Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform, 18 Jan 2022

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From YouTube: Microsoft Power Platform community call – January 2023

Description

Latest updates and news on Power Platform including community events, training opportunities and the Monthly Community Tip.

Demos – Building a Name Pronunciation Database with Power Apps and Power Automate, Mention a bot from a Power Automate flow, and Effortlessly showing grids of data in your Power Apps using the Creator Kit.

Published: PDF Reader Creator Kit sample and 3 new Low Code Revolution Show episodes. Reviewed upcoming events and Sharing Is Caring training opportunities.

This call was hosted by David Warner II (Microsoft) | @DavidWarnerII and recorded on January 18, 2022. Questions addressed in chat throughout the call.

Agenda items
00:00 – Intro
02:06 – Latest Power Apps Samples – April Dunnam (Microsoft) | @aprildunnam
05:37 – Power Platform Community Shows & Events - April Dunnam (Microsoft) | @aprildunnam & David Warner II (Microsoft) | @DavidWarnerII
10:15 – Independent Publisher Connectors - Jocelyn Panchal (Microsoft) | @JocelynP_PM
12:21 – Together mode picture
13:30 – Demo - Building a Name Pronunciation Database with Power Apps and Power Automate – Lindsay Shelton | @LShelton_Tech | aka.ms/Jan18-Demo1
26:33 – Demo - Mention a bot from a Power Automate flow – Dennis Goedegebuure | @expiscornovus | aka.ms/Jan18-Demo2
39:51– Demo - Effortlessly showing grids of data in your Power Apps using the Creator Kit – Scott Durow | @ScottDurow | aka.ms/Jan18-Demo3
1:00:50 – Closing

Learn more
• See the full blog post for this call in the Microsoft 365 platform community blog - https://aka.ms/m365pnp/blog
• 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 - https://aka.ms/m365/community

A

B

With the community, this is the Microsoft Power Platform Community call for January 2023. today is January 18th I am your host David Warner Community program manager for Power, Platform and I am so excited to get into 2023 with you all. We have got some amazing initiatives in store for you all and are super excited to begin sharing them with you today. There's something new today to talk about. So let's take a look at what our agenda is. We've got the latest updates and news on Power Platform. We're gonna.

B

Have our great group picture time together in together mode? Everybody loves that, and then I mentioned new did I mention new I mentioned new community call conversations you gotta stay till the end. Everybody we're going to tell you about this new program and initiative that we're starting with the community, to give you more collaborative opportunity to work together so super excited. Then we are going to discuss our amazing demos of the day with Lindsay she's, going to talk about building a name pronunciation database with powerapps and power.

B

Automate Dennis is going to cover mention a bot from a power automate flow and then Scott is going to effortlessly, show us grids of data in powerapps you using the Creator kit, so we've got a hat trick of amazing presenters today, so excited for that. Let's do some housekeeping, though uh you may be thinking I want to present on these calls and guess what you're welcome. We would love to have you present on these calls and we're going to make it easy easy on you.

B

Actually, we've created a nice little URL for you to go fill out now. What's wonderful is this is a URL that you can use for all of the community. Calls that you see in our fantastic Community, whether it be some of our PNP calls, or this monthly call you are welcome. It doesn't need to be anything, that's Earth shattering. It could be a feature. It could be a practice, a solution that you want to share.

B

We want you to show it to the world, and then we want to collaborate on it, so it is open to everyone. This is your community and you are welcome to present. Don't hesitate if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to myself or anybody on the community success, team, Hugo or Heather or Jocelyn or vesa, and we are here to help you all right. Absolutely here for everybody.

B

Now, let's talk about some cool stuff that the community has actually made we're going to talk about some Power Platform samples and we're going to turn that over to April Dunham.

A

Thank you David, so we have one new sample uh this month. Here we got the PDF reader Creator kit from Angelo, so this is pretty cool actually using uh some of the Creator Camp functionality to build a PDF Reader application component here that you can utilize so a really cool sample there. You should definitely go check out and we have a few more that we'll process here in a little bit.

A

um Definitely encourage you if you have any Power Platform Solutions power, apps uh Power, automate virtual agents, whatever it might be, to go and contribute that to the sample repository and if you don't know how to get started. So this is on GitHub. Maybe you've never used GitHub before not sure how to package up your Solutions and then how to share that I think we have something coming up to help you with that. Don't we David.

B

uh We absolutely do April I'm, so glad you mentioned it's almost like we set that up right. Well, friends, sharing is caring, is exactly what April was describing now. This is a program that provides Hands-On guidance, so if you're new to the community and you're wanting to do all those amazing things like April had mentioned we're here for you, this system and a program is Hands-On live sessions. That means that we're going to get on calls together and we're going to accomplish tasks together.

B

So, for example, if you want to submit one of your amazing Power, Platform Solutions or samples that you've created, but you don't quite understand or are not comfortable with that whole GitHub stuff, which is confusing because it uses weird words like fork and uh raw and blame- and you know that's a lot of stuff- we will walk you through together. What's even better, these are safe space opportunities. We don't record those calls, so you can feel free to ask any and all questions that you would like without fear of it going on record. You know.

B

Sometimes we think should I know this. How to do this? uh Does anybody else is this new to everybody? Everyone starts somewhere folks, so we absolutely encourage you to join these sessions. uh We have just scheduled a another Power Platform samples contributor session for February 23rd that you are more than welcome to register, for they are completely free.

B

uh We've got a writing for the web coming up next week, so that is open for uh registration, so don't hesitate, we'd, love to communicate and collaborate with you and by the way you get a badge for that. Wait, you said badge what what badge is there badges you betcha? We have our community recognition program now. This is a formal and official recognition program that we have created for you in the community to say. Thank you.

