Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform Connectors, 18 May 2023

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From YouTube: Microsoft Learn Independent Publisher Power Platform Connector

Description

In this low-code developer-focused demo, Sean Kelly shows how he created and applied the Microsoft Learn Independent Publisher Power Platform Connector that he made. The demo results in a rich Power App and Teams integration which leverages Microsoft Learn's API to assist users as they grow their Power Platform knowledge.

Demo presenter: Sean Kelly | @SeanKe11y, linkedin.com/in/seanke11y/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/microsoftlearncataip/
https://learn.microsoft.com/training/support/catalog-api
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors/tree/7ce80bf62fe610039d39f218ce9aacf867bc6e1c/independent-publisher-connectors/Microsoft%20Learn%20Catalog

Learn more about Power Platform Connectors
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/

A

And introduce our independent publisher today, Sean Kelly is here to share his Microsoft learn connector that he has made so Sean feel free to take over use as much of the remainder of the time as you would like. It is completely yours.

B

I obviously haven't shaved in a while, so uh hi everyone, I'm Sean, Kelly um I.

B

Don't have a presentation uh prepared I'm, just going to go straight into demo mode for this, but I've been working with platform for over a decade now, most recently with HCL Tech as an educator, so I've been using the Microsoft learn catalog internally in my role and I had a custom connector built internally to access some of the content there and I figured that it might be a good idea to to publish it both to learn about how the certification process works, because, like train people on custom connectors as well internally and also um you know, it might be useful for some people, you know so um so so that's what I did and that's.

B

Why I'm here to to show you today? So what is it? Well, basically, the Microsoft learn: catalog API is a way to access. The Microsoft learn catalog self-evident and you can access all of this type of information.

B

um Now uh I'll I'll just plug some of these uh I'm not going to go through all the docs or anything but I'll plug them into the into the charts. If people want to read uh afterwards, but uh basically you've got this API endpoint, which is going to uh access all of that content, it's a huge, a huge Json object. It's just that single endpoint.

B

So if you want to access, um if you want to access certifications or learning paths or modules or whatever it is from that catalog, you hit that endpoint and you you provide a type. If you want to filter it down right. So that's basically what what the custom connector wrapped around so coming into the the custom connector definition.

B

um Basically here we we have this independent publisher one. This is a Microsoft API, but I uh published a connector. Therefore independent publisher, um So within this um we've got a single action, because we've got that single endpoint to hit, and then we pass in parameters uh the critical one really is the type. uh If you don't want to return everything from that catalog, you need to provide a type I've tried to kind of give detailed description so that, if you're in power automate or in powerapps, using this that you'll get those prompts including examples.

B

So you can say: okay well the example. Here it's a comma separated string. This would return modules and learning paths, so you're not restricted to returning a single type, for example, and it's the same for basically all of these and you've got levels rules products if you're familiar with going into Microsoft, learn I hope most of you are, and you can filter down for different products. You know beginner Advanced intermediate. All of those are basically represented here as parameters, so that's basically what the connector does.

B

So what I'm going to do is show you how to access it both from a flow empowerment, quite a simple one, just to show the endpoint and then I'll show how I've used it in the canvas app as well.

B

um So I've got a a flow here um that I just created earlier and uh I've always wanted to say here's one I made earlier. So there we go um and we've got the. uh This is just an instant flow um and I've um I've got a trigger here and I'm basically want to capture the type from the user, because I don't want to return everything from that from that API. So basically I've, provided uh you know a text drop down list uh that would be kind of captured from the user.

B

I'll probably just delete this, and just add it again just to show it's not that difficult, but adding a new Step we're going to look for the Microsoft, learn connector and then we've got all of the kind of documentation gets returned there. If I select this, you can see it's just that single action. That's there and but then we've got all of this, and this is just the exact same text that we saw from the documentation right. So that's just coming through.

B

So if you hover over any of these you'll get a kind of description about what what is expecting with an example of what would be acceptable at the end. So in this case, I've got a parameter here called content type. So that's for my type property, so I'm going to come in here and just dynamically grab the content type from the input and that's fine I won't do any further filtering here. I'll show you further filtering in the canvas app. So if I save this.

B

um Okay and then we'll just test it out.

B

And then we've got the various different options, so I'm going to say, courses run.

