Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform Connectors, 30 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: Updates on Independent Publisher Connectors for Power Platform & UK Bank Holidays Connector Demo

Description

In this 12-minute citizen developer/developer-focused demo Natalie Pienkowska and Martyn Lesbirel share a time off request app that uses an independent publisher connector to grab a list of UK Government Bank Holidays (json). Employees quickly determine if time being requested falls on a bank holiday negating the need to request time off for those official holidays. User enters dates in request form, Power Automate flow processes the request - checks holidays and returns answer. This PnP Community demo is taken from the General Microsoft 365 Development Special Interest Group (SIG) - Bi-weekly sync call recorded on September 30, 2021.

Demo Presenters:
• Natalie Pienkowska (Microsoft) | @NataliePienkow1
• Martyn Lesbirel (Dynamiti)

Supporting materials:
• Connectors - Microsoft Power Platform Connectors | https://github.com/microsoft/powerplatformconnectors
• Connector Repo - U.K. Government Bank Holidays | https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors/tree/dev/independent-publisher-connectors/U.K.%20Government%20Bank%20Holidays

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

Hi everyone good to be back um since two weeks ago, so again, for those who don't know independent publisher connectors are power platform connectors that can be submitted by anyone um for use within our platform right. So if you're, tired of building custom connectors- and you know not having an easy way to share them or having to import them into each environment, this is a great way to kind of get that connector out there get your name and the product so on and so forth.

A

So, since last call we've had one new connector published the accuweather connector by a mod and four new connector submissions, three coming from new new independent publishers, it's pretty exciting and one by troy, troye see you on the call today. So hello um and troy submitted a spacex connector, which is really exciting. We have a total of 16 connectors in production so far and 20 more coming in the pipeline.

A

um So one of the updates I wanted to share is um we had a couple of bugs in our certification pipeline, but we're getting them all fixed, um definitely by the end of the week so next week, all normal things will resume and we'll get your connectors back into the direction of production. um Also, I know hacktoberfest was talked about multiple times during the call right, because this is a github repository.

A

I've already added the topic of hacked over fast, so if anyone's looking to submit um a new connector or add functionality to any of the connectors that we have in that repository, you're, more than welcome to in terms of the leaderboard for number of active connections, airtable is still number one. Hubspot crm still number two and jira search by paul is still number three. So it's exciting to see all those in the usage there and just wanted to just call out um the independent publishers.

A

Again, um you know ahmad daniel, duke who is new martin lesboro who's joining the call today to provide an awesome demo, who's built, two connectors um miho gusevsky, matt beard, nick brown or maul paul rui, troy, vivek and wung. So it's really exciting um to have all these folks publishing such great connectors and I wanted to also say a huge congratulations to troy, who submitted 12 connectors, which is a lot definitely our biggest contributor. So far, so congrats, troy um and just a refresh on you know how you can become an independent publisher.

A

You know step one is building the custom connector right. If you want to collaborate with somebody else, you're more than welcome to as well or revisit one you've built in the past add functionality to an existing one.

A

If you're stuck on like what connector you should build, you can always go into top connector asks in our wiki and the github um step. Two is preparing all the artifacts. You need so there's three, the swagger api properties and the readme md, which is used for documentation.

A

Then you submit the artifacts, make sure you add in screenshots that the connector works into your pull request, and then you follow through with comments during certification right. So certification can take anywhere between two weeks and a little bit longer, depending on the number of times. We have to go back and forth just to make sure everything is working so that your connector can get full adoption and then step five is to show off your connector right. um So I've been doing a number of youtube recordings.

A

Martin- and I have one tomorrow morning um morning, my time afternoon evening, martin's time um and you know being able to be on the blog and have other um other spots just having your name and the product and your connector out there. So it's pretty exciting and you can always feel free to reach out to me. If you have any questions about the program martin over to you.

B

Thank you very much, uh I'm just going to share the right screen.

B

Hopefully you can all see my screen now. um It's obviously the microsoft platform, connectors repository in github, all of us working on the independent connectors live down here, I'll, be showing you this one. Today, the uk government bank holidays. This is a very small, very simple custom. Connector.

