Microsoft 365 Community Transform SharePoint Add-in model solutions to modern development patterns, 30 Mar 2023

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From YouTube: Transforming SharePoint add-in workflow apps to Microsoft Power Automate solutions

Description

This module introduces you to the design of workflows for SharePoint Online with Microsoft Power Automate as a replacement to the SharePoint Add-in model workflow solutions.

This video is part of a series in a playlist about "Transform SharePoint Add-in model solutions to modern development pattern": https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXJLA29Q0Xk7psbAUqzQZwe

➡️ Next video on this series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLHMjJNHehE&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXJLA29Q0Xk7psbAUqzQZwe&index=14
⬅️ Previous video on this series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-fUEd6lGvI&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXJLA29Q0Xk7psbAUqzQZwe&index=12

#Microsoft365 #PowerAutomate #Flow #Workflow #SharePointOnline

In this video, you will learn about

- Upgrading SharePoint Add-in model workflow apps to Power Automate
- Understanding how Power Automate workflows for SharePoint work
- Creating an approval workflow in SharePoint with Power Automate

📖 All guidance content including code samples can be found here: http://aka.ms/sp/add-in/modernize/samples

✨ Presenter
• Paolo Pialorsi (PiaSys.com)

📃 Agenda
0:00 Introduction
2:30 Demo
6:00 Updating SharePoint Online data from Power Automate flows
8:29 The task approval UI in Microsoft Teams
9:38 The flow history of Power Automate

📝 Learn more
• YouTube playlist for this video series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXJLA29Q0Xk7psbAUqzQZwe
• Guidance: Migrate from classic workflows to Power Automate flows in SharePoint - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/business-apps/power-automate/guidance/migrate-from-classic-workflows-to-power-automate-flows
• How to: State machines in Microsoft Flow - https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/state-machines/
• Design flows with Microsoft Visio - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/visio-flows

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

Sharing is caring! You are awesome! 🧡

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From SharePoint and in modern workloads to power, automate flows just to set the context, let me remind you that, with the sharepointed in model workflows, you can only create solutions that Target SharePoint data, so lists libraries or sites, and you can create sequentials, flowchart or state machines. The designer that you use for such kind of workflows is Visual Studio prior to version 2022, because in Visual Studio 2022, those workflows are not supported anymore.

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The workflows are, generally speaking, based on the host side of the app in which you define your workflows, and you can eventually Define and configure your workflows as a SharePoint integrated, so that you will able to Target the content of the SharePoint host side, and not only the SharePoint upside rather a SharePoint and in model. Workflow relies on a custom. Workflow is to release the end task list and can have custom forms like, for example, the custom task forms the initiation and the association form with power automate flow. You are not tight anymore to SharePoint.

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Only and actually you can consume any workload of micro 65 as well as any other external API. As long as you have a proper connector or the capability to use an HTTP based rest API, there are plenty of out of the box ready to go template that you can use. So you can definitely speed up the development process of your flows and there is a designer which is web-based rather than based on Visual Studio.

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You can mainly create sequential flows, but if you have a good knowledge about power automate, you can do more than just a sequential logic and whenever you create a task and you assign a task to a Target user in power automate, the task will be a task of micro teams, approvals or a task of Microsoft planner tasks. So let me move to the demo environment and let me show you how you can transition from an old SharePoint and in model workflow to a modern, Microsoft power, automate flow.

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Imagine that you have a list of orders in a custom list of SharePoint online or of Microsoft lists, and you want to implement a workflow logic to handle the approval of the order as such, using power automate instead of the old sharepointed in model workflows. You can simply do something like that when you are in the list using the UI of SharePoint online, you can click on integrate power automate and you can click on create a flow.

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By clicking on this button, you will see a list of ready to go templates that you can start from. For example, you could choose the start approval when a new item is added so that the approval flow will start automatically Whenever. There will be a new item added to a list. If you will select this option, you will be brought to power automate and from here you will have to configure the template in order to connect it to the Target environment and specifically right here in the lower part of the screen.

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You can see that you have the connection to all of the services, so you will use Microsoft, 365 and exchange online to send email messages. You will use SharePoint online, you will use approvers and you will read the user's in Azure active directory and you will need to connect all of the workloads that you need to use to the power automate flow, providing a valid set of credentials to access those Services by default.

