Microsoft 365 Community Microsoft Teams, 3 Feb 2022

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From YouTube: Use the Power Platform and Microsoft Teams to quiz yourself

Description

In this 12-minute developer focused demo, Albert-Jan Schot wanted a way to quiz himself on the details of what he read 3 months ago. Happen to keep a list of what you read in SharePoint? Want to create a no code solution to quiz yourself on past reads using Power Automate that pulls details transformed into questions from your list, shuffles the array of questions (for quiz experience), and renders them on an Adaptive Card that also evaluates your response? This PnP Community demo is taken from the General Microsoft 365 Developer community call recorded on February 3, 2022.

Demo Presenter: Albert-Jan Schot (BLIS.digital) | @appieschot

Supporting materials:
• Article - Shuffle an array with Power Automate | https://www.cloudappie.nl/shuffle-array-power-automate/

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

So recently I did a demo around some power platform stuff and I started to think. Oh, this is actually an interesting demo. So, let's see if we can take it one step uh one step further and what I try to do is try to read, read books and probably well, not the only one. The only thing is that when I read a book and like two or three months later, I totally forgot that I've read the book, so I was looking around the solution.

A

Hey can I get some cues or triggers that I should read more or should be well at least know the fight that I've read. Something maybe get some inspirational quote or something like that, and apparently there is this app where you can provide the app with whatever you've been reading, and then you get triggers or reminders. Okay, hey you've read this: can you remember who wrote this? Can you remember a quote from what book it is so start thinking?

A

Okay, this is actually an interesting scenario, so I figured out okay, I keep all my all my reading. I keep that in goodreads and what I did is I simply synced what I got in goodreads to sharepoint list now within the sharepoint list. You'll see that I've got some books and authors date, read writing so some some normal, let's say metadata around the books that I've been reading.

A

This is just a bunch of metadata. There is no no fancy logic in there. I didn't do anything with um with all that, the cool stuff that you can do with list formatting. It's just plain plain content. Now I figured what I wanted to do is I want to get a reminder around something that I've read recently, let's say every week, or maybe once or twice a month, something like that. So I figured okay, let's see if I can get a flow that sends me a reminder now going from there.

A

I currently edited in flow, so I created the reading reminder flow and what the flow does is. It is pretty straightforward, but there are a few fancy things in there that make that make it fun. So first thing is: okay, I'm gonna run it every week, wednesday good good moment to reflect on how the week is going and what I'm gonna do. Is I'm gonna get an item from my reading list?

A

I use a random integer, so I at least get some resemblance of a random book in the list that I have and with that item I now have my book. I have some metadata around the book and what I do is I run an http trigger to get some additional information, because what I wanted to do is I wanted to quiz myself. So now I got my book.

A

I know who wrote it and what I'm going to do is I'm going to call an api where I say: okay, search an api for all authors that have the same name. So I pick the author that I've uh that written my book and then I pick his first name or her first name and then query for other authors out there and potentially you get a lot of get a lot of results. But let's, uh let's bear with me, so you get some. You get some results.

A

You get some different authors that you can that you can work with and what you then can do is then you can say: okay, I've got the book that I've read. I've got some additional info and let's send myself a question. So can I remember who wrote it then, in order to do that, you can work with adaptive cards and we're going to have a look at the adaptive cards in a second.

A

But the important part with adaptive cards is that you actually can ask questions in an adaptive card, so you can ask a user okay, what is the option or what do you want to provide as an option?

A

So what I did is I created a array with three options: choice, one choice, two and the correct one and the correct one has the author that are coming from my book so coming from sharepoint and the two other authors are actually coming from the api that I call so I just get a random value or a random author from the list of others that I that I get now. The second thing that I wanted to do.

A

If I would ask this question like this, the third option is always going to be the correct option, because the third option in my array has the label correct. So that's not something that I wanted to do. What I want to do is I want to shuffle my array. I want to mix it up a bit, make sure that it's not always going to be the third option. When I get get my question, so what I do is I create a random integer between zero and two.

A

So I get three options and what I then know is: okay, let me randomize my book array and in order to do that, I have a quite large function, so I put it here. So it's a bit more readable what I'm actually doing, I'm using the skip function with skip. You can actually say: okay, give me everything after a certain starting point. So what I have is, I have my random start, which is between zero and two. Then I'm going to get everything after that random start and everything before and every time I run this.

A

I will get a different random start, so I get sort of a random set of of data by using the union. You can then combine everything again, so you have a single array which is sort of randomized. It's not 100 randomized, because well, I'm um only doing specific options, but then, in a way I still have not always the third option. As a result, it's slightly slightly different. Then the next thing is there. Is this adaptive card option and the adaptive card? Is it's a it's?

