Data Stewardship to Scale

The most inspiring reason for learning Dataverse is the breadth of capabilities you can use to set strong standards for data stewardship. As per Wikipedia: “Data Stewardship means the formalization of accountability over the management of data, and the data-related resources. So, while data governance programs set the rules, data stewardship oversees the smooth implementation of those rules.” Therefore, data stewards seek a comprehensive approach to data management to ensure the quality, integrity, accessibility and security of the data.

How does Dataverse help? Dataverse is designed to be more than just a database. It can also include data from other data sources, for example through virtual tables. Everyone can take advantage of the built-in Common Data Model (CDM) tables designed to support strong communications between you and the businesses you partner with. Of course, you can also easily create custom tables, views, and forms. But don’t stop there! Take the data model to the next level by layering business logic, rules, and process flows to maintain data integrity and guide participants through important process steps or milestones. This end-to-end approach of optimizing enterprise data models enables both solution makers and business analysts to use, and to share data, with confidence.

Get started right away extending the value of tables and leveraging business rules with the new “Formula Fx Column“. The Formula Fx Column enables us to use Excel-like expressions within table columns (aka Power Fx). In the solution below, I’ve added a column to check when the current contract value exceeds 30% of the original bid value. Now Dataverse will trigger process alerts through Power Automate when this occurs. Since the logic is built into the data, all the Makers (new and old) will automatically gain this logic when they build apps using this table; no matter what type of app they build!

TIP: Leverage Formula Fx columns to drive consistency in process and notifications

Granular Security

Microsoft consistently prioritizes security and customer trust. Anyone can learn more about Microsoft’s Security and Trust commitment, or specifically about security and compliance for the Power Platform. So, why do I call this out as one of the three reasons for learning Dataverse? Because Dataverse brings security to the next level with its scenario-focused approach that facilitates a wealth of data visibility, security, compliance and auditing. Dataverse manages these through several layers of controls making it a platform with security on steroids. Some of the most commonly used layers of security include, but are not limited to:

• The Environment: The environment itself is the root container in the tenant for Dataverse. So it’s easy to assign a Security Group (“SG”) to an environment. This will constrain the environment contents (such as database tables) to members of that SG.
• Column-Level Security: Each column within a record can be configured for column-level security. Now we can decide to share all Customer Account details with the Sales team, but restrict access related to contract value and invoicing to only the Finance team.
• Role-Based Security: Dataverse uses role-based security (RBS) to group together a collection of privileges. These security roles can be associated directly to users, or they can be associated with Dataverse teams and business units. Users can then be associated with the team, and therefore all users associated with the team will benefit from the role. My favorite thing about this is that you can create roles and then insert them into the Solution Package so they can easily be reused there or in other solutions.

This layered approach to security and record visibility supports the diversity of requirements needed for common business scenarios. It’s not just about ‘who can access what data’, it’s also about facilitating need-to-know visibility by combining layered security with filters and views to aid in discovery, yet reduce noise in a people-friendly methodology.

Note the roles and the people in the image below. They are all working on a construction project but they have varied data access constraints and requirements. Dataverse can ensure that each individual gets to what they need to know, when they need to know it.


TIP: Simplify, and reuse, Security Roles by storing them in Power Platform Solutions:

Extended Integration Powers

Not all of our data starts or ends in Dataverse. Dataverse is designed to help you to orchestrate all your enterprise data needs, no matter where that data is stored. In many cases we will want to migrate, synchronize with, or simply just view data virtually within Dataverse.

Both migration and synchronization occur easily using Dataflows. Dataflows are a self-service, cloud-based, data preparation technology. Dataflows enable customers to ingest, transform, and load data into Dataverse environments, Power BI workspaces, or your organization’s Azure Data Lake Storage account. Customers can trigger dataflows to run either on demand or automatically on a schedule; data is always kept up to date.

