Microsoft 365 Community SharePoint, 21 Jul 2022

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From YouTube: Use folders to create a dynamic list filter and Power Automate to populate folders and create pages

Description

In this 24-minute developer-focused demo, think on how we may receive e-mail, add details to a list, and display item details in manually formatted page. Chris Kent automates this process with a flow that creates a folder for each new list item and moves the list item into the folder using the Power Automate template - When a new item is added in SharePoint, create a page and complete a custom action. Presenter configures flow that includes updating list with page URL and metadata. This PnP Community demo is taken from the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Development Community call recorded on July 21, 2022.

Demo Presenter
• Chris Kent (DMI) | @theChrisKent

Supporting materials
• Documentation - Use column formatting to customize SharePoint | aka.ms/spdev-column-formatting
• Icons - Flicon.io | https://flicon.io/
• Repo - Community-tooling | https://github.com/pnp/community-tooling
• Samples - SharePoint List Formatting Samples | https://github.com/pnp/List-Formatting
• Flow – When a new item is added in SharePoint, complete a custom action | https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/templates/details/3999d042ec7a49c5b91ae2229037fdb7/when-a-new-item-is-added-in-sharepoint-complete-a-custom-action/
• Demo - Microsoft Forms to SharePoint List: Create SharePoint List from Excel | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBeckKMlrg

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

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Stuff, so let's do that all right all right, we're gonna head over to our classic Warrior horse's site, all right! Well, we'll just ignore those! It's fun! Okay, we'll hide it with that face. So sorry, David all right.

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So let's talk about what the horses are up to, so the horses are always trying to uh look into new things and to work on stuff, and so we're going to take a look at RNG they've got a new rnv site where they're doing their research and development and here's where they're going to gather up all the different ideas for how things are working they're going to gather up. uh You know different initiatives, so they can kind of view what's happening.

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They can comment, they can work together on them, and that sounds like a great idea and they handed it to someone who that's not their job. They have another job, but you know it seemed fine at first because they were very excited about it right.

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So what they said was just email me, your new research initiative that sounds good and then they create a little page for it, uh they'll link it back and then they can check it out, and that seems okay at first right, but things have picked up, but now we're talking new two to three a week and we're looking at more of these and it's gotten a little crazy we're trying to manage all that, and so now we're going to talk about what could we do to make that better right?

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So it's a common scenario right, something starts small gets a little bigger, but you still don't have funding or budget to do anything much beyond the out of the box right. So let's see so in this case right, uh our lovely uh manager of the r d and M site. uh What they're doing is when they receive an email, they're putting things in a list, because you know they thought a few things there. So they've got a list here. They put them in this list and that's cool and they have the details.

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You know the key details: they're having them email them right and they're, hoping that maybe they'll make this a form that they can later have. You know individuals fill out and so on, and once they, you know, put these items in here and they create a page right. They've got this template here, so they create a page research initiative and then they fill out some stuff. For instance, here is page they're just linked, and so they've created a page for that research initiative right, oh, this is lovely, so excited about this all right.

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So that's, okay, right, but they've got a copy of this information over it doesn't look great right. They've got to do this funnel manually and as things ramp up right, there's a lot of chances. They can make mistakes. Things aren't quite right. uh Things are certainly not standard as they work through this. um For instance, they decide to add a new category. They've got to go back through all the other research initiatives. Add it you can see it's a bit of an issue right. So traditionally you might solve this right.

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If you're coming from a development background, you might do this as uh spfx right, for instance, you might create a single page. You put spfx web part on it and maybe you've got a query string that points to you know a list item and then you're displaying that list item. However, you want and that works pretty well, there are some big limitations drawbacks with that right for one, uh this person doesn't have any funding right, so they don't have time to spin up development.

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Even if it's the easiest, spfx web part in the world right, there's deployment, there's other things: we've got to go through approvals, it's a big hassle just to get that going sometimes right, it could be the right call, but what if they also want to take advantage of individual pages? So we want page comments right. They want to be able to let the authors they want the key information, but they want to, let them add any other web Parts they want and so on.

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So a single page template from just using query strings, isn't a great model for that either right. So what can we do? Well, in this case we want to. We want to look at how we can make this information look better. Now, one of the things you might do- and this is a fine thing- sometimes you've got a small amount of information- is to use page properties right.

