Flow buttons

Flow buttons can be triggered from the Flow mobile app (get the app) or website.

View a short video below to learn more on flow buttons:

Moreover, after serving well their administrators, ProRail now plan to leverage Flow further by using button sharing and exposing various SharePoint operations to their end-users for self-service. Button sharing enables you to share buttons with your peers such that these users can run them as well, thus helping them become more efficient, as well as enforcing the same processes across the organization. Check out this list of templates to get started. 

About ProRail

Prorail is a semi-governmental organization that is responsible for the entire railway infrastructure in the Netherlands. They work 24/7 to make the rail infrastructure safer, more reliable, and more durable to get people and goods to their destination in time. The Netherlands have the busiest rail system in Europe. In 2015 3,3 million train rides were made. ProRail employs approximately 4000 people and has a E3 Office365 enterprise license for every employee.

“Flow buttons help us to create sites quicker which makes our customer happy. Another advantage is that a non-technical person can do the job.I can’t wait to see the Flow app in the hands of the end-users. It will help them adopt SharePoint. Most people like apps, don’t they?” says Berna Vink from ProRail.

To support such a scale, ProRail works closely with two preferred solution providers on their various needs, Sogeti and Motion10.

• About Sogeti – “We are a leading provider of technology and software testing, specializing in Application, Infrastructure and High-Tech Engineering Services. Sogeti offers cutting-edge solutions around Testing, Business Intelligence & Analytics, Mobile, Cloud and Security.”
• About Motion10 – “Integration is in the DNA of Motion10 and we are specialists in Digital Collaboration and Business Intelligence using Microsoft technology. We help clients to work smarter and more efficient. Next to this, using the Flow mobile app to provision sites is very easy and intuitive”

When recently speaking with Daniel Laskewitz from Sogeti, he shared that “Flow helps ProRail to be more productive with their site creation process. It’s easy to use different services and connect them to our Flows. The Flow buttons make it possible for the SharePoint administrators at ProRail to create a site from anywhere with any device.” 

How did Flow come to the rescue

ProRail uses Office365 and SharePoint Online to collaborate in teams, departments and project teams. In order to support and maintain SharePoint sites they use several different site templates that are used to provision a site when a new project or team is formed.

All this work is done by the Enterprise Content Management team. To facilitate easy and rapid provisioning of team and project sites they asked to use a more streamlined process. 

This is where Flow and Flow buttons step in.

ProRail defined a button flow for SharePoint administrators for the rapid site creation. ProRail currently uses Mavention Make for site creation, and the button flow uses this solution to create sites. For your own environment you can also use Office Dev PnP as a provisioning solution.

The Administrator can trigger a button flow from anywhere using his mobile app, or from the flow website.

When selecting the button, they can easily provide input parameters such as the site title, the template used and a unique tracking number for the site.

Below, for example, are the inputs to fill when triggering a button from the flow website.

How does the flow work?

Once every input is filled, a compose action is used to create a JSON message from the inputs. When the compose-action is completed the Flow sends a JSON message to an Azure function that provisions the site. These inputs, combined with additional configuration pre-defined in the Flow, are all that’s needed to easily provision new sites.

“Optimizing business processes is a breeze with Microsoft Flow and Azure Functions. As a developer you have all the required tools for testing your integrations and it’s easy to quickly provide value for your client. Next to this, it is a joy to see new and useful features get added to Flow on a weekly basis.” Says Jurgen Wiersema from Motion10

As a next step, the team plans to leverage button sharing as well as Approvals to make this ability available for end-users. They will add an approval step to the button flow and then share that button with company employees. This allows for self-service site creation which is monitored by the ECM team. In addition, they will also make self-service creation available with other configurations for SharePoint. 

Learn more and connect with us

Check out our documentation that covers app concepts, from getting started to more advanced capabilities.

Visit the Mobile section on our community and share what you’re doing, ask questions or even submit new ideas and reach out to us on Twitter.

