PL-100 Microsoft Power Platform App Maker – Power Automate components

1. 49. Configure triggers

Hello. And in this section we’re just going to take a step back from designing detailed flaws and we’re going to have a look instead at the individual components that you can use. So we’re going to have a look at triggers, actions and expressions when you need to manipulate variables, for instance. So hopefully after this section you will have a few additional ideas of flaws that you can create in Power Automate. So in this video we’ll be looking at triggers and I hope you’ll bear in mind that triggers being the first item in a floor, it’s the event which starts the floor can be very useful for business logic. For example, maybe you want to be notified when a new role is inserted into the data first. We saw that in the previous section.

Maybe you want an email whenever your name is mentioned in Microsoft teams, or maybe onto mobile notification when your boss sends you an email. Or maybe you want a weekly or daily roundup of whenever new files are added into SharePoint what the new files are. So in this video we’re going to have a look at various triggers. So I’m going to create a blank floor. I’m going to go into new floor, instant cloud floor and I’m going to skip this step. So that gives me completely a blank slate. Now, it’s untitled. You will want to title it by clicking there and typing your own name for your floor. Now if you don’t, then the computer is going to give it a name and you don’t want that given the name that it uses. So we have got triggers and actions.

Let’s see if we can have an action as the first stage of a flow. So if I say put a condition control says you cannot use an action as a trigger, please select a trigger. So the trigger is the thing that comes very first in the flow. So what can we do? We can manually trigger a flow. So we’ve previously seen that we can user input, so we can have text, for instance. And we don’t just need to just have one. We could have multiple questions that we can ask the end user. Alternatively, if I delete this, we could have a schedule, so a reoccurrence. So when some time has passed, every minute, every week, every month, you could put in your own custom value.

So how many intervals do you want? So every week or something, so you can say you want it to be on a particular day if you have it for a week. So maybe you want it to be every week on a Monday or a Wednesday starting at 02:00 in the morning and maybe 02:00 in the afternoon. And maybe you want it in terms of number of minutes. Or maybe we do it at 02:00 and 02:00 and 30 minutes. So half two. And you can see down here in English how it would run how often. So it will run here what, eight times a week. Now, if I try to add another trigger, so manually trigger a flow, you’ll see here that we cannot use a triggers in action.

So not only is the trigger the first item, it can only be the first item in a particular floor. So let’s see what other types of triggers are. Well, it could be for a selected item, for instance when an item is created. So maybe it’s created in SharePoint or modified in SharePoint, maybe it’s created in a folder or maybe when it’s deleted. Now, another thing could be the Power apps or Power virtual agent calls. So this particular flow will start when it’s called on by Power apps. So you can see no additional information is required if I do that. So it could be in terms of calendars.

So maybe when an event is added into a calendar using Google Calendar or Outlook 365 or Outlook. com or equally when there’s a new event added to a calendar, maybe you’re using Microsoft Teams and you want when a team member is added or removed, or if you select a message and you execute it this floor. So perhaps I click on a message and click on the floor and it does something to that message, maybe sends it out to lots of different people. Or maybe when I’m mentioned in a team’s channel message, or maybe other parts of the Power platform, for instance, when a button is clicked in Power Bi, or when Power Virtual agents calls a particular flaw.

Now whatever you’re using, you will find that dynamic tokens are generated. For example, for the on Power Bi button clicked, then we have the dynamic tokens of user ID, user name, user email and timestamp. If however, we have a manually press. So if I change this to manually trigger a floor and then add a notification, then we’ve got things like locations, city, state, street, postal court, country, region and full address. We’ve got date and time stamp when the floor was triggered and we’ve got username and user email. So in this video we’ve had a look at triggers.

We’ve got four basic types when you manually trigger a floor, when you trigger a floor in a different application, for instance, if you click an item and then say okay, SharePoint, I want you to trigger a floor based on that item. You can do it on a schedule or you can do it when an event happens. So an item or file is created or modified or deleted. Another part of the Power platform calls an event is added to a calendar or when you are mentioned in a team’s channel message. So let’s just have a look at some more triggers for specific applications.