B

The uk government provides a website which gives you a huge chunk of json, which lists by holidays. For you, um this is quite useful as black holidays to have a tendency to move date each year.

B

So if you need to check on them, sometimes you need to um not work off just today, an assumption, but what it is for that particular year. um The other strange thing for me, it actually has is this value of bunting, which is probably the most bizarrely british attribute. I've come across in json and bunting.

B

If you don't know, is that string of little flags you're meant to get out for celebrations, um so if you've ever wanted to know, if you should be getting the bunting out or not in the united kingdom, this can tell you um anyway, as a demonstration today uh we're going to be starting off with a form we'll. Just this is fairly simple.

B

It's just a form, a bit of text and you select date and in this case overexcited employee selects the 25th of december, which, if you're a quick you would have seen, was on a saturday clicking. Okay, that goes into a flow.

B

And then, eventually, once the flow processes, the request, we should be receiving an email telling us. We don't need to take that off as holiday as it's either a weekend.

B

Or a bike holiday now, the normal reaction is: let's make another request again.

B

We got excited when we look. Okay, the 25th is a saturday. Let's just take the monday off.

B

Because we want to have a long weekend over christmas.

B

Wait for the response again this time, you don't need to take it off. The reason for that is because christmas day falls on the saturday. The actual christmas day holiday in the united kingdom is bumped along to the monday, so the 27th is the christmas day holiday, not at the 25th.

B

B

B

A date which is neither a weekend or a buying holiday, you will be told you can have the date off. This is all fairly simple stuff.

B

It's done by this flow now, if any of you've looked at float templates you'll immediately recognize this. This is the simple flow form to email.

B

Template, adapt it a little bit.

B

Okay, so we have form response submitted.

B

We get the form details and, quite literally, all the bank holiday custom connected doses. Allow you to fetch the holidays. For the kingdom, it literally returns one large piece of json. um This is what the government gave us. It's a bit disappointing, but um I'm hoping to look into splitting that up via the new code for code in connectors option.

B

Now. The next step is to literally just grab only the england and watch holidays.

B

Here we then filter the array looking for a date from the english and welsh holidays that matches the date that was submitted with the form that will give us an array um fairly simple there. um If there's nothing in the array, it's not a bank holiday. If it's one, then we found a blank holiday.

B

This is getting the day of the week as an integer. The day of the week function will return a number representing monday, tuesday, wednesday of thursday, one hour day of the week as a numeric value to you. If you use this, so the user submitted their date request, we just give them.

B

We just find the number that's because down here, I'm actually setting the variables to represent sunday and saturday. The reason for doing that is here in this selection.

B

It makes this a little bit more readable. So if you have a instance where the number of by holidays is greater than zero or the day of the week is equal to sunday or saturday, then you send a not required email in terms of taking that holiday and we've got the responders email from their form submission.

B

If it's not the case,.

B

And they can take the holiday will send an approval message.

B

Again, using the responders email address and a slightly different message now the example is almost a bit trivial.

B

But the idea is to give you some idea of how you could build on this.

B

um This flow could be extended, so you could do such things as when a request is submitted, get the username, find the person's manager from the aed and send an approval request off to that manager. First, before the user was told they could take the holiday uh within my company.

B

I loaded this connector up into our tenant colleague, who's written a substitute scrum system for us, which consists of a form was sent each morning to tell people what we're doing with a normal, agile screen what we did yesterday. What we're doing today do we have blockers, um you put the answers in which send it in and it gets attached to a team's channel and that now doesn't bother sending us those forms on the bike holiday, he's checking with this um in our parent company.

B

uh It's also being used for around robin for call allocation within that company, so calls submitted on a bank holiday or put into a special bucket to be dealt with rather than being allocated out when no one's actually working and giving someone the potentially false impression that call may be getting dealt with when it isn't.

B

That is pretty much the uk government bank holiday collector, uh there's not a lot to it, but it turns out to be quite useful. People tend to quite like it when they realize they can't check on my holidays.

B

Thank you. So much. Martin.