Tutorial

Sites

A SharePoint site is a web site that contains pages, add-ins, web parts, lists and libraries. You can create a site for an organizational unit like a department or division, a project, a document, a process and anything else that you may want to store data, information and knowledge about a particular thing.

sharepoint sites

Site Collections

A site is contained within a site collection. All site collections contain at least one site at the root called the root site which is simply a SharePoint site. A site collection will usually contain many more SharePoint sub sites other than the root site. For example, in a typical organization’s intranet the root site will store and display information about the organization as a whole and then there will be sub-sites for each department.

site collections

comparing sites and site collections

Permissions

Permissions are given to users to be able to read, edit or have full access and they’re propagated down to all the individual site components such as lists and libraries.

site access

Lists

A SharePoint list is comprised of columns and is used to store rows of data in much the same way as a spreadsheet in Excel.

lists

Columns

A column can store a wide variety of types of data and some of these include text, numbers, currency, date/time, lists, yes/non, SharePoint users and managed terms among others.

In addition to columns a list can host folders and those folders can host sub folders going many levels deep, not unlike the file system on your computer. And like a file system you may add rows into anyone of the folders.

Views

Every list will have a default view of the data which is usually in tabular mode but other types of lists can display different types of views as in the case of the project list. The project list’s default view is the Gantt chart view. A view is comprised of the columns you want displayed, filters for which rows you want displayed, settings for how you may want to group the data and the sorting of the data. A list can have many views which can be public to everyone or private to the user who created it.

Permissions

Permissions are automatically inherited from its containing SharePoint site but can be overwritten by breaking the inheritance in the permission settings of the list.

Parts

When a SharePoint list add-in is created, SharePoint will automatically create a part for it so you can add it to any page within the site. This part can be referred to as an app part or web part. The part will show a condensed view of the list and depending on settings allows the user to add rows directly to the list without having to go there directly.

Forms

A lists add and edit forms can be modified through SharePoint Designer and can also be replaced by InfoPath forms.

forms

Workflows

Workflows can be created and added to a list to perform any number of actions based on any number of conditions through SharePoint Designer.

Libraries

A SharePoint library is used to store files and everything written about the SharePoint list applies to a SharePoint library.

Columns

After uploading the file the columns are used to tag it. For example, a resume or CV can be tagged with a location and skills column. The more columns a file has to be tagged the better results the SharePoint search engine will return when users perform searches.

Versions

Another feature of libraries is the ability to have multiple versions of the file by being able to check it out and check it back in. When a file is checked out no one else may modify the file until it’s checked back in.

adding a document library app

Parts

SharePoint parts are self-contained components, sometimes referred to as widgets in other systems, which are added to pages to provide content from lists or libraries, content from outside systems, or provide some type of functionality like a birthday reminder or image carousel. These parts are called add-in parts or web parts in SharePoint.

Add-ins can be downloaded from the public SharePoint app store, added from the internal catalog of apps which can be used to deploy internally custom developed apps or are created automatically when a list or library is created.

A part will have many types of settings that be configured to customize its output or function. All parts share a common set of setting that include title, height, width, chrome state, chrome type among others and will contain settings unique for the part.

To edit a part you must be in page “Edit” mode and a down arrow will appear in the top-right corner.

Pages

SharePoint pages are stored in libraries just like any other type of file. When a SharePoint team site is created a “Site Pages” library is automatically added and the pages in it are used for users to interact with the site.

To add text or parts to a page click the “Edit” button in the “Page” tab of the ribbon located at the top of each page. You can add and remove pages like any other file in a library.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)