B

Thank you for all the amazing work that you're doing in the community to Showcase all of the incredible technology that we have, and this is powered by credly yeah, that same credly, that when you get certified by Microsoft, uh you get a badge. It's the same one, so your community badges are going to sit right alongside those certification, Badges and they're, going to allow you to show to your managers to your clients to both that you are making an official difference in the community. These are accredited, so they can be Associated to LinkedIn.

B

You can put them on your blog. You can share them on Twitter. We encourage you to let everyone know about them. We have so many new badges available for you, of course, a number of Power Platform. Our presenters today are going to get the 2023 Community called presenter badge, and we've got all more coming out with lots of opportunities for you to contribute and be recognized. It's absolutely free again. We cover the cost, no cost to you.

B

We do need you to opt in which you can do at ak.ms Community recognition, and if you already have don't need to do it twice, we'll track you forever. We won't stop you, but we'll track you and we'll make sure that you get credit for everything. So we really appreciate your doing what you're doing- and this is our way of giving back and saying thank you.

B

So, let's move on to some uh Community shows and events and I'm going to turn it back over to April to talk about a few things.

A

All right, thanks David, so just an update on our low code, Revolution show we've been pushing out several new episodes over the last month. Here uh I did an episode with Jim Dugan about Azure app modernization with powerapps, a pretty cool scenario of how you could actually modernize your Mainframe development with powerapps from it. So really cool scenario there, if you're, if you're still using some mainframes and then Daniel uh last quiz on the team has started a brand new series.

A

uh Power Platform CLI exposed um so he's doing a series of videos here walking you through start to finish how to get started with a Power Platform CLI with the first one being with cardik there, and those will be monthly uh videos going on on here for a little bit so definitely check that out. If you're interested being a guest, we have a link there AKA at IMs for slash low code, Revolution guest. We would love to have you featured on the show now, in addition to the local Revolution I want to.

A

Let you know about some things that we have going on some events that we have going on next month and it's powerful devs conference is back. So you might remember, we've had the this the year before last and then the year before that. So this will be the third or fourth I've lost track actually year of the powerful desk conference, so it will be a half day virtual event on February 15th, starting at 9 00 a.m. So this event is Power, Platform focused but kind of from the code. First developer angle.

A

So all talking about the Integrations that you can do from Custom connectors, powerapps component framework and all of that good stuff that you can do to extend the Power Platform with your code first developer skills, so you can go to that link there to learn more, we'll, be publishing the schedule. um The session soon we'll have wonderful, Keen out there for the event, so I hope you can check that out and join us live for that now.

A

This is part of a bigger event that we have going on in February, though we're doing a low code, February 30 days of low code. So if you go to aka.ms4 low code February, you can check that out. That will be kicking off actually January 31st to give us a couple days, since February is a short month there. So again, this is focus based on that kind of integrating your code.

A

First developer skills with the Power Platform, so we'll have some Hands-On Labs guided tutorials exercises that you can go to ask the experts all kinds of stuff where you can learn daily blog posts and all that how to get started with some of the capability there that we hope you check out and then at the end of that and we'll have a cloud skills Challenge and all that that you can take part of so hope. You can check that out more information to come soon. Once we get ready to launch that.

A

So that's that's all we have back to you. David awesome.

B

Thank you, April. That is exciting stuff. All right. Let's keep on the event Trail here. Shall we folks. Now. Last month we shared with you a community called discount code for the European Power Platform conference. Well guess what Hugo rocks is back I said: hey Hugo, he said I said: could you be willing to share this code again and he said so I said so. He only had one request, and that was that we let him include a little selfie of himself.

B

uh So he gave me this selfie I, don't know folks, I think it does. Look like him. I, don't know. If you ask me that is Hugo I've seen him in person. I'm not saying he's the rock but Hugo rocks 30 is going to get you a 30 discount on your code only until January 24th, though so definitely take advantage of this. It is going to be an amazing conference uh super excited for that, so don't hesitate to take advantage uh and let Hugo know he rocks by using it all right cool.

B

So, let's talk about another event upcoming this weekend, if you're in the Twin, Cities metro area or neighboring states they're coming back with their M365 Twin Cities, uh it is this weekend in where else the twin cities in Minnesota, so you can definitely register for this. If you're in that area, it's a great show, they put on a really well done event: I, love it uh and uh recommend: don't hesitate to sign up if you're nearby is a free community event. You may be wondering: well how could my event get included here?

B

Well, we actually have Community Days available to you. This is a free way for you to include your event in community calls such as this, and you can access it at AKA, dot, Ms, slash communities here is a couple of Community Days events that are coming up. All you need to do is go to that site and if it's a free community event you're absolutely free to list it, and we will try to highlight it for you on these calls, so definitely don't hesitate to get involved and share with the world.

B

The amazing events that you all are putting on because we are here to support you now, let's transition over to uh and talk about, some connectors with Jocelyn. We welcome her to the call.

C

Hi everyone so nice to see you some of you guys might recognize me from some other community events, but it's my first time here at this. One super excited to share with you guys some information on Power Platform connectors in case you don't know what they are. These are the connectors that you use to connect to other data sources, other apis and other applications to power, automate power, apps and Azure logic. Apps. You might recognize some of these big ones on the left office, SharePoint dataverse.

C

There are three types of Power Platform connectors that I'd like to share with you. There are first party ones which are owned by Microsoft, such as those office and SharePoint connectors. There are verified Publishers, which are made by third-party API owners, so think about people like DocuSign and Adobe. They own the API that the connector is made by the last one which I'd really like to emphasize to you guys is independent publisher connectors. What are those independent publisher? Connectors are connectors made by community members such as yourself leveraging open source coding and open source apis.

C

They, basically, you guys, can contribute to our ecosystem of over 900, specifically 924 connectors by visiting our GitHub and getting involved. Some of these independent publisher connectors have resulted in some really awesome use case scenarios snowflake, HubSpot, udemy, Spotify, gitlab and open AI are all connectors that were made by independent Publishers, like you guys. So, please reach out to me. If you have any questions, I would love to help with jumpstart your connector building experience and I'm.