But wait, you don’t always have to move or synchronize data! In many cases, having a “virtual” table is the best choice for leveraging the data directly from the source. Any business user can create virtual connections to data external to Dataverse. Check out the new virtual table providers for SQL, SharePoint, and Excel for example. Thanks to virtual table providers, we can now take advantage of data outside of Dataverse to layer it into our solutions, or to enable more complex scenarios that require modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), Azure functions, extended compute power, and/or dynamic query-driven tables.

TIP: Optimize solutions by layering data sources that you rely on every day using virtual tables

My favorite service integrations are those related to optimizing Business Intelligence (BI) insights (such as with Power BI), and the wide selection of Azure service partnerships, such as with Azure Synapse. Azure Synapse extends both compute power and our ability to create dynamic table queries through the use of Spark or SQL select statements. Both existing Dataverse tables and query tables created in Azure Synapse, provide creative opportunities for visualizations and insights in Power BI (learn more in this demo).

TIP: Take advantage of Spark and SQL Select statements along with the enhanced compute power of Azure Synapse

Conclusion

There is definitely a broad return on investment when it comes to learning Dataverse.

• Data Stewardship to Scale – helps us to reuse data and set standards across our business
• Granular Security – secures data across the domain, across tables, including column and role based security
• Entended Integration Powers – enables us to bring data from anywhere we need it into our solutions

Get started learning today:
Microsoft Learn for Dataverse
Additional resources:

1. Security Concepts
2. Power FX and Business Rules
3. Virtual Table Connector Providers
4. Azure Synapse Link for Dataverse

The post 3 Primary Reasons to Learn Dataverse appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

We can all learn from their professional examples and persistence, even during a period where the world is recovering from a pandemic. Of course, we wish we could celebrate more people today. We recognize how successful thousands of you have been, and we will continue to showcase stories throughout the year to show our gratitude for all that you do.

For a set of 80+ curated organizational stories, visit our Microsoft Power Platform stories blog post.

The post Celebrating our community for Juneteenth 2022 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Child flow essentials

• Helpful definitions:
  • The parent flow – this flow can have any type of trigger, and will call into the other flow.
  • The child flow – this is the flow that is nested inside the other that will contain the smaller task(s) you want to run.
• Parent and Child flows must reside together in a Solutions folder (learn more about Solutions here).
• Child flows may include variables from the Parent flows, and this transfer is facilitated by the prompts configured in the button trigger* on the Child flow.
  *Please note that manual button flows which are solution-aware may be triggered via a Parent flow. However, they can not be triggered from the Power Automate mobile application. This is a known issue that we are working to resolve (learn more about button flows here).

Passing parameters from the Parent to the Child flow

We have received feedback asking for additional clarifications on how to pass parameters between the Parent and Child flows. Therefore, we’d like to clarify how this is done today in the scenario below.

EXAMPLE #1 – In this example, there are two SharePoint Online sites which are capturing documentation drafts for different projects. Each library has different work flow processes to drive the submission and authoring of documentation. However, as an enterprise, they have one standardized way to get them approved for posting on their public-facing website. This is a great opportunity to leverage a Child flow which can service multiple libraries, and ensure a consistent process in the whole tenant. I’ve included a video here to illustrate several takeaways for this feature. Can you find at least four takeaways in the video?

EXAMPLE #2 – Multiple Services calling the same Child Flow

Remember that the Parent flows don’t have to ressemble each other to leverage the same Child flow. In many cases, you’ll be able to share Child flows across your cloud services! In this next example, two unrelated parent flows, one in Teams, and the other in Virtual Agents, are leveraging the same Child flow for Account Owner notifications.

Teams Scenario: We are engaging third party vendors in the collection of leads during a large conference event. We want to leverage the Teams mobile app to facilitate data collection by frontline workers for leads who don’t have scannable business cards (there is definitely an opportunity to use AI here too). They are triggering a flow to post an Adaptive Card form whenever needed during the event (see left side of the screen shot below). Many channels are receiving lead notifications, and are processing these requests by preparing customized introduction packages. We have added additional value for the sales team by also calling a single Child flow to assign follow-up tasks to Account Owners in Dynamics. Since sending notifications, or creating activities, for Account Owners can be very helpful in qualifying leads, we’ve decided to reuse the same Child flow for our Virtual Agent conversations!

