Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 5 Mar 2020

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Using Siri to setup your Office 365 OOF message with Microsoft Power Automate

Description

This PnP community demo is taken from the bi-weekly SharePoint Developer Community - General Development Special Interest Group (SIG) call recorded on March 5, 2020.

“How can I quickly and verbally set my out-of-office auto-reply in Outlook from my iPhone?” Chakkaradeep (Chaks) Chandran recently asked himself this question and in this 14-minute demo, he steps through configuring a Siri Shortcut to trigger (http) a Microsoft Power Automate – “OOF flow,” to verbally set his OOF in Outlook. Opening command: “Siri, set OOF message.” Follow the information collection conversation and how behind-the-scenes Siri creates the http link containing data required by the Power Automate flow to execute. Step through the Power Automate flow and see final result – OOF activated in Outlook based on information collected verbally by Siri. Configuring a Siri Shortcut is similar to configuring a flow.

Demo Presenter: Chakkaradeep (Chaks) Chinnakonda Chandran (Microsoft) | @chakkaradeep

Supporting materials:
• Using Siri to setup Office365 “Out of Office” message with Power Automate – Chakkaradeep Chandran (Chaks) | https://www.chakkaradeep.com/2019/11/27/use-siri-shortcuts-and-power-automate-to-schedule-your-out-of-office-automatic-replies/
• How to work with HTTP requests | https://www.flowjoe.io/2019/08/27/understanding-the-trigger-when-a-http-request-is-received/

All SharePoint PnP Developer Community demos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR9nK3mnD-OWSbg0o9a7mx_E7s2u7h_o2

Learn more about the SharePoint developer community at: http://aka.ms/sppnp.

A

I thought I would do something very interesting that I found myself to be using a lot is how quickly and easily I can set my automatic replies and outlook, because that's something that I do when I'm going on vacation- or you know maybe I'm out of office for some things and I just want to let people know I'm not available and and reach out to the resources right. So every time I do this by going to Outlook.

A

Alright, it's there boy, your claim doesn't matter, but you have to find validated and then, like you, go and said that so, given that I have access to power, automate I was thinking gosh. How do I do this? That's something that I can I can relate to the tasks I do every day, which is kind of like I use, iPhone shock. That's a lot so iOS shortcuts you haven't used.

A

It I'll quickly show demo as well and and I automate many of the things in my iPhone, so I thought oh I can actually use shortcuts to set my message so I got into the journey and and finally worked I also blocked about that on how to use silly silly shortcuts and for automate to schedule your move, so I want to go through that today and you know, have some fun because many people are working from home and some may be group and some may be- you know- want to take sick leave.

A

So that's totally, you know fine, but sometimes you just want to like kill your phone to do the things and just do it right. That's why technology is here for us to help us, so what I did was I built a flow that can do exactly this set out of office message, so I'm going to show you what it looks like to do it and here's mine out of office message so clearly, there's nothing here. Right now, I'm going to go to my iPhone I'm gonna open my shortcuts app.

A

So that's how you can get to the shortcut tab. There is an app here that you can click and that so you can see. I already have a lot of shock. That's like, if you have out, we can say: what's my next meeting and we'll Chile the next meeting, you can even said city shortcuts or apps, so you can connect your you know your favorite to-do app or the to-do list or even tasks, and then there's also you can use whatsapp I can even shake him to my local saloon.

A

For my haircut, that's really cool right. So I have set everything up so when I, when I leave it and just say city chicken for haircut and do its job so where's our shortcut that we're gonna demo today here it is I'm on vacation right, so I can have many options. I can tell silly to say I'm on vacation and then it will basically lead you out. I'm not gonna. Do that now, because it won't record city audio in this call.

A

You can also place this in your home screen and then launch from there or you can come to the shortcut and click on it and that's going to run and it's gonna say until one day so I'm gonna say March, 15, right and then I'm gonna click OK and then that's pretty much it it's done. If you're using C likes, you tell you that you know it's all set, but since this was I was watching from here, they didn't actually do that. Now what it did was.

A

It went and started a flow behind the scenes, and now, if I actually switch and come to automatic replies, you can see here there you go from 3 5, which is today's date and 3:15 that we selected. My automatic reply is here. So what happened was basically here's my flow, so this flow is, is using the HTTP trigger.

A

So when an HTTP request is received, it's going to do certain things and it also has a payload that has ended so based on end date, so based on the parameter I sent here, which, even though you saw I selected a date, I'm still getting a string here and then I do some. You know date manipulations in the flow and then use the action set up the automatic replies in Outlook. So what am I doing in big manipulation?

A

The first thing is I'm getting the time when you can see just making sure that I go to a standard time and then convert that to my time zone, so I'm getting my current time and then I'm also getting the Pacific Standard Time, based on that UTC time just to be safe in this space. So then I format the string using short date pattern.

A

That, apparently, is what the outlook connector likes to the start time date time and end time date time and then I set my search time zone, UTC and destination is a PST here.