C

Looking forward to seeing some of your contributions and yes, there is a badge to be an independent publisher with connectors. Thank you. David.

B

Awesome thanks for sharing Josh we're going to have her back every month, everybody so we're gonna talk about the amazing work that you're doing and I got a secret for you all we're working on a sharing is caring session. Don't tell okay, tell everybody, tell everybody we're gonna work on a sharing his caring session and we're going to show you if you're wanting to get involved in connectors and do more with them, but you've been a little hesitant we're going to do it together so be on the lookout for that super super excited all right.

B

Well, what time is it? It is picture time. So, if you would like to share uh with the community, you're amazing and fantastic faces, uh bring up your camera and I'm gonna click into together mode here and open up Camtasia. Let's set the record.

B

Let's move that off the screen and I'll move you all wonderful folks in all right. Looking good, we got a few more rows. I think if you want to, if you want to share your camera and uh all right, well, I think all right, yeah I see Ralph in the front row looking good. So uh let me hit record here when we get to three two and one: let's wave to the community, everybody take a wave and let everybody know how awesome you are love to see all the smiles and the faces.

B

You are what powers our community see, what I did there Powers our community awesome? Okay, all right, let's get back to it all right! So uh well, let's talk a little bit about our presenters for the day, so we are going to turn it over to Lindsay Shelton, who is going to cover building a name pronunciation pronunciation. I, don't know database with power, apps and power, automate Lindsay. Take it away.

D

All right, let me get my screen set up here- oh I'm, here, to talk to you about building a name pronunciation, quote-unquote database uh using both powerapps and power automate and just first to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Lindsay Shelton I am an application programmer from the Kansas City metro area. I am a Microsoft certified trainer and a fun fact about me. I was actually a teacher for 10 years before switching careers and I don't regret a single day. uh Switching careers I uh love doing what I do now.

D

I'm really excited about it every day and I do a lot of different things. With my current uh position, my biggest push that I'm working on right now is Power Platform, adoption governance, implementation at my organization, which I'm really excited about, but I've also done work with things like SharePoint framework development, Azure, apim implementation. So is any of that interests. You feel free to connect with me on socials LinkedIn at Lindsay, T Shelton.

D

uh You can reach out to me on my blog lindsaytchalton.com that I need to upgrade shoot more or I'm, most active on Twitter at L, Shelton underscore Tech, and so, if any of those topics are interesting to you or you want to, you know, hear about my cats uh feel free to reach out and connect with me. So this is something you know: I don't have a name, that's mispronounced very often, but I do have a name. That's misspelled, quite a lot, so I I can understand. Certainly why it's important.

D

This is a quote that kind of helped Drive why this was an important Initiative for us to work on our names. Are our identities closely linked to our heritage? Mispronouncing, a name can be experienced as a kind of microaggression, as the person may feel, put down invisible or unworthy and I. Don't think anyone on this call would ever want to make someone feel any of those ways, and especially not on purpose and I. Think you know the bigger issue. Is we don't do it on purpose?

D

We just don't necessarily have a way of knowing how to pronounce someone's name, especially in this time of hybrid work, where we're not meeting people face to face and getting to hear their names. You know we're we're kind of putting out our best guess and there's not an easy built-in out of the box way for Microsoft.

D

You know like there is with LinkedIn to tell us how to pronounce someone's name- and this was especially an important initiative where I work, because we are a medical research institute, we're a non-profit and because we're you know a scientific organization we bring in employees from all over the globe. So we celebrate diversity, we're an incredibly diverse organization. So you know what were we doing to help?

D

You know, support and celebrate these Unique Individuals that we have working for us, and so we actually had a hackathon, which is a really cool fun thing to do, even if it's not um all with your your I.T Department, we brought in people who were non-it people, and uh just we do this for three days every year, and so I had actually seven women on my team this year.

D

For our hackathon and we came up with this solution, so it's not technically a database, that's just uh you know a more of a casual misnomer to call it a database. uh What it is it's a SharePoint site and it's got two columns on it. One column has an embedded power. App and one column has an embedded SharePoint document library and the way it works is one of our. We call them members.

D

Our users will come in and record their name pronunciations and we actually added in pronouns, because in the year of 2023 we also don't have a built-in way in Microsoft to uh you know record our pronoun preference. So you know we have the prompt up here. You can say you know your name pronunciation, my pronouns are: are they them or whatever? They are?

D

You record it through the power app and then it's populated uh via a power automate flow into the SharePoint document, Library I, just blurred out the names for privacy, and then you can go in here and listen to other people's name pronunciations and pronouns. So you know if I'm going to go meet with someone or if I've just met someone and I'm not sure how to pronounce their name.

D

I can listen to it as many times as I want to and practice it so that the next time I meet them I can be confident and saying their name instead of avoiding it or mispronouncing it.

D

The solution is actually made up of this power app sitting on top of the power automate flow, which sits on top of the SharePoint page and document library and I will tell you. I am not a UI person or um one of my teammates actually graduated from Kansas City, Art Institute, and she wanted to get her hands on this and I said you don't know how to do power. Apps you're going to break it. So forgive any UI problems with it.

D

um How does it work on the front end? So the user clicks on this microphone control to start uh the recording they record their name and pronouns if they wish and they click the same button to stop the recording, then they go down to step two. This is not actually populated when they just first open up the app, so they click here and the preview audio button, and then it populates this audio control in a gallery. Then they can listen to their name.

D

uh You know their recording as many times as they'd like they can trash it. They can start over record it again. Preview audio do that as many times as they want. It's not getting. Uploaded nothing's actually happening it's just living in the app and then as soon as they're happy with it. They click the upload audio file button. Then a power automate flow is working in the background to upload it to the SharePoint document Library, which is as I, showed you on the other side of the page. That has the power app on it.

