Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform Connectors, 14 Oct 2022

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From YouTube: You can be an author of an Independent Publisher Connector

Description

In this 11-minute citizen developer-focused demo, Vivek Bavishi frames up the independent publisher process in 5 clear stages. Propose (tell all what you’re working on, fork repo, submit PR), Build (code, security, test flow, screen shots), Document (details on connector and actions), Prepare (validate files), and Submit (check all items completed, add screenshots). Please allow Microsoft a few weeks to validate your submission. This PnP Community demo is taken from the Microsoft Power Platform community call – September 2022, recorded on September 21, 2022.

Demo Presenter
• Vivek Bavishi (Hitachi Solutions) | @that_API_guy

Supporting materials
• Repo - Microsoft Power Platform Connectors | https://github.com/microsoft/powerplatformconnectors
• Documentation – Independent publisher certification process | https://docs.microsoft.com/connectors/custom-connectors/certification-submission-ip

Stay connected
• Twitter https://twitter.com/microsoft365dev
• Call attention to your great work by using #PowerAppsCC and #PnPWeekly on Twitter.

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/m365/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community Blog - https://aka.ms/m365pnp/blog
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - https://aka.ms/m365/community

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But yeah I'm going to be talking about independent publisher, connector and how you can submit one, but a little bit about me. I'm, a business application, so MVP have been one for three years: I work as a Senior Solutions consultant at Hitachi Solutions and see the power addicts badge all the director ones.

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Being a part of that Community I mean says three years, but probably more than that enough and that's some ways you can can have five I used to make a bunch of videos but now I'm a baby, uh but yeah you can follow me on Twitter as well.

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Videos are just different now right, yeah yeah, different videos now so the agenda I'll uh briefly talk about the the whole publisher program, independent, publish connector and try to make it as a five-step process, easy to understand, and we will look at each of the steps a bit of a demo of each of the steps as well.

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So the independent publisher, connectors anyone can submit a connector. So if you have an API service that you want to create a custom connector and submit you can submit one all these certified connectors can be used by anyone else on the platform, so you are contributing to something which, as Charles mentioned except I, don't 7.4 million after makers, so you have so yeah and then it opens up the possibility to connect to so many services right. So there are so many services. Every business has different apis that they want to connect to.

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So you can not only just create it for yourself, but something that others can use right. So the five-step process proposed document prepare and submit. So if you want to just take a screenshot of that, that would be it's something that you can kind of just it's a long process if you go to the docs, but this will help you kind of streamline your process and not feel like it's a long month. So the first step process.

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You want to make sure that try is right now sitting here, make sure that he hasn't submitted a connector so uh because 90 of the connectors are submitted by him yeah. You can create a proposal first, so on the GitHub repository you create a fork.

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Criter Fork started with cloning that in vs code, once you have cloned it, you can create a local repository. So once you have that it will show you all the folders and because you want to submit a proposal first, you want to create a different branch. So that's something that any new connector you can keep creating new branches.

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So here I'm trying to submit a proposal for PayPal, so I've created the branch published the branch and now I want to so now that you have a branch you want to create a new folder within the independent publisher, connector, so I'm creating a new PayPal Branch. You always want to add a readme file so that it doesn't have to be complete because you are proposing right now but add some information in there, so that people know what the connector is about.

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um Once you have your readme file submit those changes, publish it and then once you are done with that, you want to submit the pull request. I know it's if, if you're not aware about GitHub I'm going very fast here, but it's a 10 minute demo, so once you have the pull request, make sure you add proposal in the title followed by the independent publisher, that connector's name and then independent publisher, so that it can be identified. The GitHub library is for all the connectors, not just independent publisher.

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So now that you have submitted the proposal now, people know that someone's working on this and you can check this before you submit the same connector. You can always add changes to that connector, but make sure- and you can also collaborate with others.

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So the next step is to build the connector so to build the connector. If you're not aware, you have to create a custom connector, so you can go to custom connectors in powerapps or power automate make sure you have this iPhone background color. They are specific about this, so that explicit color has to be there. And then you want to find the security if it's API key or odds things like that, you're going to refine all your actions triggers in the connector.