A

So if it's in your region, you can set your region time zone and the other thing I also do is I get the string that I, passed and I will show you very soon how I actually pass that string, which is a date and I, know that it's going to be in the date format and I convert that time zone using the string days time date, time string to Pacific, Standard, Time I'm, just going to say such time is PST here. So the output is I'm, gonna get a date.

A

I don't have to work on strings, which is the thing that I really want you and then I actually now go and you know, set my status. That's scheduled external audience, like all the things that I want to do with setting up a group message. The key parameters are the start date end date and there's also this message here: I, don't know why it didn't come up here. Maybe it's a refreshing shoe, but basically to also type in the message there. So you will get or you know you can.

A

You can have a friendly message for your and the things that I'm doing here is basically getting you know to display that March, 6th or much summit. You can even just put the date here until whatever date you you send using the shortcut and that's pretty much it. It's only like few steps here. The key thing here to be in the know is to work with this HTTP request, so I know. David will link this in the chat and the slingshot blog post that he would do immediately after this call.

A

But if you go to my blog post, there is also linked to another blog post that describes around how to work with the HTTP request trigger it's very powerful. So if you spend a little bit time understanding what it does and how it works and how to actually constraint the parameters that you send, which is basically like you know, I want to send one to three parameters here and then there are all strings of numbers.

A

It will actually generate the schema for you in your flow and then add it as the payload that you can send. So once you cross that stage, then you have your flow, build your using the parameters that you are constructing here and then setting the out of office message. So what happens in my shortcut? So let's get into that.

A

So here's my shortcut. If you're, not with shortcuts I, also link to my blog post me Apple's documentation. There are so many actions and steps that you can basically add by clicking this, and then you get several options. You have scripting. You have media location documents. You can even have AB suggestions that city works with here, so you can directly use the chart city seditious. So just a chocolate in your shotgun. But the first thing I have here is that I'm asking Siri to speak.

A

So when I say I'm on location city responds to me as awesome until what day right. So that's really nice. So you get some conversation going on with your with Siri, so they're, just not like a robot, but it's just something that a conversation in nature- and you can even like say way down to finish and said the rail. You can even choose your why's that it's going to be like all the available voices, and then you got another step that is basically part of the scripting.

A

It's a it's going to ask you until what date, and then here this input type. So it has the option to say text number: you are all date, so in this case I'm doing date, and then you can even set a default date. If you, if you want to start with and then what I am doing, is formatting that provided input to shorten and short time format, so I know I will get it in this format. So if I go back here and show that one, so you can see I'm getting in in this format.

A

So that's what I'm doing here in this shortcut, which is I'm using an action from the calendar and converting that to shot date-time format pro with the input that is coming from its previous action and then I generate a URL action step that basically now copies and could be that the URL that you get here in your flow, which is here, that's the link that you need to do it and for folks.

A

Looking at this to understand the real issue here that you should be aware of is this: is you know anybody can call this URL so for me, after this tall I will basically like delete this clear, a copy or you know, create a new trigger and then change the URL right, because it's not it's security by obscurity.

A

So that's something you should be aware of it's really hard, but if somebody get access to it they can, you know, keep calling this flow and then what I do is there is a network action where it says, get contents of the URL and then do what you want to do with it.

A

You can post, you can do all the operations so here I have get post put, so all I want here is post, and then you specify what does if you have and then you can say, request body the parameters that you want to send and you can choose whether it's JSON its form or its file. In this case we want JSON and then I put the name as and I'm getting the date parameter from this action output.

A

So it's pretty similar to how you're building a flow right, but it's very much aligned to how Apple is working with chocolate. So you might need to know how to do these steps. But if you are following me right now, it's very similar to how you would do this in a flow right, except that you need to know which actions to use in which and sorry I just start. My screen was here: it's basically like Ling like a flow right and here's the gate.

A

Contents of URL, where you can specify the method they're disposed I can also specify any either I have and the request body in the form of JSON. So it is very powerful and it's very similar to how you build a flow as long as you know what steps and which category they are right.

A

So, instead of products which you see in flow, you have the category C and like stripping, especially if you want to like have inputs from the user or work with some device level controls you go into scripting if you want some music and Apple music, stuff or Spotify, going to media and even images right.

A

So that's the thing that you need to know, but once you cross that that's it, you use the network action to post the to call the URL with appropriate method and body, and then finally, C will speed back to you done enjoying your time off. So that's the shortcut. I have chicken like ten minutes for me to build this, given that I know a lot of iOS shortcuts, but once you do that it's very powerful, you can do a lot of things. Now.

A

Your imagination is it's like the key right you can have so many flows. That does many things just talking to your phone you're not limited to you know, I have to have Siri support or I have to like have a flow button in my BJ know. If you're cool to build these shortcuts, you can now have several flows with HTTP trigger that then calls other flows right. Child flows to do certain actions so yeah.

A

This is something cool and do it, oh so I'm sure demo and shared a lot of power and automate and sitting shortcuts, and that's it from me- is now excellent.

B

Excellent Thank, You Jax really really interesting and it's it's nice to see kind of related technologies, and this is anyway into Mike's racist. If I very, aren't really really interesting automation because you could do then, whatever you want in the flow or in the power automate side with that setup, so really really cool.