Virtual Agent Scenario: In parallel to the conference, and throughout the year, Virtual Agents are receiving questions on our products. As the conversation moves along, a flow is initiated to collect follow-up product interest. As a result, that flow will call the Child flow to inform Account Owners about that conversation. This further facilitates reuse of standard notification processes, and optimizes our Child flow to serve two different services (Teams and Virtual Agents). As a consequence, we’ve reduced the overhead of maintaining multiple flows.

Learn more about Adaptive Cards here  and learn more about Virtual Agents here.

Important things to keep in mind

• The Child flow action will not be visible if you have not created the flow within a Solution. Therefore, if you don’t see the action, check that you are working within a Solution.
• Start the Child flow with a button trigger, and configure it to receive parameters from the parent (as shown in the video above).
• When sharing the Child flow, remember to share using ‘run-only‘ permissions, and using the flow owner’s embedded connection (i.e. the ‘use this connection’ option).
• Calling a Child flow from a Parent flow counts as only 1 flow in the Per Flow Licensing Plan.  However, please note that it is possible that you will see a trial prompt in certain cases. This is a known issue that we are working to resolve. Please do proceed with the trial if prompted, as that issue will be resolved without any impact to your billing.

What’s coming next?

We are most definitely not done with this feature. For example, we are considering enabling this functionality for Power Apps button triggers (not fully supported today). What ideas do you have that could help us to extend opportunities for scale? Please add your own ideas directly on the ideas forum (and ask your peers and associates to vote them up too). We are paying close attention to those top ideas when prioritizing what we’re unlocking for you next! Thank you for your continued patience as we evolve the platform in response to your feedback.

The post Helpful tips for using Child Flows appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Improving custom connectors success

Custom connectors enable automation experts and developers to add their own customized actions and triggers within the flow designer. They extend functionality beyond what is available within the out-of-box connectors provided by the Power Platform (Learn more on custom connectors and Power Automate here).

Thousands of customers are leveraging custom connectors to facilitate REST API usage in many innovative scenarios specific to their industries and business objectives. On the other hand, we also understand the challenges many have faced, updating, maintaining, and resolving issues while building and testing them. Therefore, we are providing enhanced connector validations to raise awareness of connector standards, and to enable those making custom connectors to resolve errors and/or problematic configurations which would impact flows running with that connector.

Validation for built-in connectors

We began testing and refining connector validation early in 2019, refining our own connectors (see full list here), and setting an example in the same best practices we would recommend to our customers who are designing custom connectors as well. We have evidence that these new validation standards will contribute greatly to consumer adoption of all connectors, and will expedite better automation outcomes.

Expected impacts to your service

We do not expect that these validations will impact any of your flow runs. Enhanced connector validation does not break any flows which are active and running today.  With that said, we recommend the following proactive actions to prevent issues which may occur in adding, editing, or updating actions and/or triggers which are associated with a connector that has been flagged with a validation error. As connectors are validated, although flows will continue to run without issue, the connector actions may be locked as to changes.  When locks occur, flow makers will be unable to edit existing actions, and may not see the custom connector when adding new actions in the flow editor.

• VALIDATE CUSTOM CONNECTORS: Review your custom connectors to be sure that validation has not flagged them with an error. Respond to alerts as needed to remove any validation flags.
• REPORT UNEXPECTED ALERTS: If you do encounter an unexpected alert on an out-of-box connector, please report these immediately via the community forums (if non-blocking), or through support options, if urgency is required.

We thank you again for your continued feedback. We will continue to drive proactive performance enhancements, like these embedded validations, at every opportunity so as to optimize better business outcomes every where.

