Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform Connectors, 8 May 2023

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From YouTube: Companies House Independent Publisher Connector - How API integration adds value

Description

In this 9-minute developer-focused demo, Matt Collins-Jones evaluates the pros and cons of using an HTTP Action in Cloud flow, a custom connector, and an Independent Publisher Connector to bring data/value into your Power Automate flows/apps. See how a flow invokes the Companies House connector action that calls the Companies House’s API and brings back data for report. Advantages of Independent Publisher Connectors include - used across flows and apps, DLP governed, worldwide usage, centrally updated.

This PnP Community demo is taken from the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Development Community call recorded on March 30, 2023.

Demo Presenter
• Matt Collins-Jones (Capgemini) | @D365Geek

Community Call Conversation
• aka.ms/Mar30-Demo3

Supporting materials
• Repo - Microsoft Power Platform Connectors | https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors
• Connector - Companies House (Independent Publisher) | https://learn.microsoft.com/connectors/companieshouseip/

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/community/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/community/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - http://aka.ms/community/home

A

B

House connector, it's an independent publisher, connector that I created and published last year. I think it was now um I'm going to talk about how the API can add value to organizations a little bit about me.

B

uh I'm Mark, Collins Jones, most people call me mcj these days, um I've been working with business applications for about 10 plus years I'm, a big Power Platform fan I've my job roles, senior Power, Platform solution, architect, I'm also a cat dad uh there's my two cats and I'm also a dad dad um and you can find all my social medias and things uh in those links right there.

B

So, let's talk a little bit about um how we, how we use apis in the Power Platform to to add value, so there's different ways to control apis. um This is a little bit of a generic slide, uh so do bear with me, but it's it's all about showing different use cases here. So so we can call an API through a clap through a HTTP action in a cloudflare. This has some advantages. uh It takes very little time to do. You can build it.

B

You can test it really really quickly and it's great you're good to do it. uh It does have some disadvantages, though um you have to rebuild it each time you want to use it or you have to make it reusable so putting it in a child flow and calling it and then handling all those all those calls, and things like that, you may need to update it in multiple places.

B

So you may change the API key or you need to have a different piece of information, meaning you need to update it in different places where it is where it's deployed to, and these things are also slightly hard to drop them. um You can turn it on or turn turn off the HTTP option. There's very little you can do elsewhere.

B

There are some things you can do, but not not for the majority of it, so that if you have an API that you want to connect to that you're going to be consuming data from regularly most times you're trying to you don't want to make a custom connector. So a customer cancer has a couple of advantages. It can be used across flows and powerapps very easily, and it can be governed specifically through DLP as well, but it does have some disadvantages.

B

These are only available in environments where it is deployed. This channel sounds a bit stupid to say out loud. um It's only available where you deploy it yeah, if that makes sense, but if you, if you have like a small organization that maybe has a Dev test and a prod then deploying it to those three environments, is, is fairly standard and fairly straightforward. If you have an organization that has dozens or even hundreds of environments- and they all want to consume this bit of data, it becomes a little bit more problematic.

B

There's no Central way to update this connector. If it's deployed across multiple environments, you have to do the deployment each time so that you can update it. If you make a change or a bug fix, it also takes a little bit longer to write than the regular HTTP action as well.

B

Now, if you think that the API that you're working with is going to add value to not only your organization but also other organizations, you can go down the independent publisher room, so it's taking a custom connector, submit it to Microsoft and becoming an independent publisher for that connector. This has a few advantages. These again can be used across flows and apps easily and can be driven through the DLP.

B

They can be used in any environment worldwide. That's the big thing here! That's the reason why this is so great. Is that no matter where you are in the world and again, there's a caveat, some environments? It may not be available. You can use this worldwide in any environment. It's always going to be there DLP permitting the cross and it can be centrally updated.

B

You can create a bug fix and you can submit it to Microsoft and they'll push that bug, fix out or add that additional feature out to the entire worldwide community, so it can be centrally updated. You also don't need to own the API. This is this is really key here. A lot of organizations have their own apis, but they're not building connectors for them in the Power Platform. You don't have to be the owner of that API to submit a connector to the independent publishers.

B

You also get a shiny badge from the PMP Community as well. If you do that the disadvantages it can take a little bit longer than the HTTP production or the trust and connector as well. So let's have a quick dump.

B

So I thought what we'll do is we take a look at companies out of the company's house if you're not familiar with? It is a government organization that collates and maintains data about companies in the UK. So if I know this company's house, I can search for a company. So if I, if I search, Microsoft I, can find a couple of entries from Microsoft here.

B

So we'll look at the one in Microsoft UK and what we'll do is we will grab the company number, which is this one up here and we'll go through to our apps, so I thought I'd do this on the Fly, hoping the demo. Dots won't strike me down for this um I'll create a new account in my database instance. In my model, driven app, uh we'll call the account name, Microsoft uh I will put in the account number that we just got we'll hit, save and we'll create that record. Now.

B

What the company's house connects allows you to do is it allows you to go off and retrieve information about a company, so in this instance, you may have um Tendencies where a company will have one name that is known by, but also another one where it is a training name for legal reasons, and you can also get some uh some other details about a company as well so I've added in a custom button onto my ribbon at the top here, it says company's house a little smiley face.

B

If you press the button, it's going to pop open a little custom page if I click run the flow on the custom page, it's going to trigger my flow. It's going to bring back the Microsoft limited, is the trading name for this Microsoft Corporation, and it's also populated in these address details here. So I did all this so that you can see. There's no, no camera trickery, nothing behind the scenes. It's just going off, getting that data and pulling it back.

B

So let's take a look at how this flight works, so this flow is triggered from a camera. This app is triggered from a custom page and I'm going to pass some information to the flow to be able to pull back the right information. So I'll pass the record ID.

B

Well, then, I'll go and retrieve that row by the ID and then, when I find that account number the the number that we put in that company number in the record um and I'm using my my action here, which is find a company by the number.

B

We then go back and we can update this information from what we received. So you can see here. We've got the address details here and then, if I scroll a bit further down, we should see the the Trump lead trading name here and then we go back to the the powerapple flow and just say: yep: we've done it and that closes the window and then refreshes the data for us.

B

So we do have other options that I can use as well. So if I click here and search for my connector, so companies house search this one from this house independent publisher, and we have a list of different actions that we can perform here. So all these different actions that are going to provide us different things, uh different pieces of information, this one we used here was uh find Company by number It's. Usually the easiest way to to find things, and we also have other actions in here.

B

We can do it like find address by number and different things that are kind of old, legal and finance stuff. That I'm not going to pretend to know significantly, but it's it's always suggest different pieces of information and if I go back here, this is a previous flow run. That I did uh with another company uh just to show you that it pulls back all these different pieces of information um and brings them all into one place. So the reason I like this genecta is about two months after I built it and submitted it.

B

I started working on a project where one of the very first requests was they want to retrieve information from companies house, so um I went fantastic I've made a custom jets for it. We added a button onto the ribbon and honestly, but by the fact that I've already done this two months ago. It made it so much more beneficial to that customer that we already had something that could do that and it's available to everyone, not just at one company I, didn't need to develop it specifically for them. I developed it for everyone to use.

B

um I can't see a question in the uh in the chat about the trust. um Probably sounds does not cost anything. uh You can sign up for a free, API key. All you need is the API key to use. uh It does use premium free access, caed premium licenses, but with that that's a very Whistle Stop tour about all this. Thank you for your time today.

A

Matt excellent job very, very much. Thank you for sharing that with us. It's a really nice end-to-end uh example. Excellent.