D

uh The PowerApp uses just some basic media controls. It's got the microphone control and then the audio control that plays the recording back. It's got a gallery control that has the audio recordings in it. That just shows you the most recent recording the button that populates the gallery with the most recent recording done and then that button at the bottom. The upload button that is triggering a power automate workflow. It is numerphic just to be extra, because I had a little extra time in the hackathon.

D

So I wanted to use one of Christine K's tutorials and make it a little bit cool. uh So just to show you I'm not going to show you everything. This sample is in the PNP samples Gallery, both the power app and the power automate workflow, so you can feel free to grab it and use it. However, you would like, but um I did want to point out just a few things. So this microphone control here, it's not the onstart that does anything.

D

It's the on stop where we actually set things up and now I'm going to try to explain this to you, but I'm also going to tell you right now: Daniel Christian posted a video a few years ago that went into the technical details of this, and this is how I was able to make this happen. So he didn't have this exact use case and I did some tweaking of my own, but I just have to shout out Daniel Christian, because I wouldn't have been able to get this work without his video.

D

uh This first up here. This sets the time stamp for the video. Then we get the actual audio for the recording. Once again, we stop the recording, then. Basically, as it was explained, the audio file, we get a ton of data around the audio file. We don't need most of that data, so these next two things the temp Json and the string beef 64 VAR. That's just pulling out just the little bits that we need in order to send those to SharePoint.

D

Ultimately, so we're going to use specifically this string, b64 VAR in the next uh control, which is this preview audio button, so like I said this doesn't show up. I can actually show you that really quick I forgot to pull that up here. So the way that it actually works is Lindsay Shelton, my pronouns are she her I, previewed the audio and then that control shows up and I can delete it or I?

D

Can preview it again and then I can upload it so when I go back in here from current slide, uh so when I click that preview audio button, what it's doing is it's building a it's using the collect function and it's Gathering, most importantly, these three variables, the duration variable which we're going to use and put in our SharePoint Library, uh the recording name, which is obviously going to be the name of our file and the recording itself, which you can see we're setting to this string. B64 variable.

D

So that's that kind of finesse, finagled version of the audio that we're going to utilize and that's what's going to be uploaded when we click that upload audio button, so we're triggering the power automate flow. So let's switch gears here. Let's go over to that prior to making the power automate flow. You want to make a SharePoint document library and it's very simple setup. The only column you need to add is a number column called duration, so call it duration, just the number column you don't need to change any of the other settings.

D

Then you go and you make your flow. The trigger is powerapps instant flow and then we're bringing over, as I said, three variables from the Power app, so we're initializing a variable using that string, 64 VAR variable and we're turning it into a string. We're we're, including that value in here and we're calling it The base64 to audio, then we're creating a file in SharePoint. So we've got our site name our folder path. This is the second variable here. The create file.

D

This is the file name, I just have to add the dot MP3 just to kind of type it. And then this is the really. The trickiest part of the flow is we're using one expression. uh This is the one thing I did have to tweak from how Daniel's video did it I'm, not sure why I? You know I kind of smashed my way through things and then just tweak try things until they work.

D

I had to use base64 to Binary and then translate this variable, the basics before to audio I, translated that to Binary and that's what got it to work, and so that's the file content and then we just had to add a third um action here for updating the file properties, because I wanted to put in the duration. For me, especially when testing it was helpful to see the duration, because I could tell oh. This is that file I, just tested or oh it didn't upload properly, because that duration didn't change.

D

So we've got those three items that k over from the Power app and it's really just needs to be three actions in the power automate flow I have a few extras just to make it more um just to add more variables, but you don't necessarily need to have those and then, when you're, actually clicking um upload the audio file, we're using the for all.

D

We've got the name of our power automate flow here. The generic save audio file, just SharePoint online run and then our three variables recording the recording name and the duration. So that's basically it I'm. Sorry, if I went through that too fast but like I said it is on the PNP samples Gallery.

D

um The whole project, as I said, wouldn't be possible without Daniel Christian's uh uh video, so go check out his YouTube channel and also check out Christine K's um tutorial. She makes some amazing stuff. She um did. The walk through on the dimorphic buttons, I I didn't show you the dimorphic button. I'll show you really quick. Oh ah there you go. That's it.

B

Awesome, thank you Lindsay. This is really fantastic and for someone who always has trouble I'm, I'm horrible at it I admit uh I love this so helpful. It creates a sense of togetherness and respect for other people uh to properly identify and call them by their real name. So thank you for sharing that really great stuff.

D

And a lot of people forget that you know it's not just foreign people's names, like my name, is gonna, be hard for someone from a different country to say too so it's everyone's names that you know needs help and practice.

B

Exactly for me, I I, that's why I tell everybody hey just say: hey you I'll respond to Au and that's that's good enough. All right awesome! Thank you, Lindsay! Well, let's move on to Dennis who's going to show us uh how to mention a bot from a power automate flow. So Dennis the floor is yours. My man thank.

E

You David, let me share my screen as well, so yeah I'm, Dennis Dennis talking about last names and pronunciation, that's probably difficult one for a lot of people um and my handle on Twitter and all the social is exhibition office and another one for pronunciation, and today I'm going to talk about mention about from within the flow.

E

um So so, first of all uh something about me, um I'm, an I.T consultant I work at Ultima in Reading, UK, I'm, actually Dutch, so I moved to the UK four years ago and I primarily like to help out people with their I.T challenges. So that's what I'm doing as work, but that's also what I'm doing in my free time uh other things which I'm doing in my free time is running I like running um I'm, a gamer and I also like to cook, which obviously helps with Family Life and uh yeah.

E

Besides that I'm also, a super user and I recently became a business application to MVP, so I'm, pretty proud of that.

E

um As a super user. I constantly help out on the power usage forums.