So for instance, for Microsoft Teams, we’ve already had a look at that. You can get a trigger when you’re mentioned in a channel message, but you can also get a trigger when a new channel message or team member is added or removed. Or you can have for a selected message. In other words, you click a message in Microsoft Teams and then you click a button floor to do something on it. If we’re looking at the weather, then we can have a look at when the current weather or conditions change. So what’s the difference? Well, current conditions, that’s just general current weather. You can specify it for temperature, UV index, humidity or wind speed when that changes. For instance, if the wind is equal to goes over or goes below a certain item. If we have a look at Microsoft Office Outlook.

So we’ve got some triggers such as when a new email arrives, maybe in a shared mailbox, when it mentions me, when an email is flagged, when an event is created or added, updated, deleted or modified, and when an upcoming event is going to start soon for OneDrive for business. Then we’ve got triggers such as when a file is created or modified and again for a selected file. So in other words, you click on it and then button, floor, run and then SharePoint.

We’ve got things such as when an item is created or modified, when a file is created in a folder or modified for a selected file or item, when a file is classified by a content understanding model, when a file or item is deleted, and when a site has requested to join a hub site. And then looking at the database we’ve got when a floor step is run from a business process floor, we’ll have a look at business processes coming up, when a row is added, modified or deleted, or when an action is performed. And then finally in SQL Server we got a trigger such as when an item is created or modified. So these are some of the different triggers that can start off your Power automate floor.

2. 51. Configure actions

In this video we’re going to look at the various categories of actions that you can use. Now you won’t be required to memorize all of these for the exam but it’s useful to know roughly what you can do. So first of all we’ve got variable action so we’ve had to look at these already. So variable actions include things like incrementing because of adding a number to a variable decrementing available, initializing the variable which you need to do in the first place setting a value to the variable so instead of saying it’s the previous variable plus two it says this new variable is going to be nine. This current variable is nine appending to a string variable and appending to an array variable.

So let’s have a look at the sort of actions you can get with Excel online where you can delete, get or update rows. You can get worksheets or tables. You can list the rows present in a table. You can run scripts, you can add a key column to the table. In other words it gets added to the right. Or you can add a row into a table or you can create a table or a worksheet. For Google Sheets we’ve got actions such as Get Insert, Delete and Update Raw get rows so more than one row and get sheets. For Microsoft teams we have got add a member to a team create a team meeting or Create a team’s team get messages or post message or reply. It could be in a chat, it could be in a channel.

Post a choice of options as the floorbot to a user. You can post an adaptive card and wait for response in a chat or channel or you can reply with a message or with an adaptive card. We’ve already seen triggers that you can do for instance when a new channel message or a team member is added or removed when I’m mentioned or when you click on a message and then a button so that’s for a selected message. Looking now at MSN weather we have got actions of get the forecast for today or tomorrow or get the current weather for mail we can send out email notifications.

Now that is not the spam I should point out. You can send a maximum of five males per minute and 100 males per 24 hours. If you want more then you should instead of be using mail you should use Office Three Six five Outlook. So there we can create delete, update contacts or events. We can send, delete, export, flag, forward, move or reply to emails. We can find meeting times. We can get attachments or calendar view of events or calendars or contacts or contact folders or email or emails or event or events or mail tips for a room or a room list or rooms in a room list. We can mark emails as red or unread. We can respond to an event invite.

We can send an email from a shared mailbox, we can send an email of options, we can set up automatically replies and we can update my contacts folder looking at OneDrive for business we have got actions such as create or delete a file, list files in a folder, convert or copy or move or rename a file. Maybe using the path we can create a Share link, we can extract an archive to a folder, we can find files in a folder or by path we can get a file content or metadata.

We can get file thumbnails, we can list files in a root folder, so useful if you want to go through for each file and we can update files maybe from a URL. For SharePoint we have got actions such as Hub sites we can approve or cancel a hub site join request we can join a Hub site, we can set a Hub site join status to pending we can add or delete attachments or we can get attachments. We can check in files or check out files we can copy or move files or folders we can create or delete or update or get files or items. We can create new folders. We can create or stop sharing links for a file or folder. We can discard a checkout. We can get changes for an item or file.

We can get update file properties. We can get files or items. We can grant access to an item or folder. We can list folders and we can also extract folders looking at the date of us. We can add or delete or update roles. We can download or upload a file or image. We can get a row by ID. We can list or relate or search or unrelate roles. Relate and unrelate means it’s the relationship. So want to end on end to end relationship. We can perform a bound or unbound action. So this means associated or not associated with a table. We can predict using AI builder models.