The post Optimizing custom connectors through enhanced built-in validations appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Select a format from the drop-down list of options:

…or create your own custom number format, just like you do in Microsoft Excel using “Enter custom value”

Brief video demonstration 

This new action will prove to be helpful in many scenarios, as well as for both citizen and professional developer roles. Value highlights include:

• Maintain numeric values as numbers for in-process calculations, yet format the appearance of the number based on typical patterns such as Currency formats.
• Leverage past knowledge with custom formatting patterns previously learned in Excel, Power BI and Power Apps expressions.
• Vary currency formats as per the business process requirements, rather than only the flow-maker’s locale.
• Includes developer-friendly patterns such as C2 (currency with two decimal places), and N2 (negative number with two decimal places). Learn more about these .Net formatting standards here.

Thank you for your patience as we worked on this new action. You can look forward to many more actions like this during calendar year 2020!

As usual, we await your feedback on the Ideas Forum. Happy New Year!

Audrie

The post Simplified Number Formatting appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Adaptive Cards now simplify both display and input scenarios, enabling you to focus on the data and/or process point-in-time, and removing the need to design a custom user interface. Start with any connector, and easily share and collect data across services with minimum effort:

Post adaptive cards to Teams member activity feeds and chats:

• Post your own adaptive card as a flow bot to the user
• Post your own adaptive card as a flow bot to the user, and wait for a response

Post adaptive cards to Teams channels:

• Post our own adaptive card as a flow bot to a channel
• Post our own adaptive card as a flow bot to a channel, and wait for a response

To help you to get started with these new ‘wait for a response’ actions, we have outlined everything you need to know @ https://aka.ms/AdaptiveCardsforPowerAutomate
What’s coming next?

We are definitely not done adding value in this area. Behind the scenes we’ve been working on an embedded Adaptive Card designer experience within Power Automate to expedite card design and customization. A sneak peak of the embedded experience is available within our experimental features so that you can try it out, and give us feedback. We are looking forward to your feedback as we prioritize the work for our next iteration.

Features Introduction Video

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think of the newest actions, and the experimental embedded designer. Please post your thoughts in the Ideas Forum with the tags/labels of “Adaptive Cards” so I won’t miss them!

The post Power Automate + Adaptive Cards introduces business form scenarios on Microsoft Teams appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

The 25 Days outline is as follows:

If you missed the series, no worries! The recorded playlist will be available all year from here in numerical order, and the actual Power Apps application is downloadable from here. Feel free to reuse these in your demos and user groups as well!

Enjoy, and Happy New Year to you and yours!

Audrie
(aka @ArtsyPowerApper on Twitter)

The post 25 Days of flows – The Power Automate Advent Calendar appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

“Attendees at the recent MBAS learned how attending online and in-person meetings can provide you the opportunity to connect and learn from others on a local and global level, all while having a little fun. Community members Ted Pattison, Daniel Christen, and Phillip Guglielmi showed their skills in this low-code/no-code environment and had a few laughs during our PowerAppsUG Shootout.”
-Rose Spitzer, Dynamics User Groups

Joining is free: https://www.powerappsug.com/  

The post Announcing the NEW PowerApps User Group! appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

The Solution Goals:

The app that Paul has built is delivering a feed of information from several different SharePoint lists, consolidating only relevant information for the consumer as an “activity log” or information gallery. In common business scenarios these feeds can be used to share news and announcements, manage project task assignments or completion, and can even be used to monitor eating patterns, or emotions in medical or fitness scenarios. This type of app is often appreciated in the collaboration space, as it helps users share and discover relevant information snippets. My favorite part is the clever use of search results (see more on Result Sources). I remember when we first started using the Content by Search webpart to configure our search results on SharePoint (that stuff was huge for us). Amazingly, I believe that was only 2 or 3 years ago (now well known as the “CBS” webpart)! Today, just imagining that level of precise relevance in search results as a source of app data really impressed all of us over here!

Paul shared a screen shot of his daughters sample app (since the production app was confidential). It’s an adorable ‘Cat-alogue’ activity feed app. Huge kudos and thanks to his brilliant daughter Ashlee! 

Activity Logs have loads of uses though! Imagine the following scenerios where having an activity feed from multiple data sources or lists would be beneficial:

• News and Announcement Feeds in SharePoint lists (the ones we see on the home pages of communities for instance)

• Event Planning Activities (pulling data together into a single app such as registration stats, speaker planning, progress on room logistics, hotel and car discounts, etc.)