E

um I really like that, like I, said, I would like to help out people, but um I also learn a lot about that, and today is something I'm sharing, I'm sharing, something which I learned from that Forum. So um a person called himachi, hopefully I pronounce. It correctly asked about how to mention a Bots from flow in teams. So this this whole solution is based around that question.

E

So I looked into that I did some research I reflected a couple of polls from the graph API and I came up with this solution which I'm today presenting to you guys. So what is it made of? um It? Has a couple of building blocks first of all, I built and published a power virtual agent, second of all, I created a listing in in sharepoints, which is uh holding information about frequently asked questions and I applied some few for formatting to it.

E

Thirdly, I created a team and a channel because obviously I wanted to mention the bot from that channel and, lastly, I created a flow which monitors that channel and which, whenever uh the hashtag FAQ keyword gets mentioned, then uh this this flow will get triggered and it will mention obviously the balls and then, lastly, oh and that's always with these kind of solutions, I've tested it loads of times because, obviously, at the first try I didn't succeed. So it was testing, testing and more testing. Obviously this is a live demo, so it not always works.

E

So let me first of all show you how it should work, so I've recorded an animated gif, um as you can see in here, I posted that I have a question: hashtag FAQ and then what you see is I reply to that with a message and a message is: has the the topic trigger of the power of virtual agents and that's when the bot kicks in with a response? So that's how it should work.

E

So let me switch to My Demo environment to show you in real life, um so, like I mentioned before it has a couple of components so, first of all uh the power of virtual agents that agents.

E

So this is the the power of virtual agents, um it's just a a straightforward one and what I did is in within the portfolio agents. I created a topic called feq example topic, and that topic only has two actions or two components: a trigger phrase. So can you show me the FAQ question mark and a response from the Bots, which is here's the link to the FAQ?

E

So if you would test that it would.

E

It would look like this, so it's it's pretty basic setup.

E

um What I did with this power future agencies, I published it and I, published it to the Microsoft teams Channel or uh to Microsoft themes as an app and yeah? That's that's about it and what's important from this when you after you've set this up, is that you uh record a couple of details. You will need that later down the line for the for the power ultimate flow, so one of the things which you should take a note of is the name of the bolt which is pretty straightforward.

E

Faq pulls, but also this old app ID. So that's really important for the ad, mentioning part of things so be sure to copy and paste that so that's the first part uh the power of virtual agents. The second part is the list itself, so I can actually click on it and just navigate to that. So the second part is again a pretty straightforward list. So it's it's all around the scenario of sharing FAQ questions and answers. So hopefully, that's zoomed in correctly, so it has a title, column, question and answer and a category so yeah.

E

This looks pretty nice, but what I did is I also applied some formatting to it. So you can see that here in the FAQ per category, if you so, this shows like an accordion kind of style. I I didn't figure this out on my own I just used a great resource and that resource is the PNP GitHub. I o list formatting samples, database or sites. So if you go to that, you have all these few samples, and one of them is the FAQ accordion.

E

So credits where credits is due, um that's from announce, but the villain hopefully I, pronounce it correctly so yeah just pick so just have a look at this Json and apply it to it.

E

um So that's the second part of the of that mentioning um the third part yeah, it's a pretty simple part: that's creating a theme, so the team is just again a Microsoft team team with an additional channel. So in this instance I created a bot mentioning Channel and that's it. No special uh confirm configuration for that.

E

So that's part, number three and part number four is the the flow itself. So that's where yeah, the the most interesting parts for me came into play. So um again, let me zoom in so this flow has several steps. um So the first step is the Trigger action. The when a new channel message is added um Trigger action and that action has a couple of conversions. So, first of all, it's looking obviously at the team.

E

I just showed you and it's also looking into new messages within the bot mentioning Channel, but we don't want to regulate every single time, because people can type a lot of different type of messages. So what I did is I included a trigger condition, and you can actually already see that here in the notes.

E

So what I'm doing is I'm using an index of function and that index of function is looking for the the hashtag FAQ string within the body body contents fields and it checks if that value or if that's the output of the index of function, is equal to -1 I, don't know if you're aware, but if an index one outputs -1, it means it hasn't, found the keyword you're looking for the string value, we're looking for and we want to have the reverse output of that. So that's why I'm putting a knot around it so effectively?

E

What I'm saying is expression is if I haven't found.

E

um Faq yeah I want the opposite of that. So if I found FAQ then trigger this flow. So that's where this trigger condition. Expression comes into play for the people who haven't used that you can add that here in the settings, so that expression is added here in this area.

E

So that's the first part how to trigger this flow and after that um I'm gonna, reply to the message and I'm doing that by using a Samsung HTTP request, action from The, Office, 365, connector and that action is consumed is using the reply to a channel message. Graph, API methods, um there's documentation about that. So in the graph API documentation, you can find it how you can construct such a a request.

E

So, as you can see in here, the team, ID, HTML, ID and a message ID are needed and you can post things like content and other types of properties.

E

So with a bit of reverse engineering, I've figured out that it was possible to obviously reply to it to that message, but it was also I also figured out that you need. This add sign to do mentioning.

E

You need the bot name, and if you use that ads that attack I should say, then you can refer to your Bot by using this application in the mentions section. So in here you can see an application section and here's that app ID I referred to earlier so um yeah I store it in some variables. In here so in here that here's that same ID, but that's the way how I figured out how you could mention uh a bots, so um hopefully I still have some time.

E

Let me try and see if it works now as a real live demo. So where can I find there #faq.

E

I can hopefully it's clear, let me zoom in a bit again and normally, as you can see in previous demos, yeah. It took about one to two minutes before that trigger kicked in, but in essence now that flow is looking for this keywords and whenever it found it yeah, it should reply with this.

E

So hopefully, like I said we still have some time left for that to wait for that.

B

Yeah you're good, no problem; okay, it's really really slick, Dennis, very cool.