The post ProRail Customer story: Hear from Sogeti & Motion10 how they created a SharePoint solution for ProRail using Flow Buttons appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Learn more about Flow button on a short video here or below:

Also, we will be adding support for shared buttons soon, so you’ll be able to leverage the widgets power even more. For example, let’s say you want to create a tool for your team to help them track their working hours. You can create this flow once, share it with your team, which in turn will be able to trigger it by tapping on its widget on their device home screen.
 

How to get started:

Let’s look at an example – follow the steps below to create a widget for triggering a new build in VSO and learn more about the widget possibilities.

Prerequisites:

• An account for Microsoft Flow.
• The mobile app for Microsoft Flow installed on a supported device.
• At least one active button flow.

Android widget:

The Android widget is a single button shortcut, which you can place on your device’s home screen and use to trigger a specific flow. It’s resizable, and you can add as any as you’d like.

Here’s how you can create your own Android Flow widget:

1. Long tap on the home screen background

   
    

2. Tap on the ‘widgets’ menu item

   
    

3. Scroll down to the Flow entry or search for it

   
    

4. Tap/drag the widget to your home screen

   
    

5. Pair the widget with any of your button flows

   
    

6. Set your widget location & size

   
    

iOS widget:

The iOS widget is a widget containing all your enabled button flows.
The widget can be accessed from the widget screen, lock screen, and from the 3D touch menu of the Flow app.

Here’s how you can add the Flow widget:

1. Swipe to your widgets screen, scroll down and tap ‘Edit’

   
    

2. Choose ‘Flow Buttons’ from the ‘MORE WIDGETS’ list, reorder the widget list and click ‘Done’

                      
    

3. Flow widget will be added to the widget screen.
   Use the ‘Show More’ button to expand it and see all your buttons flows.

          

Flow widget can also be accessed from the 3D touch menu – simply long tap on the Flow app’s icon:

Learn more and connect with us

That’s it, you can now start using the Flow widget to trigger flows easily. This opens a world of possibilities for you, your colleagues, and your customers.
Visit our Flow community and share what you’re doing, check out our documentation, ask questions or even submit new ideas and reach out to us on Twitter.

The post Widgets are now officially available for both Android and iOS appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Today I’m happy to introduce a highly-anticipated milestone: Flow users can now trigger their workflows using physical buttons. This capability comes as a first step of connecting Flow to the real world, to enable leveraging MS Flow for so many more business scenarios. The breadth of services which Flow can connect to, and the depth of Flow logic you can apply – all behind a physical button.  

As a recap, until today you could use Flow Buttons to trigger flows on demand directly from your Flow Mobile app or website (App available on iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile coming soon). Just check out some of our Flow button templates here.

And now, you can trigger on demand flows using physical buttons! Dramatically simplifying your workday – placing repetitive work tasks behind a single button, and drastically reducing the time you or your employees will spend on them. 
Need a simple way to order more inventory in a production floor? Push the button. It will create a PO with approval in your CRM.
Need a simple way to call Tech support in a conference room? Push the button. It will dispatch a mail to your support team, or open a support ticket in your system.
Need a simple way to track your consulting work hours for various companies? Push the button. It will log your hours and location in an Excel file or a Google sheet. 
Need an effortless way to keep track of product sales at a customer touch point? Push the button. It will update a dedicated Sharepoint list. 
The use cases are endless.

Microsoft is delivering these capabilities through partnerships with two of the leading products in the physical button  space, each with its strong and unique business value: Flic by Shortcut Labs, and Bttn by The Button Corporation. Check out our Physical Button templates here.

Bttn by The Button Corporation

Bttn is a powerful physical button which has built-in internet connectivity and operates without utilizing a smartphone or pairing with an app. “In the ever-expanding and complex forum that the internet has become, interface design has become increasingly important. Bttn was developed as the human interface to the internet,” says Juuso Pesola, CEO of The Button Corporation. He continues: “It provides shortcuts to various internet services, and together with Microsoft Flow, it’s easy for anyone to create actions that trigger entire business processes.”