So we’ll be looking at AI Builder later on in this cause and we can perform a chain set request that’s a group of connector operations as a single transaction. And then finally we’ll have a look at SQL Server. So for SQL Server we can delete or get or insert or update rows. We can execute a SQL query, we can execute a store procedure, we can get raw or rows, we can transform data using Power query and we can get tables. Now you might wonder why it has brackets V Two.

Well there needs to be some code written for each of these and when Microsoft makes a big enough change they could call it V Two, V Three and the reason for that is it leaves the original code as is so that nothing breaks. So this will give you a good idea of the sort of actions that you can do in Power Automate. So basically what is your connector. And then let’s see what you can do with it.

3. 53. Implement common expressions

In this video, we’re going to have a look at some of the expressions you can use. So maybe you don’t want to output an entire tweet, maybe you just want the first part of it. For instance, now you won’t be required to memorize any of these. Remember, the PL 100 exam is for people who may not have It training but are comfortable using technology. So you should have a basic understanding of data models, user interface and processes. You do not require to have memorized all of these functions for the PL 100 exam. So let’s have a look, not at the dynamic content, but at expressions. So, first of all, let’s have a look at the string functions. First of all we’ve got concat.

So this joins two strings or any number of strings together. Now, I should point out these are based on Azure Logic apps. And the question mark that you can see here means that it is optional. In other words, you could concat just one text string. The dotto dot means you can keep going. So you can have three text strings, four text strings and so forth. substring. But that’s the equivalent of mid in say, Excel, so it can get the left middle of a string. So if I have substring, put it up here and I have the word hello and I start at position number two and I get three characters. Well, position number two, unlike Excel, position number zero is right at the beginning. So normally this is the first character. But in Azure Logic apps and in these expressions, the first character is position number zero.

So this would be position number two for three characters. So you would get LLO. So if you did this in Excel and you said mid hello like that, you would get these three characters. But in Power Automate you get these three characters instead because of where position number zero. Position number one is it’s zero based. So looking down at this list, well, not on this list is length. That gives you the length of it of a string. Replace replaces some old text for new text to lower and to upper.

That’s conversion into lowercase or upper case starts with and ends with. So this shows whether text starts with or ends with a certain text that comes as true or false. Split splits a string using a separator. So maybe you got several items separated by commas so that would split the string into all those different items. Trim gets rid of white space at the beginning and the end and then format number returns a number formatted as a string. Now you can use the format of Excel, so any of the standard Excel numeric format strings and you can also use the net formatting as well.

So those are the string functions collection. These are for arrays conversion. These include array, binary, bool, which is a boolean flot, int and string. So conversion from one type to another logical. So we got if equals and not or. And we’ve also got less, less or equals and greater and greater or equals. We’ve got some mass functions. So Min and Max, we’ve got Rand for random number, and then we’ve got add some mul and divide div for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Now, only two arguments can be used. You notice it doesn’t say comma dot dot dot at the end. So you can add two numbers together. So let’s add three and four. If I wanted to add five to that, then I would need to use some nested arguments and do be careful with division.

So if I was dividing three by two, then the answer would be one, because three is an integer and two is an integer. So the result would be an integer. If you wanted one and a half, then at least one of these numbers would have to be a floating number and you can use the conversions for those. And finally mod returns the remainder and range returns an array. So range one, comma three will give you an array with three values, one, two and three. Looking at date and time, UTC now gives you the current timestamp as a string, but you can format that string as well.

Get future time and get past time, says give me the time right now, but add a few days, hours, minutes, seconds, but maybe you don’t want to do that from right now. Or you can do that with a timestamp function. So add to time, subtract from time, and then we can also add seconds, minutes, hours, days. We can convert time zones. So we’ve got functions like to UTC. UTC is Universal Time Coordinated, it’s the GMT, it’s the London time in the winter for instance. We also have start of our start of day, start a month. We have the day of week, day of month, day of year.

So your basic extraction functions there, if you are using a variable, then you can get that by using variables. So maybe I want to add a variable which is called my first number, and I want to add that to another variable which is called my second number. So you do that using the variables function. So you’ve got other things, manipulation, workflow functions, they get inputs and outputs on flaws. But this is the basic sort of things that you can do in expression. So hopefully, if you got something that you need a little bit of manipulation for, you can use these functions, these expressions based on Azure logic apps.

As I said before, you won’t actually need to know the details of them, but it’s nice to know that they are there. Just make sure you click the CMO button to get a bigger list.