E

Yeah last time, like you can see here, it's two three minutes. So hopefully it's now a bit faster here. It was one minute so I'm not sure if it's like uh five minutes batch job kind of thing in the background that it's not actual actual real time.

B

It knows we're all watching, so it's like I want my time in the uh I want my time.

E

But yeah I was uh looking back at this. This is like I created this seven months ago. Yeah, probably you cannot I've seen like a chat, GPT connector. So probably you can also includes those kind of Connections in this process as well, but so this is yeah still pretty static, but yeah I already have some new ideas for this: oh yeah there it is so now you can see. I mentioned the box, and now the bolt also responds with its own response, because I mentioned it so yeah, that's it.

E

So um let me go back to my presentation so yeah, that's it. um If you have any questions, yeah feel free to uh mention me or contact me on my socials and otherwise yeah I'm, always on the power usage Forum. So mention me on there as well. Thank you.

B

Awesome awesome, stuff Dennis. This is really really cool and and just I love again, both both demos so far today have the Better Together storyline to them using multiple Technologies, just warms my heart to see that, because that's just real life, so thank you so so much Dennis all right, Scott, Great Scott. It is time for effortlessly, showing grids of data in your power apps using created kit. Take it away.

F

Thank you very much, David, yes, great Scott um indeed and uh yeah. My name is Scott Duro commonly pronounced as Duro. So actually uh the pronunciation of names would be would be very good for that.

F

um So I've uh been a business applications MVP since 2013 I've had the pleasure of kind of growing up with a platform from all the various different pieces coming together to make the awesome platform that we know today.

F

um There's my various different social media profiles that you can go and reach me on, but um you might have seen me as the Lemmings guy I I write games in power apps quite a lot um just to kind of just prove that they can do certain things, um but before that I was the kind of ribbon workbench guy, and this was a tool that allows you to customize powerapps model driven apps and before that it was Dynamics 365 and before that it was Dynamic CRM, um but today I'm going to be the Creator kit guy.

F

um So what is the creator kit? So the Creator kit is a uh a solution. That's been developed by the power cat team and I actually had the pleasure of working with the powercat team on it, and it's a group of components that you can install into your environment and then use in both in your canvas, apps and also your custom Pages inside model driven apps, and it basically creates this fluent UI style set of controls that you can create user interfaces that look very similar to the office.

F

The SharePoint, the model driven app style of user interface, and you know sometimes it can be quite hard to create user interfaces that look consistent with other parts of the Power Platform. So it just Bridges this Gap. Until perhaps the the first party there will be out of the box controls to do this and it's open source. You can get the the the source code and so I'm going to give you some links at the end, and here they are actually, um if you want for reference on how to to endure the installation Etc.

F

But what I'm going to show you specifically in this uh presentation is how to show data in tabular format, because one of the things, if obviously, if you're using SharePoint tabular data is, is very common right. You know we all created a list and you can add columns and you can move them around if you've used model driven apps again, you know it's it's a very common thing. You have your list, you can sort and- um and you can add different columns and and select different rows.

F

It's kind of basic kind of stuff, but if you are using canvas apps without the Creator kit, we've all been there. We've tried to create grids using galleries, I've done it so many times, and it feels a little bit like Jenga, because you know you you get it looking really great and then you try and adjust something and then it all sort of come books comes tumbling down.

F

Well, I mean at least that's that's my experience, and so what the Creator kit has got is it's got something called the details list and if we come down to the reference app that you get when you install the Creator kit and and I'm not going to go through on how to install it because there's a whole ton of really great documentation. If you go to the learn page, which I'll give you a link to, um there is fantastic set of documentation that has to install it.

F

What you need to do the prerequisites and also documentation all the different components, but one of the parts of that installation is you get a sample reference app and and part of that reference.

F

App is a section on the details list, so you can see here that we've got you know like it demonstrates all of its different capabilities, um and you know it does basic basic grids, but you can also have things like icons and you can have um tags and- and you can have expanding and collapsing elements you could have inline content as well sort of content that perhaps in a responsive environment, you might want to wrap it over into multiple lines to keep the data density High um and so what I'm going to show?

F

You is how to do that right, because you know it's a it's a demo, so um I've got a uh I've got just a canvas app here then I'm going to go and create a new screen and I'm going to use this uh responsive layout here, which is using containers, and so we've we've got um the the root and then three different containers in there.

F

Now the middle container is this container here, which is a stack set of containers, so this makes it very easy to to put out our components in there, so they just automatically stack up and I can adjust. The relative Heights make them stretch to the full width. So if you've not used responsive containers, yet I really recommend going and checking them out, because it makes making apps work on multiple different device formats really really easy um and um grids are all about data density. I mean this is the thing, because Gallery is a fantastic right.

F

You know, I can go and add in a gallery and um I can bind that to some data and I can you know, add a image and I can add um sort of like a headline piece of data and then sort of a sub heading and maybe a secondary bit of data and then a Chevron to go and expand to show more data.

F

um But then, if you want to actually cram lots of data into there, then that's where grids really become come into their own, because it allows you to sort of have these columns that you can then resize and, like I, said, wrap on multiple lines. If you need to so by by default, you don't have a um a fluent style grid. We've got this data table preview, which has got some basic data grid formatting it's it's um quite Limited in what it can do, but you know sometimes it might be useful.

F

But in order to get the the details list from the fluent from the Creator kit, you have to go down to this rather sort of hidden um little thing down at the bottom here. Well, that's a bit too large, let's just zoom out a bit! Oh, my goodness! That's there! There we go! How big can we get this? um My I've got a new mouse and it's uh it's somewhat a little bit trigger happy, but anyway down the bottom.

F

We've got this, get more components so I'm going to go and add in a details list from the power cats. So if I search here you can see here, it's got details lists from the powercat publisher and once I do that it will then be added into there. We go import that it'll be added into my set of controls that I can set into my canvas app or my custom page. It doesn't come under the layout. It comes under this code, components area, um and you know this is slightly different.

