Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 3 Mar 2022

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From YouTube: Migrating Cloud Flows using Flow & Apps migrator

Description

Need to deploy apps and flows to production? In this 9-minute developer focused demo, Denis Molodtsov shows how you can move canvas apps or cloud flows across Microsoft 365 tenants or sites using this migration tool that automatically converts exported flows and apps to be compatible with targeted environment. As well, the tool helps you migrate SharePoint lists used as a dependency for your Apps and Flows, convert SharePoint List Forms customized with Power Apps and more. Steps through migration using tool. This PnP Community demo is taken from the General Microsoft 365 Developer community call recorded on March 3, 2022.

Demo Presenter: Denis Molodtsov (Point Alliance) | @Zerg00s

Supporting materials:
• Tool Repo - Flow & Power Apps Migrator | https://github.com/Zerg00s/FlowPowerAppsMigrator

Learn more:
• Learn more about the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community at: http://aka.ms/m365pnp
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community YouTube channel: https://aka.ms/m365pnp-videos

A

Today, I'm going to show you a tool called flows and powerapps migrator, it's a tool that helps you migrate cloud flows and canvas apps across sites or even microsoft. 365 tenants, my name is dennis malassa. My expertise is everything sharepoint, but in the last few years I was also working a lot with the power platform.

A

So, let's start with showing an example, uh you have a large flow, a cloud flow that uses a sharepoint connector, it's connected to a specific source site and it also uses some dependencies, sharepoint lists and libraries.

A

Now, if I export this, then import it to a new tenant. You'll see that I need to do some manual manipulations, for example.

A

Well, I need to re-establish the connection and then I will have to fix the site address. The site address can be fixed manually like this.

A

And then I would then realize that the list is missing, which is a dependency.

A

It's usually not a problem if your flow is relatively simple or small, but imagine you have a large flow or even better. You have multiple flows to migrate and even worse you can do it frequently. Let's say every day once you you go from dev to staging to production for example.

A

uh So let me show you how the um low and powerapps migrator tool solves this, so I'm gonna already have it downloaded. So I'm gonna run the migrate packages batch file.

A

When I run it, it'll first ask me to specify a source site and then a destination site. I'm gonna specify a source one first and then a destination site.

A

um Before by the way, before doing this, I am supposed to place the exported flow or app here. It could be multiple flows or apps, and I should place it in the source folder.

A

Once that's done, and I run the tool. It'll first asked me to log into the original tenant which I'm gonna do.

A

Then it should ask me which dependencies I need to bring over. So in my case, I am interested in two lists, so in a destination tenant, I'm missing budget and tissues that need to move over here.

A

So I'm going to select them budget and tissues.

A

And a few moments later, using the power of the powershell pnp tool, the flow migrator is exporting dependencies, including customized forms using json and even content types. If they are present in the list. All lists, then, once that's done. The next step is to connect to the target tenant.

A

And as you might guess, the next step would be to import dependencies, so first all sharepoint lists and libraries will be created on a target tenant.

A

It should usually take a few seconds.

A

And once that's done, the dist folder will be automatically opened. This folder now contains a converted version of a package, so this converts the package has a an advantage. So when I import it, uh you'll see in a few moments that it won't ask me to manually correct sharepoint dependencies like lists libraries views.

A

All of it would be will be automatically.

B

A

Just give it a few moments.

A

um All right, so let me open the flow when I open it so voila. I don't need to correct any dependencies. The um site address. The list. Names are all corrected automatically behind the scenes. This uh dependency was created. Let me prove that it was moved over, so these two dependencies were automatically migrated.

A

If you want to migrate, multiple flows, you simply export all of them put to the source folder and then just go over the same steps. You've just seen also this tool migrates canvas, apps and even solutions.

A

uh You might have large solutions that you are preparing for your clients, for example, that might have hundreds pages guidelines deployment guides. To avoid that, you can use the same tool.

A

One of the cool things that you can do with this tool is to prepare packages for your clients or partners. So there is a.

A

There is a script called prepare deployment package for clients, so if you run it it'll package, your solution as a part of a folder that you can hand over to the client, the client on their site simply need to create convert packages.

A

They need to click, convert packages batch script and that will complete the installation on their part, which is very useful.

A

That actually could be probably done for something like seaweed starter kit, which is not that easy to deploy.

A

So the tool can be found under this url and if you want to use it, just simply download the latest release, there is a number of limitations and features that you might be interested in you. You can check. What's migrated like canvas, apps, uh standalone cloud flows, solutions lists, libraries, if you customize your lists with um custom forms using json formatting. That's also migrated.

A

uh This solution doesn't migrate. Data content types are migrated, lookup fields are unfortunately, not migrated right and you cannot migrate. Anything. That's uh spanish spans across multiple sites, so the limitation is that all of your sharepoint dependencies need to stay one in one site, all right. So that concludes it.

B

Very, very cool dennis, uh thank you for for sharing that really, I'm sure is gonna save a lot of people a lot of time, uh and- and you know all the little amount of time we save adds up- allows us to go, do bigger and better and cooler things. So uh thank you for creating this, and also thank you for sharing it with the community really fantastic stuff.

A

Thank you, david.