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Power automate works in the context of the user, who defines the flow so right now, I, am this user and I am connected to those services. Now, if you click on the connect button, you will see the auto generated flow for you, so you don't have to do almost anything. You just will find the flow generated for you. Where an item is created.

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This is called the trigger condition of the flow and when an item is created in the Target site collection in which you are in the Target list in which you wear when you selected to create a flow, it will start an approval. You will have to specify the target approver of the flow and then based on the outcome of the approval task. You can say: okay: if the approval is yes, okay and you will see the response of the approval task is approved. Then, if it is approved, then you will send an email to.

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Let people know that the item- the order item has been approved. If it is not equal to approval, it was rejected, and so you will send an email message to notify that it was rejected. There is also a section right here when you can eventually notify that the approval action failed, and if that is the case, you will get some information from the profile of the user, specifically the email of the current user, and you will use it to notify the user about the issue now.

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In order to use this flow, you simply need to specify the target approver, which can be myself in this scenario, and then you will be ready to play with it once you are ready, you save it and you can eventually already test it from this designer. As you can see right here, you can click on test or you can use it from the UI of SharePoint online.

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But when you are in SharePoint online, you can also click on integrate power, automate, see your flows and you will be brought to the power automate interface, where you can see the whole list of flows that you created, including the one we just created right now and which I slightly changed to set a field which is the approval status field in the order accordingly to the output of the flow. So this is basically exactly the same flow that we have just seen before. When a new item is created, we create an approval request.

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The approval request will go in Microsoft teams for approval and upon the condition result. I will not only send email to the users to inform the outcome of the approval, but I will also update the item in SharePoint online with the proper approval status.

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This update item, as well as any other action that you would like to add to your flow, can be simply added by clicking on add an action, and here you will find a huge list of actions that you can rely on to work with Native workloads of Microsoft 365, as well as with the third parties workloads like, for example, you could work with DocuSign. You could work with external services and systems and stuff like that. So, for example, if you want to do something with SharePoint, you can simply search for the SharePoint actions.

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You will filter by SharePoint, and here you will see all of the actions that you can have at your hands whenever you want to work from within a power outlet flow targeting SharePoint online.

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The same happens if you want to use the email, so you can say that you want to work with exchange online or actually you want to work with the mail so Outlook in Office 365, and you will have a bunch of actual for that area and so on so forth, so plenty of options, and once once you define a flow and you have it ready, then you can simply play with it and, for example, let me create a new sample order right here, so it will be a sample order.

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0 3, the customer just for the sake of making an example, would be customer zero. Three and the amount of this order will be 15, 000 Euros. The order now is pending approval. If I will create the item now, if I will go to teams, I will find an approval request.

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So let me switch to teams, and let me show you that in my team's context, I will find in the activity that I will have a request to approve the sample order, 02 that was already there, but pretty soon. We will also see another request popping up right here to approve the order 03 that I just created the UI of the approval task will simply look like this, because it is based on Microsoft teams approvals. Here you can see what the target item is. You can see who sent the request and stuff like that.

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You can write a comment I like this order and you will be able to approve or reject, or you can even eventually reassign the task to someone else. If you think that you are not the right person in Target for it now, let me approve this one and in the meantime, we might be able to see that we have the final approval status for the order that I just created, but I will also see pretty soon. That I also have an approval request pending for the new order03.

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If it is not regret yet in the workflow engine of power automate, you can also see the history, so you can look into the history of the flows that have been executed in the last 28 days. So if in the old school SharePoint or flow model, you had this released now you have this new history in power out of it and you can eventually, from a power automate flow, save information in external services so that you can have a history longer than 28 days.

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So let me refresh- and now we see that we have a new instance that is running if I go back to teams. I can see that I have a new approval request for the order. 0 3 and here I can process it and eventually reject it. So it is really really intuitive simple and straightforward.

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You can just design using the web browser your flows and they will be natively integrated with SharePoint online and with your lists and libraries here, you can find additional links if you want to dig more into the topics covered and like always, thank you for watching this video.