F

If you've used canvas components, it's going to be slightly different, so you have to go to this code components area, and so, when I add in this component it it just sort of Pops it in as a a square block, not really very interesting.

F

But if I select this middle responsive container, there I can start to set the properties to say: okay I'm, going to extract it out to full fill the whole width there and I'm also going to make it um I'm going to make it cut the flexible height, so it it'll fill the whole height and in order to get this start to show, data I obviously need to go and add some data to my app so I'm going to add in accounts and if we've got time.

F

Hopefully we will also show wiring it up to some contacts as well. So I'm going to add contacts in as well like that.

F

So, if I, if this was a gallery right, I would go over to the uh the items property that I'm going to bind this to, and I I put in the I the the values that I want to the record set that I want to bind it to. So, in this case, I'm going to say, filter on accounts and show only where there is an industry set, because I'm going to show that as a a column.

F

So as soon as I do that it loads the data. um So if I, if I highlight this, you can see I've got some data in here, which is great, but it's not showing it, because it's still giving me this this message to say there are no columns defined. So there are two things: I need to do. Firstly, um I need to Define which columns I'm going to show so at the moment by default.

F

I've just got the the standard view, so the account name Etc so I'm, going to add in a industry and um I'm also going to add in a telephone as well like that uh telephone, oh perhaps it's already in there and the C yep, there's yeah main phone, it's already in there, um okay good. So what we'll do now is? Is you can see that it's still saying they're no cons to find?

F

Because there's that second step- and this is the really important step- is because, if you've used, um SharePoint or model driven, apps you'll know, obviously you've got to define the view layout if I come into this columns property.

F

This is where I I say this is we've got the raw data, which is what we Bound to You know that we've bound it to the accounts, but we've now got to say well, which columns do you want to show in which order, and so the way we do this is um or one of the ways we can do. This is we just Define a table and we can define a row for each of the different columns I'm just going to paste in some um some data into there.

F

Just so you don't have to watch me type that out, which would be in particularly uh painful, so there we go now it. What this is doing is each of these. uh These rows in this table here, so the first one has got a number of different properties and in the docs there's a description of what these do so, but basically uh the simplest is you've got the name um of the the column that you're going to bind this particular column in the view to, and then the display name and then the width.

F

This is the sort of like the minimum information. Now you could obviously make this width responsive to paste based on the parent width and divide it by the number of columns Etc, but there's also these extra sets of properties, so in this case I'm going to say right. Well, this is the name column, so I'm going to say this is the header cell. So it's going to be slightly bigger, I'm, going to make it bold, um but I'm also going to say it's sortable and it's resizable and equally for the telephone as well.

F

So if I go now and run this, um it's looking good I've got my my data here and I can sort by this and I can sort by telephone, um and so it's immediately giving me that ability to show my tabulidation um and the critical thing here is. This is all happening. This sorting, for example, is all happening in a delegatable way. So if you've, you know if you've done any work on large data sets.

F

You'll know that it's very important to make sure you've got delegatable uh filtering and sorting, and so this sorting will automatically be be handled against the data source. So that's um that's all great and what I'm going to do is add in a little bit more information, so add in some more columns here. So there we go and there's our existing two columns and I'm just going to pop in um three more so I've got industry code, primary contact and description. So just a couple of things.

F

I want to point out here um on primary contact, okay, the standard stuff that we would expect. You know primary contact ID, which is the name of the column in the display column. But there is this slightly interesting, separate sort by column- and this is just this is very specific to dataverse from the sense that we're displaying the name of the contact.

F

But when we are, if we are going to sort by that, then dataverse would sort of not doesn't really know if it needs to sort by the ID or if it's going to sort by the the name of the the contact. So you need to give it this um a slightly different format.

F

um But if I run this you'll notice that it's not giving me this description column- and this is a very, very common Pitfall, because I've now got I can sort my primary contact. So if I show there, we go. There's all my my contacts, but it's not showing the description um and the reason being is if I go into edit here. I haven't added this into my fields that I'm going to expose- and this is very important, because what you're doing is you're telling uh powerapps what data needs to be requested from that data source.

F

So it doesn't just go and get all the data, um and so now you can see as soon as I do that. You can see we're now getting that the description um added to each of the row, but also notice that it's added underneath that uh that that first row and the reason being is, if you look at the The Columns down here, um we've got a special uh property here. Called coal show as subtext off.

F

So we're saying, show this particular piece of information as a child of the name, and you could make this Dynamic. So you know, based on the format the width of the the app you could fold in, to show it as a um as a child column or if you've got space, show it as a separate column.

F

So that's all great- um and one thing to point out here- is that this is all accessible, so I I'm using the cursor Keys here to move up and down- um and you know, I- can tab around as well and I can use return to uh to actually do all the sorting and that's. This is some of the things that are actually quite difficult to manage if you're using galleries to sort of, but we would just assume that they work for grids. It's just one of those kind of things.

F

So what I do now is I'm going to show a additional row um for the related columns? uh Sorry, the related contacts and I'll the way that I'll do that is I'll, go into the uh the the container here and I'll add in another details list. So it's going to add it underneath now, apologies I'm, not, but just because I've got enough time. I am not uh naming all my have.

F

My containers and my controls, using you know a name, a correct naming convention, um which you obviously should do, um but there we go I've now added in my uh a separate date details list and what I want to do is I want to say when I select a contact in the top here, it shows the related contacts below so I'm just going to pop in some uh some columns for this uh child set of um contacts, but also going to bind it to um the like that.

F

Okay I'm going to bind it to some con. The contacts here and and what I'm doing here is I'm, saying only show me the contacts where the company name on on the contact equals the selected account in the top grid, because there are lots of properties that these grids give you. So you can give them input properties other than the rows. You want to show The View, but it's also got output properties.