Lets take for example an IT support call scenario: You have various conference rooms at the office, and occasionally a projector stops working, or a network is down.  Naturally this always happens at the most inconvenient time, when you don’t have a minute to spare. With a button in each conference room, simply push it to start a support ticket and alert IT of a problem in your location. No need to pick up a phone or log into a support system, just press a button.
  

For our ‘Call support’ scenario, you can set up your Bttn with the relevant name (in this case it can represent the room name), and map it to a “Microsoft Flow” Action: 
Read more on how to register and configure new Bttns in MyBttn website.

In Flow, for the support example we will choose this template. When selecting the trigger for Bttn, you will see in your list all your Bttns registerd on your account. 

Select the relevant room based on where you are placing your Bttn, and finish updating the flow. 

That’s it, you’re now good to go with support scenario. Check out more usecases in the existing Bttn templates, or create a flow from blank.

Flic by Shortcut Labs

Flic is a wireless, smart button that connects to your iOS, Android phone or Mac computer via Bluetooth. One push of the Flic button can shortcut over 60 apps, services and features across all of your devices. 
“We are thrilled to partner with Microsoft Flow – it’s an awesome suite of powerful and automated flows that further empowers the Flic community with even more options and possibilities. By joining Microsoft in the quest of helping people work smarter and faster, we give Flow users a convenient way to activate their automated tasks and processes with a simple push of a button. “says Elin Härén, CFO at Shortcut Labs, the company behind Flic.
Customers can leverage Microsoft Flow and Flic buttons to keep quick count of your product in selling points, log the number of onsite participants at an event, keep track of work hours, and many more tasks that can benefit from automation. Check out these Flic templates to get started.
To start using your Flic buttons for Flow, you should first go to your Flic app and pair their clicks with the new Flow action.

Then,within Microsoft Flow, when creating a new flow from blank or from template, once you select the Flic trigger and sign-in, you will be able to see your registered Flics.

Let’s take a look at an example: a popular use case is one with business users who need to keep track of their work hours, and work locations, so that they can review the info or sum it up at the end of the month. For example, consultants who advise several companies, or project contractors.
A while ago I blogged about how this tracking can be achieved using Flow App buttons.
Now, you can achieve this tracking with a Flic button.
   
Simply push your Flic upon arrival and upon departure. You can use flic click types of Click, double click and hold to potentially distinguish between your various projects. Pressing the Flic kicks off a workflow so all your info can be logged into the list of your choosing: Excel, Sharepoint, Google sheet, PowerBI, and more. 

For our example, check out this template which logs the info into a Google sheet and sends a notification upon success. Map the Flic trigger to use your relevant Flic button and event type. 

Map the ‘insert row’ steps in the flow to your relevant tracking Google sheet to log ProjectName and Click time. And that’s it, your first Flic flow is configured.  

Learn more and connect with us

That’s it, you can now start using physical buttons to trigger Flow. This opens a world of possibilities for you, your colleagues, and your customers. Exciting times ahead!
Visit our Flow community and share what you’re doing, check out our documentation, ask questions or even submit new ideas and reach out to us on Twitter.

The post Connecting Flow to the real world – Flows can now be triggered directly from physical buttons appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

First, just a reminder of the basics: If you aren’t familiar with button flows, they are an easy way to kick off a workflow from your iOS or Android device with a single tap. To use a button, download the app for Android or iOS and sign in.

Also, if configured to do so, a button you triggered can send info on your location, your user details, and the current time. You can find an example for such a useful button flow in a recent Flow of the week blog.

Now, heading on to our newest capability: When creating a button, you may want to define which information is required from the user when that button is triggered. In turn, a user who taps that button will be asked to provide these specific details. The details will be used upon execution.

There are countless daily operations which can now be triggered easily from your mobile device, using button flows.