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So, if you've seen this web part, you can add additional columns to your page site, Pages library- and you can show them here right, I can show the title and that's cool. You can add a whole bunch of these, and that would be a standardized way to do it and you could have the metadata and set on the list. You can have it on the page and that's one way, but you don't really get a lot of control over that, and this is the formatting demo.

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So you know that's not the solution all right, so let's get rid of that. So what? If we wanted to go a little further right? We want to make this a little better. So we've gone back to our initiative site right and the first thing I want to solve is navigation right. So we've got this. We've got this. So we have this navigational View, which is cool. It just gives us buttons so that we can click on those links. So we go back to the home page.

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Let's just integrate that briefly, all right, so we can come in here and whatever those things you can do here. We don't care about that anymore. Instead, we're going to add the list and we'll pick our initiatives list, and then we edit that this is where you can see. We have the list and we can pick our view and so in this case we're going to pick navigation and we're going to hide all these uh extra junk. We don't want right here, I'll move you guys over here all right.

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Let's apply that and so that's cool. So now we've got this little thing here and uh because I've got weird section issues, that's a it's a list! One part issue I'm just going to turn off the section background shading. So it looks good right. So now we've got this navigation, that's going to be dynamic. Whenever we create an item in that list right and click this and it's going to go to whatever site. We pointed at so we're solving some things with formatting right, but let's go a little further.

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So if we go back to our list, uh which was let's go to resources initiatives, we have this idea of like what what if we want to display this a little better and we have this idea of a stacked View. So this is just some of those details right now, they're all stacked on top of each other, which doesn't look great, but it's a little more of the the way we want to display. This right, it'd be great if we display that on the page.

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So if we go to a page say we're on our course, Clause page all right, we're just going to remove this whole thing or where's that button on it. Let's just add a new one: there we go. We add our list here and then we go to initiatives and we're going to grab our view right and we're going to say that stacked view just as before and we're gonna. You know we'll hide these things just to make it prettier and wow wow and get out here and we apply.

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Well. That's not great right. We still have multiple items here um and they're Infinite Wisdom. The dynamic filtering is only for a list of libraries. Instead of Google pull from query strings and some other stuff, we might be able to do uh so. How do we do that right? We could create an individual view for every item and then we would be very, very sad that we were having to do that and maintain that, and that would just it's not it's not a good plan. Don't do that? Okay, but what about this thing?

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What is this folder thing? Well, let's check that out. This is where we're really looking at it. This is the folder pattern, and so if we come back here, uh the idea here is: if we go back, let's go to our all of them, so it's a little easier. If we go to our list settings we're going to take advantage of folders you're familiar with folders in document libraries where they're on by default, but you can do them in list as well.

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So if we go to our advanced settings- and we just come down here- and we say- make new folder command available, we're going to say yes and we're going to hit OK and now we go back and the idea here is well not on navigation. Let's go back to our all items. We could create folders right. So let's create a folder and we're going to call this one initiative or one and there's a reason for that name.

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I'll show you so I'm going to create that and then, as I created, a folder and I can literally just grab this guy and stick it in the folder right. So now, I've got this in a folder there's horse clause and we could go back and we've got another folder and so on, but on our page here now we can actually type a folder right initiative.

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Two three four was that what it was one? Maybe let's try that yeah Supply there we go. Look at that so now we can actually use a folder to create a dynamic filter for us all right. So now we're pulling back exactly the item we want here. All right we can, we can go a little crazy. We can get rid of this name right. We can just say you know details or something right, and that looks pretty good right now. We're pulling this in all right, so this works pretty well right.

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So now we're just pulling from a single folder and that's great and we're getting a little further right, but that's still a hassle right. The idea that I've got to create a folder I'm going to sing there I'm still going to create the page and then I've got to create a the web. Part and I've got to point it to the folder. Again, I've got a little more Dynamic here, but why don't we take this a little further right, so why don't we make a way to have this folder stuff be automatic.

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So let's look at that, so we're going to go to integrate we're going to power automate and we're going to create a flow and I'm just going to hit, show more so I can get the the template I want, which I just want when a new item is added right. This is the idea that, whatever a new item is added to this list, I want to run my flow all right. So we'll continue here and we get a nice little starter. It's pointed at our list, wow wow wow and that's exciting. Now.