• Punch List Comments and Follow-ups (where different roles are logging comments on final punch list items for project completion)

• Yammer Feeds Associated with SharePoint Data or Documents (data mash up of related content from SharePoint and Yammer, or SharePoint and Slack)

• Support Response Feeds (showing only responses involving the current consumer of the app)

• Cross-Group Project Request Activities (combining project health factors: scoping, schedule, and cost adjustments)

• Issue or Problem Management (composite info on problems, with investigation notes, related tasks and/or document comments)

• Fitness Activity Log (with food, exercise, and workout journals)

• Psychological Activity Feeds such as Mood Logs (to view activities, circumstances, or conditions around the time of the mood logged)

• Vehicle and Equipment Maintenance Logs (showing types of maintenance across several categories: repair, reoccuring maintenance, decommissioning, etc.)

​Another example Activity Feed UI in PowerApps:

Components:

​​Paul’s solution starts on a very straight forward Power User level, and then is built upon to demonstrate how easy it is to extend solutions using Pro Developer extendability options. The components of the solution were:

• SharePoint List Data
• A custom SharePoint Search Result Source
• An Azure Function (via PowerShell)
• A PowerApps Custom Connector

Paul’s Blog Postings on CleverWorkarounds.com:

Part 1
Part 2
​Part 3
​

Video Demonstrations and Walkthroughs:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

You don’t want to miss checking out each of his blogs, and giving this a try in one of the many scenarios possible (the sky is the limit). I enjoyed every minute of reading them! Feel free to connect with paul_culmsee on private message or below in the comments for more details. Let us know where you see opportunities to use this methodology, and please share your own app stories in the app gallery, or video gallery, as soon as you can!

Happy PowerApping!

Audrie (Audrie-MS)

The post Learn to Build Activity Feed Apps for SharePoint Lists Using Search Results appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

This is a direct response to your demand. (Special thanks to community members Sue P. and Dave V. who suggested a video series!) I’ve seen how much you love learning new ways to do more in your apps. So, I know you’ll enjoy this new series on YouTube which started on November 17th. Since we’ll be off several Fridays during the holiday season, I pre-recorded and uploaded a batch of them to get you started! For instance, this Friday’s demo leverages the Left(), StartsWith(), ColorFade(), and Today() functions, and creates a dynamic left navigation for filtering a gallery. 

Maybe you are already an expert with functions and formulas? If so, let’s get you involved in this series too! Just tag your YouTube videos about formulas and functions with the hashtags #FridayFunctions and #PowerApps. Or perhaps you prefer to have functions and formulas pre-built for you? Don’t worry, the PowerApps team is working on lots of new surprises where you won’t need to be a master at functions or formulas. On the other hand, I would suggest that you check out the video series anyway. These are usually very short videos (<7 minutes), and I try to stuff in several general tips and tricks around many other PowerApps canvas feastures too! Plus, you’ll notice that some of these Friday Functions videos will be scheduled as 1-hour live webinars online! Those will usually go a bit deeper than the short videos I post on Friday afternoons. Bring your laptop, and your questions for us, and enjoy the deep dive webinars from the comfort of your own office space!

Moving forward, here is the Friday Functions playlist (check it often for new videos): click here

Note: Each YouTube description area has references pointing you back to our community articles for any function mentioned in the video. This will help you to learn more on your own, and to try new things as an app-maker as well. Feel free to subscribe, comment, and like videos, this way I will know what you appreciated there! 

If you have a function that you’d like me to cover, please post it in the comments below. I’m committing to a new video for each Friday of every month until spring (then it’s totally up to you if I continue the series)! We’re thrilled to be able to help you to use functions and formulas more efficiently! Thank you for your continued feedback and support, and as always,

Happy PowerApping!

Audrie

(ArtsyPowerApper on Twitter and YouTube)

The post New! “Friday Functions” series helps you to master formulas! appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.