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.

“There is a huge amount of logistical effort required to coordinate efficiently the activities of more than 200 employees and vendors who work together to produce some of the most highly attended sporting events in the world.”

“We like to call ourselves a traveling circus,” says Stephen Byrd, Director, Technology Integration and Development at NASCAR.

Technology Transformations – SharePoint Online

How does NASCAR achieve this feat, week after week? Luckily the same advancements in technology that revolutionized racecars and trackside mechanics also accelerate operations throughout the company.

“In the last five years, we have seen NASCAR retool technology in every aspect of our business, from electronic fuel injection to how we work in the office,” says Franza. “We have moved beyond sitting behind desks using a computer linked to a local network to embrace technology that’s expected by a younger, high-energy, mobile workforce. We operate in an around-the-clock digital world, dealing with in-the-moment broadcast and race logistics. So we use Microsoft SharePoint Online as a cloud-based digital cockpit that accelerates how we work together to get things done. Our folks can get their files anytime, on any device, to keep us moving forward. It’s become essential for our business to be successful.”

NASCAR developed a company intranet called Inside Track, a one-stop shop for all employees to stay up to date on current NASCAR news and to find resources they need to be productive. Built using SharePoint Online in partnership with Microsoft Consulting Services, the intranet includes department sites such as HR and Finances, but it’s a subsite called the @Track site that has really made a difference for the logistics team in NASCAR Productions—before, during, and after an event.

The whole idea of creating the @Track site for the logistics team came about when members of the Technology Integration and Development department heard team members, who work in an adjacent office, continually calling out to each other over their cubicles to coordinate hiring and scheduling crews, make travel and catering arrangements, and accommodate rainouts.

“We thought there must be a better way to communicate,“ says Franza. “The ideal way to work today takes a mobile-first, cloud-first approach. We looked at G Suite, but Microsoft Office 365 provides a single platform of services that are enterprise ready. Employees can go from email to SharePoint Online to OneDrive for Business to Skype for Business Online without leaving our work environment—and with security and access management tied in.” 

“Things change from second to second building up to a race, but the logistics team stays on track with SharePoint Online. We’re saving time putting out fires, and our productions run more smoothly,” says Franza. “We no longer mail around locked Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. With the ability to coauthor, we can have 15 people working on the Operations Workbook at the same time. The documents indicate who makes changes in real time, which is incredibly helpful before, during, and after each event.” 

Mobilizing Information – PowerApps

Mobility is critical for NASCAR, but building and managing custom mobile applications across platforms has historically been cost prohibitive. Robert Burg, Senior Manager, Technology Integration and Development at NASCAR, recently used Microsoft PowerApps to build a custom mobile app in a matter of days rather than weeks.

The “Track App” displays maps, the TV compound, locations for officials, catering operations, hotels, and other logistic information directly from SharePoint Online on Android, iOS, and Windows mobile phones.

“By adopting Microsoft PowerApps, we got a fast, easy way to build and maintain a mobile app that uses our SharePoint Online data and that field workers love to have at their fingertips,” says Burg. “Now we can provide content to our independent contractors as well. All they have to do is download PowerApps on their device, and we can make the Track App easily available to them without having to publish it separately on the various app stores.” 

What an amazing showcase of what you can do with a single PowerApp! It just automagically works across all three major phone devices without any extra development work to make it compatible! This saved Nascar both the time it would normally take to get custom apps into the various app stores, and the expense of platform development for each device operating system.

A Suite of Cloud Services Enhance Collaboration and Efficiency

Nascar took full advantage of Office 365, optimizing many services not mentioned in this blog for the benefit of their business. What a pleasure to see how our cloud productivity tools are actively driving efficiencies into their workforce, enabling them to win the productivity race every day!

“The Technology Integration and Development team at NASCAR was born out of a single question: How do we empower the business to get more done? We chose Office 365, with its mobile-first, cloud-first benefits, to give our employees the best tools for working at the office or at the track. Putting a race together requires the same coordinated teamwork you see in the pit, and with Office 365 and SharePoint Online, we’re driving productivity into a new era of time- and cost-savings. That’s great news for NASCAR.”—Stephen Byrd

For more on NASCAR’s race toward efficiency, read the full case study. Reach out to us if you’d like to pilot something similar; we’re committed to enabling you to succeed!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this in the comments below! Happy PowerApping,

Audrie

The post Nascar Wins the Productivity Race with Office 365 and PowerApps appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.