Ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete those mundane tasks on top of meetings, projects and high-pressure deadlines? I certainly do. If you’re like me, you know that time is precious in the working world. But what if I showed you how to give yourself back time and never worry about that busy work again? With Microsoft Flow, you can!

I am a social content writer and Community Manager of the PowerApps Community (previously Microsoft Flow Community Manager.) I spend most of my work day writing, designing, editing, and reading when I’m not in meetings or events. Flow came to my rescue  when I was writing content for the Microsoft Flow Twitter Account. Every week, I was responsible for providing the social media team with a list of tweets, graphics, and media for the following week. to be sent out each week.

My Flow automates submitting Twitter content each week. At first, my process consisted of back and forth emails between teams, random technical issues when sending content, and zero formatting. With Flow, I am able to write organized content, send it to the proper stakeholders, and deliver content consistently on time. This Flow can work for various scenarios in a variety of industries. It’s a huge timesaver and easy to create!

To create this Flow, you will need the following:

·         SharePoint Site & List

·         Office 365 Outlook Account

·         OneDrive for Business Account

Now, let’s start building the Flow

1. Sign in to Microsoft Flow if you haven’t already.

2. Click on My Flows at the top of the page.

3. Select Create From Blank +.

4. Type Schedule Recurrence in the search box. Enter the day of the week, time of day, and interval frequency values in the fields below. 

Next, let’s add an action.

Type Compose into the box, and select the expression utcNow(). Selecting this action will return each flow run’s  timestamp as a string, for example: 2017-03-15T13:27:36Z:

5. Type SharePoint into the box, and select the action Get items. This will connect to a SharePoint list with the content scheduled for that week. 

6. Next, type Create HTML Table in the box, and select value extracted from your previous SharePoint action. Select Custom in the Columns box. Select the values that correspond with the column titles from your selected SharePoint list from Get Items. This Data Operations action will pull data from the SharePoint list and convert it into an HTML table. 

Time for another action!

7. Type OneDrive for Business and select the action Create File. Select the folder you wish to map to in Folder Path. Next, select Output for both the File Name and File Content boxes. Be sure to include .xls after the Output value in File Name. This will indicate that the HTML file will be saved as an Excel spreadsheet. 

          And add an action!

8. Type OneDrive for Business and select the trigger When a File is created.  Select the folder path you entered in your previous action. 

9. Type OneDrive for Business and select the action List Files in Folder. Select the folder path you entered in your previous action.

10. Now for the final OneDrive for Business action. Type OneDrive for Business and select the action Create share link by path. Select File Path for the  File Path Box. Choose to send a direct link within your organization. This allows the excel file created from our SharePoint list to be sent as a direct link ONLY to someone within your team or organization.  

11. Type Office 365 Outlook and select the action Send an Email. This will be sent to the social media team with a link that will download a copy of our Excel Sheet file. In Body, you MUST select Add Dynamic Content and add the value WebURL. If you do not include this in the email body, recipients will not have a way to download the Excel file.

I hope you enjoyed this walkthrough of my content flow. If you liked what you saw today, let me know! Leave a message below, Message me on the Power Users Community (@mackenzie_lyng), connect with me on Twitter, or email me directly!

Until next time! ?

The post Intermediate | Flow of the Week: Automate emailing a weekly .xls file from a SharePoint List. appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

To celebrate, we’ve shared the top five solutions below. To view more solutions, check out the AMA discussion board in the Microsoft Flow Community. Missed the event? Keep an eye out for the next AMA event and get your answer live!

Top Five AMA Questions and Answers

1. How do I use Flow on mobile devices?
   Hello there! You can download the mobile apps from here! – Senior Program Manager Jon Levesque

2. Is there a possibility or plan to see information for who changed a flow when. Is there a possibility to have Team Flow?
   That feature is coming soon!  We’re going to notify flow owners by email whenever someone else edits their flow. The emails are rate limited as well, so you won’t get a bunch of emails if a user makes a few edits in a row. Showing the full edit history is on our radar as well. – Senior Software Engineer David Nissimoff

3. How can I create a flow with RSS?
   You can use the RSS connector as a trigger, enter the RSS feed URL, then add the email connector to send an email. Here are templates that are very similar to the scenario you want to automate: Get new articles from “The Verge” in my email inbox  or  Get a push notification with updates from the Flow blog – Software Engineer Melinda Lim

4. How to notify me in Outlook when a student completes a quiz? Any plans to allow Flow to be used multiple times as long as the parameter is selected?
   It’s a single flow per quiz. One thing you can do is do a “Save As” of a flow and duplicate it. Once it’s been duplicated, you can apply it to different quizzes. – Senior Program Manager Merwan Hade

5. Is it possible to create custom flags in my mailbox and get the flow to populate a task or update a current task based on my custom flag?
   Yes, you can use flow to do a number of operations in Planner. See this documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/planner/ With great sample templates here: https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shared_planner/planner/ The very scenario you mentioned is listed in the templates. I am going to give the scenario you suggest above (with CUSTOM flag triggers) a quick try and post back here. – Senior Program Manager Audrie Gordon

The post Top five solutions from August’s Community AMA appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

The AMA will take place in the Flow Community AMA board  on Thursday, August 31, 2017 from 11:00 A.M. to 12:00 p.m. PST.

An Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) is the same as an “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” on Reddit, or YamJam on Yammer. It provides the opportunity for the community to ask questions and have a discussion with a panel of internal and external experts on a particular topic. In order to get the best value out of this hour, take a look at the Flow & etiquette guidelines.

The Microsoft Flow Community is a place to connect, learn, and discuss with business intelligence experts and peers. Whether you need help and support, want to explore exciting new features or have tips and best practices to share, the community is the place for you. To get started take a look at  this guide for tips on registration and exploring the community. Please let the Microsoft Flow Community team know if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you in the community and at the AMA!

The post Save the date for our second Community AMA! appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.