F

In this case, which row has been selected, it's also got other output properties like the number of Records, the number of pages, all of those kind of things um there's also this interesting thing here this as type um and what this is doing is it's because the parent company or the parent uh of a contact is actually a polymorphic lookup, so it can re, it can um be related to a parent account or actually it could also be related to a parent contact, so I'm sort of casting this I'm, forcing it to always use the account, um and otherwise there would be a type of mismatch here and again, that's sort of like a a data burst thing, um so I'm going to pop in a column going to the columns here and I'm, going to say tables like that, a table and put in a column.

F

uh Oh, no, not that one, that's a little bit, let's just jump in the gun and for a little bit more so there we go and now we're showing if I select that it's now showing only the contacts for that selected record. But the last thing I wanted to show you is that um when we are using these details lists, it's got the ability to show some slightly different formatting for these cells, because, um if you're using a gallery, obviously it's super super flexible.

F

Okay, you know you can um you know you can show any data that you look, you can use any formatting, any colors, fonts type buttons, all those kind of things. With the with the details list. There is a trade-off right. You know you do have to manage that trade-off.

F

But if I go into my Fields here and add, in my credit, uh credit hold there like that, we now, if we wanted to show that as a sort of like a as a a colored tag like a SharePoint list style thing, um what we can do is you can come into the format of the of my credit, hold column and I can Define this as being a a tag.

F

So here we can see that we've now defined this as a tag, column cell and we're also saying we're now defining the color is going to be taken for this particular cell. From this other column, here this credit tag, color, and so at the moment it's just great right, because there is no, we haven't defined that additional column, and so the way we do that is if we come into the records for this particular contact and I'm, going to replace this.

F

um What I'm doing here is: let's just name this as grid contacts, because that's the name it we're going to give it and I go into here.

F

um What we're looking at here is a grid accounts, then we're just adding in an additional column called credit tag color, because that's the name we specified in our view, property in when we're defining the columns and we're just saying if, if it's credit hold is true, then we're going to give it this color. uh If it's not we'll, have this color, and so, if we run this, you can see there we go. We've we've got it now highlighted in different colors, and there are.

F

There are sort of different other things you can do put in svgs, and things like that now I just want to highlight something. Lastly, and that is that, um as soon as you do this, you do lose some of the Sorting um aspects, because this is now using a local collection because you used ad columns, it's not binding directly to the dataverse.

F

So if you come over into the the documentation- and you look at the Behavior section- there's a lot of information there on how to manage sorting when you're binding it to a collection rather than directly to a data source as well as how to manage paging and all of those kind of things. So it's a fantastic set of documentation that backs that up and there's even kind of code samples that you can copy and paste in there, um but yeah that. That's really what I wanted to show you.

F

You know how you can very quickly get that kind of fully uh fully fledged data grid style functionality very very quickly, without having to go and use that Jenga style grid using galleries. um So yeah David. That's uh that's all for me.

B

Awesome Scott well, I think now uh we can officially call you awesome demo guy is that I think everybody agrees with that. So uh you can add another one to the list very, very good.

F

Oh those um those links actually we'll we'll you know those those are the links so I guess your emails email, those out to get more information.

B

Yeah yeah I put them in the chat earlier for you as well. So everybody comments um so excellent. Thank you, Scott very, very cool, all right everybody we're just a couple minutes over, but we're wrapping. This up uh want to thank all of our presenters today, Lindsey Dennis and Scott for amazing amazing job now, I had promised a little bit of uh I. Don't know something new something exciting. Everybody loves conversing in the chat on these calls, uh but you might have questions after the call. um You might even be watching this uh on demand.

B

You might not be watching live and you I'm missing out on the chat. Well, we are introducing Community call conversations. Let's continue the conversation we are creating dedicated space for our presenters within our community platform. For you to continue the conversation to have a conversation. Ask questions. Collaborate with the presenters. Each demo is going to get a dedicated thread on the powerapps board for you to communicate and collaborate with other members of the community. The presenters ask questions chat, maybe start working together on on some ideas.

B

We really want to encourage collaboration that reaches Beyond, just the calls and the scope of the hour that we're spending together so to make it easy. We've got some QR codes. We've got some URLs for you to use we're going to put this in the chat as well, and this is going to be an ongoing thing. Everybody so we're going to start integrating this in our other community calls as well. Our operators, if you will are standing by Lindsey, Dennis and Scott, are all going to be uh there in the chat.

B

Now it's not just open for a finite amount of time. It's open indefinitely, so you're able to continue to chat with folks within the community, and these presenters just another way that we're trying to encourage and Empower you to collaborate with the technology that we all love all right.

B

So look forward to seeing those conversations, you can always get more helpful resources at all these URLs, our community front door, videos samples, our community platforms all available for you to communicate and collaborate with, and, of course, if you like calls, we got calls definitely check out the Microsoft 365 platform.

B

Call this is specifically for Microsoft presenter, so you're are always going to get it directly from the mothership and then we've got a variety of other community calls identity, platform office, add-ins, Power Platform, which you're on and then, of course, the the development focused M365 and Power Platform and BB connections and SharePoint framework. You can access all these calls at ak.ms, Community, slash calls thank you again for all attending the recording will be available within the community. Youtube account uh here within 24 to 48 hours.

B

Don't try to access it from teams if you're not at Microsoft. It won't. Let you so it'll just end up in sadness, but we promise you. If you go to ak.ms community videos and you subscribe to our YouTube channels, you will actually get notified when they are available and we will absolutely let you know. You can also follow us on Twitter at Microsoft, 365 Dev and at M365 PNP.

B

Our next call, one month from today, February 15, 2023, 8, A.M, Pacific uh same bat, Time same bat Channel you can get the invite at aka.ms. Slash, Power, Platform Community call uh so definitely check that out. Get that on your calendar and thank you, everybody for being amazing. We look forward to it a fantastic year with all of you uh see you in the community.