B

And so let's just hit that endpoint and if we look at the output, we should just see courses Okay. So we've just returned courses from that API and we've got the various different courses there and you'll see it provides. It returns a lot of metadata there as well. So it's quite useful if you want to build your own LMS, for example, um and then let's try another one, um so I'll uh just test it one more time and grab some learning paths or all learning paths. In this case.

B

And again, that's run if we check the output.

B

uh We can see now that we fit the same endpoint, but now we're returning learning paths. Okay,.

B

Okay, there we go so very simple and then in the learning Parts we've got. uh You know um the the metadata there like the summary, what rows it's for, what products it's applicable for um the subjects, the unique identifier and other things like the modules so we've in for this particular one which is related to Azure. We've got these six modules and that's the unique identifier of the modules so I'll be kind of I'm using that in in the canvas app.

B

So that's kind of why I'm pointing that out right now, so that's it very simple uh how you use it? Hopefully, hopefully, the if you are using it and uh you know the the tooltips and the description should kind of clarify how to use it. uh My details have been shared, so if anybody gets stuck, I reluctantly agree for you to contact me for uh support.

B

um So, uh let's see so next up, we've got I want to show a canvas up, so I've built a canvas up um that uh that that basically accesses uh the the content and displays it really. It's just a single page uh canvas app or a single screen with a few galleries in place. uh So we've got a couple of galleries here for learning Parts modules I'll get into how I connected to the connector to to kind of populate these in a second.

B

But if I jump in over into play mode, basically we've got um the the it's loading, all learning paths by default and then uh it's it's applying these two filters. So I've got a couple of combo boxes here, uh one for levels, one for rows, as we saw in the in the connector in the parameters, there's probably what eight or nine of them so I could I could have added a lot more I'm, just a bit lazy. So I just picked these as a start point, so you can filter change.

B

um You know change to, say: intermediate developer and you've got you know, integrates with uh Power automated flows. You can see it's making a call there to retrieve the actual module information, because one thing we don't get in the learning path response is the details of the module. We only get the unique identifier of the module, as we saw in the previous step, but here I can open in Microsoft learn so from there. I can launch the learning path or, if I want to launch an individual module, I can go there and launch the module.

B

So it's as simple as that- and you know you can you- can change it's now. Making another call I could I could make this. uh You know it's kind of staggered a bit. So I haven't put a huge amount of effort into this app. It's not a production app, but it kind of you get the idea.

B

So how? How do we leverage that that connector that's been published to access this content? uh Well, if we jump back into edit mode again, there's the the two main galleries: there's the gallery for the learning path here on the left and there's a gallery on the right, lower right there for modules. So if I go into learning paths, the first thing to to look at is the items property.

B

So this is the that single endpoint on the connector get learning content the exact same uh endpoints that we just saw in power automate, and then we can optionally pass as many parameters as we want from uh what was the original docs. So we've got all of these different parameters, so we can say only give me learning paths modified in the last X days or since the last date or give me them with this role or this level Etc.

B

So in this case, I've passed in the Locale, the type, the level, the role the product and you can see the level and the role are just coming from that combo box, the the level combo box and the Royal combo box, or whatever is selected on the screen. There you'll also see there's a variable for a product. If we get time, I'll show you how that works, but uh we're basically saying from that. We want to retrieve learning paths. Okay, so that's what we're presenting.

B

um So so that's that's! That's that first cause when the app runs. It's uh it's making a call to to populate the learning paths uh from that connector now in the.

B

um If we remember the uh response that we get, we have this array of modules so I'm just using that to then go off and get the details for the modules, because I want I want more information other than the unique identifier. So that's what I'm doing in the on select for the um for the gallery, so in the on select I'm, basically, uh I've got this learning path, modules, variable and I'm, our collection, sorry and then I'm saying for each module. That was in the response from the learning path.

B

Call so remember in this one: it's what five or six objects in that array so for each of those modules. I want to Loop through with the unique identifier and uh and populate this collection from that same endpoint, the get learning content, but I want to use that unique identifier that we got previously on the learning path, call and then return the modules and that's going into the collection. And then, if we go over here now we see the collection items. Property is just set as that are the items property for this.

B

Gallery is set as that collection, so that's kind of how it works. um uh What else am I doing um so? uh Let's see?