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The first thing we we did to check, though, is we've got to check our trigger conditions. So right now we we can create folders and everything else, but we don't want to run this. When you create a folder, because then we can create a folder for a folder. The whole idea is we're going to run this flow to create a folder for the list item and move the list item into that folder.

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So, in order to do that, we go up here and we go to settings and we've got this lovely trigger conditions here and I'm. Just going to add one here and I'm, just going to copy and paste and all we're going to do is add equals and we're just saying if it's a folder, don't run it right, so pretty straightforward. So we're only running this flow when it's not a folder. So it's just a standard list item so hit okay.

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So now what we want to do is we first we want to create a variable right, so we're going to say edit is I, want to call this guy folder name all right and we're just going to generate. We just want standardized folder names, the next thing's a lot easier to work with, so we're going to make this string and we're going to use a little formula here, I'm going to do an expression and in this case I want to concat right. You guys going to watch me type, an expression here.

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This is going to work out to dash right and then we want to put just like we did before. We want to format that ID right. So we're going to say format number here and the way the format number works is we're going to take an item and then we're going to say padded, basically with zeros, so we're going to put five zeros in there we're going to Pat it now. We need our Dynamic item here, so go to Dynamic content and we're just going to scroll down until we find ID boom.

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There we go now. We've got a little formula, that's going to build and if we can see a little better, basically we're going to format, we're going to say, initiative, Dash and then you know up to five zeros with our ID in there and that just kind of gives us a standardized folder name which is exciting. I. Do recommend changing these titles but I'm not going to terms of speed error, but let's keep going so now. We want to create a folder right. So let's do that.

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So we're going to do that uh using this we're going to say folder and we got uh create new folder and we pick our site right there and then we're going to pick our list of course, which is that same list.

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Oh you can do it there we go initiatives and then our folder path. Well, that's our folder name. There we go so we're creating a nice folder there, and then we want to move our item to the folder. Now that's a little less straightforward, of course, in that case, we're going to use the SharePoint HTTP call Centerpoint http and there it is now.

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This is an HP call, which is not a premium connector, because it was the SharePoint, so yay all right, I'm going to click this and we're going to go r d and M and we're going to say this method is actually a post and then let's copy some stuff, because I don't want to type all that out here.

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So let's grab this and let's paste that sucker in there I'm gonna Zoom this at all there we go make a little easier okay, and so the idea is here: I'm going to get by server relative URL I've got it to my list. Initiatives instead of item ID right I actually need to replace that with dynamic. So let's do that blah blah blah blah and our Dynamic content. We don't want. We want ID, but we don't want the one from the create new folder.

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We want it from when the new item is created that ID and then we want to move it to our folder name here. So, let's back over that insert our Dynamic content, which was just the folder name and then once again we need the item ID right there we go and let's grab that ID boom. So now we go now we're going to be moving the item into the folder. So now we've created the folder and we're going to move the item into the folder, and that is very, very exciting.

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Okay, so, let's see if that works, we're just going to do a quick test on that one after we say, of course, now we'll test all right, I'm going to say manually, so we don't have to wait the you know: five minutes there we go and now we just go over to our list and let's just create a new item, all right, we'll just call it uh super research, I, don't know: wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, perfect, all right, all right, we'll give it a category just for funds.

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These right and uh duration is six weeks. Okay, we'll pick a start date. None of these are required, but I just feel like throwing out, and it's a good time all right and we'll save that all right. So now we've got a new entry here and if we check our flow, we cross our fingers. We hope thoughts and prayers and all that and there we go it has run, and so now, if we go back, we should see maybe I'll just refresh to be certain.

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ah We have initiative four, and if we close that up, we have our super research was automatically moved in there and that's very cool, uh and so then what we can do here is. We can actually turn off like if we don't like this folder view, all right. If you haven't seen this before, you can go to edit current View.

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um You come down here to folders and even though they are folders and everything folders, you can show them without folders, so it will flatten everything. So it looks just like a standard list and nobody even needs to know. You've got those ugly folder names back there, but now you've created those as flow. So now you've got a way to point to each individual item on a page. So let's go a little bit further, because hey I still got a couple minutes, so that's exciting.