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Also, there's an option to add code, so you need some custom code to add in there C sharp.

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You can add that and then you want to test and make sure that all of the actions are working they shot of this, because this is what you'll need to submit when you're submitting the final pull request to make sure everything is working with that green check mark and then also create a test flow, so make sure you have at least three actions in there which are working from that connector and take a screenshot of each action as well again, something that you'll need next step is the a little bit of the boring part of the the process which is documenting.

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Everyone loves documenting right, so you want to make sure you have a good title to the connector. So in this case it's rebrandly. This is the connected. I submitted make sure you have a description, which is something which people will look at what the service is about, so they can search for this as well, when they're searching for a connector so make sure it defines the service and then all your actions right. Every action that you've added to the connector.

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You want to define a summary, a description, and it has I mean there are some guidelines to that: I've put a reference Link in the end, but make sure that is something because this is what, when they add, the connector will show up and we'll see that in a minute.

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So you want to add a good description for each action and within your actions, if you have any parameters like uh like a Destiny the year, we are kind of trying to create a short URL, Asian URL, which is going to point to so make sure that you have a good description. So all these descriptions should be in English and then also add response, so anything the response that you get back from the action ever everything that you get back. You want to define a description for that.

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As well, because that's how we can use that in the flow, so here, if you see that option where it's mean that this link should belong to the destination URL things like that, all that gets showed up in the connector.

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Okay, all right. So now that you have done the most challenging part which is documenting, you want to prepare the connector files so that you can submit that. So in vs code, you can download the PA con uh CLI, which is a connector. They have actually added to Power Platform now as well, but you can first, you have to log in okay, then you have to download soapy account. Download it'll, show you a list of environments that you have within your tenant and then it'll show you all.

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The connectors I have 58 connectors over there, and then you specify the number of the connector and it will download that to your local, folder and it'll show up on the left with all those files. So it will download the files for which you just created custom connected within the files make sure. So these are the things which you can't add in the Wizard. You have to add it in the files. You have some more just documenting right, so you want to define the publisher. That's your name.

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My name is that API guy, the stock owner would be the service which is rebrandly and then there's some other metadata as well. That you need to add which would be the website, the website of the service, a privacy policy URL. So that's also required and the category of the connectors. In this case it's a marketing and Social Media connector.

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So there's a list of those which you can choose from and then you also want to add your name contact it's required. Although I mean Troy has submit a bunch and he doesn't get so many emails, but you want to give some support. So so you won't give you an email, then, and once you are done with all that, make sure you validate the connectors, so you use PA convalidate. This is the place where it will tell you if you're missing a description.

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um Any titles summary things like that and if it's running fine I mean if it's all good, it might give you a few warnings, you can skip the warnings but try to make sure that you I mean everything has to be validated. Otherwise, if you submit they'll, come back to you and they'll be like go ahead. Add these descriptions. It just becomes a long process, so make sure you validate this one.

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It's only if just a few warnings, which is fine and I, can go ahead and submit that the last step for submitting was reading the readme file. So if you see there are multiple things, there's a template for this, which you can download, and you need to specify your the rerun D service, the description about that the operations that are included in it, how to get the credentials. That's really important, because people might not know how to get an API key.

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There are client credentials for an oauth, so you want to Define that as well, and the last step is to submit the connector, so here I'm, showing a screenshot of the recording of the connector that I submitted Brandy. So you want to make sure you check those boxes, make sure that you have followed that so the color of the that that connector make sure we are choosing that you have all these artifacts.

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So you need to name. So you need to remove that proposal thing you just have to have the name and independent publisher, and these are all the screenshots that I was talking about. You need to take those screenshots paste it in here, so that you can tell them that this is a working connector and once you are done with all this you're good to submit the connector it once you have submitted it's great. uh It takes a few few days, sometimes for them to respond back.

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They have a big backlog, but once you are done submitting they respond back everything looks good. It will take a two weeks, I think for them to deploy to production so yeah it it takes time it's something we have to validate before it gets available for the whole, our platform, people using that. So these are some resources. Basically, what I went through it's in detail over there, the GitHub repo and also the certification process?

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Okay, all right thanks.