In this post, we’ll walk you through an example of how to create and customize a flow that uses the launch panel’s capabilities using the For a selected item trigger. We’ll also demonstrate how you can enable other members of your organization to run this flow using run-only permissions.

Create a flow

Let’s imagine that you work at a travel agency called Contoso Adventures and you store images used in your brochures in a SharePoint document library. Using the Flow launch panel, you can quickly collect feedback from your colleagues by runing a flow on-demand that posts a message to Microsoft Teams with a link to the selected item. To get started, simply select the Flow menu followed by the Create a flow button. 

This will open a pane on the right-hand side of the window listing several templates you can choose from, enabling you to connect your SharePoint data to OneDrive, Teams, Yammer, Planner, and more. Select the template titled Post a message to Teams for a selected item.

Selecting the template will open a new tab in the Microsoft Flow site with additional details about the template. Click Continue.

In the flow, you’ll notice a new trigger for SharePoint called “For a selected item.” The trigger is modeled after Flow’s button trigger, allowing you to run flows on demand and capture additional inputs that will be populated by the invoker of the Flow. These inputs can be of type Text (either a single choice or a list of options), File, or Email. We’ll learn more about customizing inputs later in this post.

For now, create the flow by specifying a Team and Channel to post your message to.  If you click on Edit, you can customize the content of the message to be posted. By default, we include the text description entered by the invoker (Message) followed by a link to the selected item.

Save the flow by clicking the Create flow button.

Run a flow using the Flow Launch Panel

Back in your SharePoint document library, select a document and click on the Flow menu. Then, choose the newly created flow – “Post a message to Teams for a selected item.”

Clicking on the flow, opens the Flow Launch Panel. The first time you run this flow, you’ll be asked to confirm your credentials. You can also learn more about what this flow does. Click Continue.

Now, enter a message to send to your team, requesting feedback. Click Run flow.

Voila! A new message is posted to Teams on your behalf including the note you added in SharePoint and a link to the selected item.

Share a flow with run-only permissions

Now that you’ve created the flow, you can share it with colleagues either by adding them as an owner of the flow or as a run-only user. The latter allows you to maintain ownership of the flow, while enabling your colleagues to run it. In Flow, head over to My Flows and choose the Post a message to Teams for a selected item.

Under Manage Run-Only Users, click on the Add another person button.

Here, you can enter individuals or AD security groups. We will be adding support for Office 365 groups in the future.  For each connector used in the flow, you can decide whether the invoker should bring their own credentials (“Provided by run-only user”) or use your credentials (“Use this connection”). Click Save to add the user as a run-only user.

Customize the flow

Let’s customize the flow you created earlier and ask the invoker whether they want to send the selected file for review to their manager or post it to Teams. In the For a selected item trigger, let’s add a text  input called Destination. Let’s replace the hint text for this input with a custom message “Select Email to manager or Post to Teams”.

Then, click on the ellipsis followed by the Add a list of options button.

For the first option, enter “Post to Teams” and for the second option, enter “Email to manager.”

Now, let’s add a condition after the Get item step that checks whether the Destination is equal to Post to Teams. And, let’s drag and drop the Post a message action into the Yes branch.

Let’s finish off our flow by adding a Get manager and a Send an email action in the No branch. You can get the Invoker’s email, OID, or display name by referencing dynamic content such as User email, User id, and User name respectively.

Now when you invoke the flow in SharePoint, you’ll be asked to select a Destination and the flow will act (post a message to Teams or send your manager an email) depending on your selection.

We hope you enjoy this new update. If you have ideas for templates or other feedback, please leave us comments below or post on our Community forums.

The post Introducing Flow Launch Panel in SharePoint Lists and Libraries appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

• Run a flow on demand for a selected file. You can select any file in a document library and send it to your manager for approval, ask for feedback over email or Yammer, and even add a reminder in Outlook Tasks, Wunderlist, or Trello.

• Run a flow on demand for a selected list item. Just like the above, you can also invoke on-demand flows for individual list items.

• Run flows for a folder. You can now set up flows like save your email attachments to a folder in SharePoint or copy files from OneDrive to SharePoint directly from a given folder.   

Run a flow on demand for a selected file

Let’s suppose you are working on a set of reports and you want to share these reports with your team to collect feedback. You can quickly set up a Flow that will send an email to the team at the press of a button. In SharePoint, select a given file.

Then click on the Flow menu, followed by the Create a flow command.

This will open a pane on the right hand side of the window. Select the template titled Get feedback from your team for the selected file.

Selecting the template will open a new tab in the Microsoft Flow site with additional details about the template. Enter your credentials and click Continue.

Your Flow is almost ready, you simply have to enter your team’s email address. You can choose to click Edit and customize the email Body. By default, it includes a company-wide shareable link to the selected file.

Give the Flow a suitable name, such as “Get feedback from FCE” team and click the Create flow button.

Now when you go back to your SharePoint document library, select a file and click on the Flow menu. You’ll notice a new addition to the menu – the flow you just created.

Click on it to run the flow and instantly send an email to your team with a link to the selected file.

Run a flow on demand for a selected list item

Like files in document libraries, you can also run a flow on a selected list item.

Run flows for a folder 

From within any folder in a document library, you can select the Flow button and the Create a flow command to set up a flow that saves emails attachments to the selected folder or copies files from an external service like OneDrive.                     

If you have ideas for templates or other feedback, please leave us comments below and stay tuned for more!

The post Introducing Microsoft Flow integration for SharePoint Document Libraries appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.