Below are just a few examples of such useful button templates:

1. Create a new contact in Dynamics CRM 
2. Add notes to a Dynamics CRM contact
3. Create a bug in Visual Studio
4. Create a new task in Asana
5. Add a new item to a Basecamp to-dos list
6. Create an Outlook task from a button
7. Add a new card to a Trello list
8. Add a new task to Wunderlist

Note: You can create button flows from template or from blank, either from the Flow portal or from your mobile device.

Getting started

Select a template from the list above, or start creation from blank. For this example let’s use: Create a bug in Visual Studio.

When defining required fields for such buttons, keep in mind what details are required from the user. In this template, the button is already defined to ask for bug title and description. You could ask for more inputs using the “Add text input” option.

Fill your ‘Account name’ and ‘Project name’ for creating the item in Visual Studio.

Tap Create to save your flow. Your button is now saved.

Running a button flow

You can run all your buttons from the buttons tab. In our example, find your new button in your Buttons tab and tap it: 

Enter the details for the bug you are reporting. In our example, you will be asked to enter ‘bug title’ and afterwards ‘bug description’. Then tap Done.

That’s it, your button flow is running. As part of this flow you will also get a push notification when the bug is created. You will also be able to track this flow run along with all your runs in the Activity tab.

I’m certain this new functionality will help you be much more effective with your workday.

You can read more about this topic here.

Outlook Tasks and HelloSign support

Also, we’ve added support for two new services this week: Outlook Tasks and HelloSign. Outlook Tasks service lets you create, read, synchronize, update and delete your tasks that are secured by Azure Active Directory in Office 365 or a Microsoft account.  For example, you can now create a new outlook task using a Flow button.

HelloSign enables secure electronic signatures that are business-caliber, easy-to-use and legally binding.

Learn more and connect with us

View our app video, and check out our documentation that covers app concepts, from getting started to more advanced capabilities.

Visit the Mobile section on our community and share what you’re doing, ask questions or even submit new ideas and reach out to us on Twitter.

The post Flow Buttons now support user inputs, and Outlook Tasks service added appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Before highlighting this new functionality, just a reminder of the basics: If you aren’t familiar with button flows, they are an easy way to kick off a workflow from your  iOS or Android device with a single tap.

To use a button, download the app for Android or iOS and sign in.

Now, heading on to our newest capability: when triggering a button now, the button collects valuable information such as your location, your user details, and the current time. This info can now be leveraged within your flow. Read more on the topic here. 

This data can be useful in various cases. One usecase which is often raised by our Flow users, is their need to keep track of their work hours, and work locations, so that they can review the info or sum it up at the end of the month. For example, consultants who advise several companies, or project contractors.

For this usecase, we’ve created these templates to log your business activities:

• Track your work hours and work location in a Google sheet
• Track your work hours and work locationin an Excel table

Getting Started

The first step is to select your template: Track your work hours and work location in a Google sheet

On the template page, if this is the first time that you are using a Google Sheet, you will be asked to Sign in.

As you connect, you should see a green checkmark next to the connection. This indicates that the connection has been successfully tested. Then, once you have connected, select Continue.

Filling out the flow settings

In order to use this flow, you will need to create a Google sheet with the following columns: Date, Timestamp, Full address.

Now that you have connected to your services, and created your Google sheet, you only need to configure one action in the flow:

In the Insert row card, select your Google Sheet file using the highlighted file picker.

Then, in the Worksheet field just select your respective sheet name, i.e. “Sheet1” In the below example.

Once choosing your sheet names, the sheet columns will be mapped to your button trigger inputs, as pre-defined in this template.

If you choose, you can also customize other aspects of the flow, such as the text of the push notification which you  receive upon run completion.

Please note that this flow can also be created directly from your Microsoft Flow Mobile application for Android or iOS.

Running your flow

Finally, running the flow is easy. In your Flow mobile app, select the Buttons tab at the bottom of the screen, and then tap the flow you just created.

Using your button trigger info, tapping the button will log your current location and time to your table.  Finally, you will get a push notification at the end of the run, indicating that your Sheet was updated successfully.