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So if we go back to our flow right, let's go further right. So we had this idea that we want it on a page. We know that. So let's do that. Let's put it on a page. So in order to do that, we need to take our template. First, let's go to our template and let's edit, this template, so we're going to edit our page template and let's set it up as an actual template. We want to use let's get rid of whatever that was right.

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So we're saying a basic page is going to have a list. It's going to be the initiatives list and we know we wanted to point to. You know initiatives, so we want to go to the Stacked View and we want the folder we're just going to put in here initiative. What was that 04 all right there we go.

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Let's apply that see if that worked, okay, yep and then we can get rid of these guys just so we have there we go so here is our exciting template right, and what we want to do here um is we're just going to leave this, as is for a minute, but actually it's going to say very simple before I forget okay, so we saved our page templates now, we've got a template and we know that it's at our research.aspx and our templates folder.

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So if we go back to our flow and all I did by the way in case you weren't familiar, is I just created page and there's an option instead of status draft to save this template, that's the only thing: I did there, it's not strictly required, but I find it is easier to do that. So, let's go add a new step, and in this case now we need to create a copy of that template.

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So this is going to be another one of those posts, so http and I'll go HTTP, press the SharePoint and, of course, we're going to pick our site. Where are you oh there? You are that's exciting, and this is another post because we're doing something here and let's go ahead and again grab our URL, we're going to replace so I'll put that finger boom. Okay.

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So what we're doing is we're getting the file by server relative URL templates research aspx, because that is the name of our page right and then we're going to copy it to our site pages and in this case we're going to use that folder name once again here right, so we're going to say boom folder name. So there we go so now, we've just gone through and we've created a copy, so I'm going to rename that just for I'll lose my mind great copy of template. Okay, there we go so that's cool.

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Now, I've created a copy of the template and in order to work with that now we need to get details about that right. So now we actually have to get metadata about that. So, let's see get file metadata and in this case we're going to pick the uh what is it D, R and D sat perfect okay and our file I did our file path, which one did I pick not file metadata, all right, I, don't know this is what's different.

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Let's see, do I have the right step here. Let me add one more step here: I want to try that one more time, because this part's fun, okay, let's make sure I picked the right metadata. One I think I did but I'm going to double check before we try to run this thing all right, so we want to get the uh file metadat using path. That's the one! We want perfect. Okay, so get rid of that get out of here. Yeah I! Don't need you boom all right!

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Okay! So that's why I look different all right, so now we need to pick our site correctly. So in this case, what we're doing is we're going to the page we just created and we're just doing this. So we get the nice ID from it right.

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So we're going to say our final path in this case we're just going to type it as site pages right, slash, I, don't know dynamic content is the folder name, all right, I'm going to type dot asbx there we go there we're going to get our page metadata and then we've got to check it out since we're going to edit the page right. So now we're going to do another HTTP action, I love those good times all right.

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So in this case we're going to pick our site one more time and our method is going to be post again and once again, let's copy this guy from over here, our API endpoint boom is just our page, Item ID right here, we're gonna backspace over that, so we can insert it and it's going to go. Dynamic content and we've got file metadata using path. We have that item id boom. We're going to check out that page.

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That's all there is to check it out and now we're going to update the page now this one's a little crazy. So, let's see what we can do here now, it's an HTTP post once again and we'll get it set up and then I'll show you what we're going to do here. So once again pick our site, we'll pick the site there. It is, and our method is once again post because we're doing stuff and the URL is this save page as draft endpoint right here and, let's once again before, forget.

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Let's take up the dynamic piece insert that item ID? Okay. So now we want to save pages draft, but in order to do that, we need the actual content of that page. All right. So good news I got a trick for you, we're going to hit F12 in our browser or bring up our Dev tools.

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What have you got that configured for right and we're going to switch to the network tab I'm in Edge, but this works in Chrome and Firefox, and all these are things I'm going to go to network I'm going to record the traffic I've just only interested in these fetch requests. For now, um let's edit, the page right just so I can hit save page as template. Let's see, let me put the page one more time and try I would like actually turn it off yeah. You actually do need to record it.

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Okay, so save page template you see, we have. The save pages draft call right here this payload right here. No, we didn't really change it. We just said view source, so we can read it this way.