A

A json schema that you can use, so I didn't do too much time on designing or making it look. Pretty. The important part is that I make sure that I've got my title. There is some well design around my title, so I make sure that it is bold. It's a it's extra large. Then you have some text where I make sure.

A

Okay, you, you understand the question that you get and then what you can do is you can actually provide the choices, the options that you want to send the user or present the user with now. If I close this one by then using the send adaptive card, I can say: okay, this is the message. This is my adaptive card. I can do an update message, saying: okay, happy with the result um and then I've got my recipient.

A

That's gonna, be me, I'm gonna get the getty question then what I can then do is okay, I'm gonna wait for that response and if the response actually is correct, then I'm gonna say: okay you're the winner. If I did something wrong, then okay keep trying or try again or maybe you could do a link to the book that you've read saying hey.

A

Perhaps you should read it again now? If I would run this, then what you will see is I'm going to run it manually. Click next next finish, one two three, but you actually see it will get the item. It will get the book info. It will uh go, go through all the different steps and it will send me that message. So if I now go to teams, you will see. Okay, you read the book. Apparently I read a jack ryan, jack ryan thriller. So, okay, who wrote it?

A

No, obviously that's going to be tom clancy I'm going to send submit and then it will probably tell me that I did well so well done now. I would run it uh again. um What I can do is: okay, let's say run it again, and you will see that if I give a wrong answer, then obviously I would get the uh run wrong. Experience saying: okay, you did something wrong. Please try again, so the only downside is that I now have two lead child, so I obviously have no clue.

A

What's the correct one uh sure this one is wrong and I will say: okay, uh well, you failed now. What I really liked around this sample is that it is pretty straightforward in steps that I need to take. I have a recurrence making sure that it runs every week or every two weeks, I'll get a random book that I've read recently and obviously I'm now qu. I'm now querying my sharepoint list.

A

I could also query my goodreads feed, where I get all the all the data for, because goodreads provides you with an xml feed of all the stuff that you've read. Then I get some additional info make sure that I shuffle my answers, send myself an adaptive card and then just work with work with the data. Now let me go to my flows and let me go to my import because I cheated a bit.

A

I didn't want to run my import every time if you actually wanted to play around with goodreads you'll need an http trigger, but what you will see is that goodreads is just a rss feed and what you then can do is if you would go there, what you will see is it's playing xml, you get a button here now.

A

Let me talk a little bit, so all the data that you actually need is already here so instead of using sharepoint, if you don't want to use a sharepoint list as your as your storage layer, you could use this xml file as well. Just get the xml file with everything that you've read and what you then can do. Is this one? I think so. The next step is that, okay for each item in that xml you'll need to work with expat queries. So what I'm going to do is: okay, it's s.

A

So let me select that one. So it's a bit more readable! What you see is that okay, I did an http request and I'm going to select all items in my http or in my xml file. Then I'm going to create a sharepoint list item based on the item in my rss feed, and in order to do that, what you can do is, then you can just say: okay, I'll in my for each I'm going to create an item and I'm going to do an xpath.

A

Now, this time I'm going to select my for each item and then I'm going to say. Okay, in this case, I want to get the item title and I want to get a text or if I want to get the author, then I can do the item author name and this one actually matches with what you see here. So I've got my item element. Then I've got an author name. I've got my title. I've got things like uh what I've given as a rating.

A

I've got stuff that okay, when did I actually read it, because you could use dates to see when you read something. So it's a really easy way without having to write really complex code to send yourself uh cards quiz yourself on what you've, what you've read of what you've been doing and well. For me, it was a really uh well.

A

I, like the I, like the scenario of getting uh getting something in my team's environment that easy, and that quick- and I think I spent like an hour on I'm getting the flow out there and doing some stuff with this probably spend another hour figuring out how to shuffle things, because it's a bit well, it wasn't apparently a scenario that a lot of people. Do you see a lot of samples out there that explains? Okay, you can use an azure function to shuffle and well.

A

I wanted to stay away with uh away from any development I wanted to play around with with the flow only and that's it. Let me see if there are questions.

B

There are lots of uh amazing chat and some questions in there happy. So thank you very, very cool, really like how malleable and pliable this is right, so you're using it for books, but someone could use it for videos uh or movies or they could use it. For I don't know microsoft, 365, community videos, if you wanted to cruise yourself and keep up to date with those I was even thinking.

B

I could tweak it to just remind my kids of all the chores that they didn't do and quiz them on things that they should be doing so win-win right.

A

Excellent work as.

B

Well, yeah, very, very cool. Thank you so so much.