Please note that when Flow accesses your location info for the first time, it will ask for your consent.

That’s it, you’re all set to use this button now. You can now simply tap the button once when starting your workday, and once again at the end of your workday.

Let us know what you think about this flow and suggest other ideas on the forum.

The post Flow of the Week: Use a button to track your work hours and work location appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

There are three types of button trigger tokens, each offering several tokens for you to use:

1. User info
   • User name
   • User email  
2. Time
   • Date
   • Timestamp  
3. Location
   • Street
   • City
   • State
   • Country/Region
   • Postal code
   • Full address
   • Longitude
   • Latitude

All tokens refer to the location & time at the triggering moment, and to the user who’s triggering the Button flow.
Please note that in order to use the location tokens, you’ll have to grant the Flow app with location permissions, and to turn on your device’s location service.

Now, imagine all the new scenarios which you can unlock. Here are a few template examples:

• Track your working hours
• Save my location to Google Sheet 
• Send me a push notification with my current location

Using Button trigger tokens

In order to use the above tokens, all you have to do is to create a button template.
You can create a button template from blank, or start with a button template. Once created, the above tokens will be suggested as parameters from previous steps.
Just click on the target field and choose the relevant token out of the list, as seen here:

For further guidance, please refer to our documentation page here.

Learn more and connect with us

View our app video, and check out our documentation that covers app concepts, from getting started to more advanced capabilities.

Visit the Mobile section on our community and share what you’re doing, ask questions or even submit new ideas and reach out to us on Twitter.

The post Flow Mobile now supports Button Trigger tokens appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

First, check out this short video which will give you a glimpse of Flow capabilities on phones (always more to come…).  

Flow creation

As we updated earlier this month, Flow creation is now available from your mobile phones. You can now easily create a flow from your phone by just a few simple clicks. Browse our rich template gallery, navigate through our services list, search the gallery by keyword, or select a various template category to drill into. Finally, after creating your flow, the mobile app allows you to edit, rename or delete the flow, as well as fix a broken connection if needed. Read our dedicated blog for more details.

Buttons

There are countless operations we wish we could trigger anytime and anywhere. Now, with Button Flows, you can get those done at just a click of a button, from your mobile device.

Imagine just a few examples: 

• Text a colleague that you’re running late to a meeting
• Trigger a new product build in Visual Studio
• Log the latest tweets about your company to a google sheet
• Send a “Working from home” email to your colleagues
• Instantly create Dynamics Leads based on tweets

Your available Buttons live in a dedicated tab where you can easily and quickly trigger any action at any time. To add more buttons to your Buttons tab, just go ahead and create more Button flows.

Button flows are like any other flows, they can be created from the Browse Tab, Managed in My Flows tab, or Monitored in the Activity tab. To help get you started, we created a category of Button templates with a long list of available buttons, and we will keep enriching it overtime. Like other template categories, the Buttons category is accessible from the Browse tab. As always, you can also publish useful templates to the gallery for other users to enjoy.

Ready-To-Use Flows

Are you new to Flow? Haven’t created any flows just yet? Don’t worry, we’ll help get you started with just a few clicks. Our new ready-to-use experience will help you wire up your first flows with just a click or two. After that, when you wish to create more personalized flows, it will already be smooth sailing in our Browse tab to view all suggested templates and services.

Flow App now available for everyone

Last month an important update made Microsoft Flow available for everyone to sign up or sign in. up until that update, users could sign into the mobile app only with email addresses provided by their work or school, like those used with Office 365 Business or Office 365 Enterprise. With the last update, the App is now open to all users, no matter what email you have.

Learn more and connect with us

View our app video, and check out our documentation that covers app concepts, from getting started to more advanced capabilities.

Visit the Mobile section on our community and share what you’re doing, ask questions or even submit new ideas and reach out to us on Twitter.

The post October updates for Microsoft Flow on mobile phones appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.