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Sometimes you'll have to come here and expand it if it's really big, depending on how much stuff you put on your page, literally copy this I'm just going to copy that head back to your flow and in the body, that's your body so paste that all right and now what we're going to do is we're just going to go through and find a couple things right. So we have this idea. Our title was research initiative right, that's what we set it up, how about?

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Instead of that, we backspace and we say where's our Dynamic content, Dynamic content. In this case we want the title right. So let's get the title from when a new items, so we're going to name our page right, there is title and then what we want to come down to is we want to find here is initiative 004 make sure that's the right one! The folder folder file, here's the folder path right here, so we want to change our folder path.

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So we can dynamically insert that as well and we'll get rid of that guy insert our folder name and then I think there's one other spot we could put as well, and that would be selected folder key, which is right here, yeah here with that okay I'm sure I'm doing yep, it's left to folder T versus 2f boom backspace over that guy and then once again, I'm going to Boulder down okay.

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So now, what we're really doing here is we're taking the whole page contents right and we're taking the properties that we configured and we're just dynamically swapping in a couple things that we just did and then we're going to save that page as draft all right and then the last thing we need to do is we need to publish that page that we just did so one more HTTP action that we should be done. Let's see, Let's see, we have one more SharePoint number four awesome.

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Now, let's grab our site one more time the and it is again a post and our URI is publish in this case. So very similar I'll check our page item id back out time and then we're going to grab item id okay now assuming I typed. All that, let's see what happens, shall we? Oh all right, sorry, one last step and that last step is to update the actual item right. So we need to update the item of the item in this case we want to grab that site one more time.

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Remember what I said one more time earlier and I lied to you. That was nice of me all right, so we go to our initiatives and our ID is that original ID from way back up top I'm, so glad your fingers across. Thank you all right. There we go and we'll just take the title, because I'll record fields for some reason, I'll be mapped in and uh we love that so much all right title, and in this case we just want to update that page URL right because we just created that dynamically.

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So we know that the page is in site pages. Actually we're going to put on our site right side, slash, RDM slash uh what was it site? Pages, slash, folder, name, dot, espx right! So that's what we're doing now. We could take this further. We could add permissions. You know individual permissions to the pages and all that stuff and then send emails like your page is ready and we can do all that kind of stuff. If we wanted, we could bring the form stuff in through Microsoft forums.

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In fact, we've got a a less than five minute demo on the on the YouTube channel. That'll show you how to take uh Microsoft forms and put those in the SharePoint list, so you could have all this kind of wrapped up together. So let's save and again cross those fingers. Okay! So now we're going to test it once again manually test it all right and now, let's see come on now we're going to create a new item.

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Now we're going to call this uh hope, the research you know did it work there. We go some categories, just for fun, OOTS and style methodology, great and duration. We're going to say is 78 years and the start date is uh we'll say uh tomorrow today is today well great and we don't need to know that and our budget is going to be uh 78 million yeah. It's a lot hope costs quite a bit. Okay. So now we're gonna run that and let's, uh let's see well what happens with our flow here.

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Oh we're gonna fail. Are we going to do it? Let's see so, we've gone through we've, aha full around successfully! Well, that's exciting! Let's see so. If we come back here now, we have hope we can see that we've got a link right here to the page, all right and click that actually takes us to a page research initiative. uh We forgot to update the title, but we can do that as well, but the idea is, we just created a page. Well, we dynamically, you know, set it up.

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We've got our navigation set up off of view. Formatting we've got an individual format here we don't have to have a view for each individual item. People then can control this page. I can add whatever web Parts. They want be still standardized display and because you've got all the power formatting. You can make this look. However, you want, you can go really elaborate depending on number columns you have. You can aggregate those powerapps we've done that as well. It's pretty cool pattern um and you can see if we go back home.

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We already have our new initiatives here and our navigation and things to sort of show up, and we could order this Maybe by recent initiatives and just limit that to five or ten and so on. So now the person that was struggling to do you know two or three of these a week is just send them all this up and it's automated and they're good to go and then get back to the regular job, yay all right and just to wrap up here.

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Here's a couple of resources for you, so please check out our full documentation. We've got lots and lots of samples on on this and more we've got samples on how to use the flow and other pieces as well, but there's also some tools available too, and that's about it. For me, thanks awesome, Chris yep, everybody is so excited right, even the horses, so very, very cool.