B

Is there anything else interesting on select, uh okay, yeah, so I've got like a levels: roles, products, um collection as well, and I'm I'm, basically getting the levels you can probably guess from the name, I'm getting the levels, the roles and the products from that learning path, and again, let's just kind of switch back here for a second uh I'm, getting the levels, the roles and the products from that learning path and I'm, adding them to a collection so that I can display it on the screen right.

B

So when I come here, it's these kind of these kind of buttons. Here. If these message these things here, so that's a gallery just with the appended levels of roles and products just to kind of recreate what you see in Microsoft learn because they do the same thing um so um yeah and then the final thing I wanted to talk about in this app in in the three minutes that I've got is the um the products so in the items, property um I'm using a variable called Product, and why am I doing that?

B

uh Well, I'm doing that for teams integration. So if I come to the app onstart property.

B

um You'll see that I'm doing some things, but in in particular, I want to kind of look at the the product, so I'm setting a default product of Power Platform. That's why the app response Returns the Power, Platform learning Parts by default, but then I'm saying if you are passing a channel ID if this app is receives a channel ID then change that product depending on the channel and that's a that's a channel in teams.

B

So if I've got the dataverse or common data service channel in teams, I only want to return the common data service or dataverse products same for AI, Builder or powerapps Etc. So then we can come over and then this this ID here. This is the unique identifier of the channel and team, so I've hard coded these channels from my particular teams instance. So if I jump over to teams, I've got a Power Platform learning team with all of these channels.

B

So if I go to say the AI Builder um Channel and go to the catalog now, because the channel ID is being passed in from teams, it's only going to filter for the AI, Builder learning paths or, if I go to powerapps and go to the learn catalog.

B

This should be passing in power-ups as the product in that variable based on the teams channel. So I'm only getting that and then, if I go to Power automate I, don't have it. It's quite easy to add, though I can say, add a power up um and then I've got my learn. Catalog save and now this should be passing in power. Automate I had to do that, because power automate was the subject earlier.

B

I didn't want them to feel left out the power automate product team, and now we've got our our product being set there right. So it's showing a few different things, but it's all leveraging the uh that custom connector, which became a a published independent publisher, connector. So that's that's it. We've got one or two minutes left, so any questions or anything like that. I'd be happy to to answer. If I can.

B

Call to action, try it out, let me know if you get uh if you get stuck anywhere.

C

D

C

To see yeah, it's very cool to see how like it starts as just one action and then you're able to leverage that to do a lot more. uh That was a really cool scenario. Can you can you filter documentation uh by path?

C

I, basically, I put a scenario in the chat that was like, like I was imagining uh using this you'd probably create a uh an app to show you the the most recently updated docs under some path, like the Power Platform, slash, ilm path,.

B

um So it doesn't, it doesn't return the document, the full documentation set, it's all learning content based. So it's learning paths um and underneath that modules and underneath that units so they're the kind of granularity for learning paths and then you've got certifications and things like that. But you don't actually have access to the wider documentation base. What was formerly docs.microsoft.com, so you, wouldn't you, wouldn't return all of the Alm pages, for example, but you could do that scenario for the content that is stored there, like learning paths and stuff nice.

A

Daniel asked: is it only module, slash, training.

B

uh Well, it's not it's not just that, but it's um so, let's, let's go back to the um the original docs for a second which is here um so the.

B

Well, actually, I'll go to my documentation, so the um I've got it here. So supported values are this? So that's: what's that's what you can return from the API? So uh when we're thinking about Microsoft learning part, so you've got learning paths at the top can contain many modules and each module can contain one or more units. So you've got learning paths, modules and units. You can also return, certifications and exams. So if you visualize the certifications page or the exams page, it gives you metadata back there with the related products and stuff like that.

B

Everything else is kind of like metadata, like the levels, the roles, the products, the subjects there are those kind of filtering attributes, so they're smaller. So.

D

Then I think that answered a different question about. Is it possible to filter through pl-400, Etc yeah.

B

Yeah, you could go in and just change the type to exams, and then it would return all exams or if you know the uid, the unique, unique identifier for pl-400. You can pass in the uid parameter with that with that pl400 uid, and it will just return that single exam with all of the date. The details of that exam, not the questions and answers, though.

D

Awesome are there any more questions.

D

If not, that about concludes our session for today.