Install the Flow Add-in

To get started, in Excel, go to the Insert tab in the ribbon and select Store. Then, in the dialog, search for Microsoft Flow. Then, click Add.

Scenario

Let’s imagine that you work for Cronus Energy, a multi-national energy production company, which generates energy through wind turbines and hydroelectric power plants. Cronus is on the lookout for better ways to streamline and standardize internal processes to make things easier for their employees. They’ve identified a key process they want to modernize:

Transfer market data entered by Commercial Analysts (minimum energy to generate, maximum energy, and target energy based on revenue goals) to SharePoint so that the Operations team can decide which turbines to use for the week. After moving the data to SharePoint, they also want to send an alert to the team on Microsoft Teams and facilitate a discussion if needed. The Operations team uses a SharePoint list called Turbine Energy Distributions with the columns shown below. 

 
Their development team is already short on resources, so they want to be able to stand up the solution quickly while avoiding as much custom development as possible. Let’s see how Flow can help.

Create a flow

The Commercial Analysts at Cronus Energy enter market data in a spreadsheet hosted in SharePoint. To follow along, download this spreadsheet and upload it to SharePoint or OneDrive for Business.

 
To get started, click the Flow menu from under the Data tab in the ribbon. 

 
This will open the Flow launch panel in Excel where you will be prompted to Sign in and consent to the permissions requested by the add-in. Click Accept.

 Once you’ve signed in, you can explore several templates to quickly connect to a wide variety of services with minimal set up. Scroll down the screen and choose Create an item in SharePoint for a selected row.
 
Selecting the template will prompt you for your credentials and provide additional details about the template. Click Continue.

 
In the trigger (For a selected row), click the drop-down next to the Table field and select your table, e.g. Table1. The trigger may be collapsed; if so, click on Edit and confirm that the Table field is set to Table1.
The For a selected row trigger is similar to other manual triggers like the Flow button for mobile or SharePoint’s For a selected item – users can be prompted for inputs when they run the flow (Text, Yes/No, File, Email, or Number) and all flows run with the credentials of the invoker. For this flow, add a Text input called Message with the hint text of “Enter a message for the team.”

 
In the SharePoint-Create item action, enter the Site Address and List Name for Cronus Energy’s Turbine Energy Distributions List.

 
Click the Week field and select Week from the Dynamic content pane.
 
The parameters in the Dynamic content pane consist of your table’s columns – Week, Min Energy (mWh), Target Energy (mWh), Max Energy (mWh), Price ($/mWh), Revenue, and Profit, information about the person invoking the flow – Timestamp, User email, User id, and User name, and lastly any “manual” Outputs you add to the trigger like Message. 
Repeat this for the Energy Target, Min Energy, and Max Energy.

 
Now, add a Microsoft Teams – Post message action. Choose a Team and Channel to post your message to. In the Message field, enter a link to the newly created item along with the Message populated by the flow invoker.

 
Save the flow by clicking the Save button.

Run flow

Select a row in the table and then click Run flow in 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! An item is created in SharePoint with details from the row you selected in Excel and a message is posted on your behalf including your note asking for feedback and a link to the 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 Create an item in SharePoint for a selected row flow. Note – To run the flow, they must have access to the spreadsheet.
 

Under Manage Run-Only Users, click Add another person.
 
Here you can enter individuals, AD security groups, O365 groups, or even anyone that has access to the SharePoint list.  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.

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 Microsoft Flow integration in Excel appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Let’s imagine that you’re the Chief Compliance Officer at the Legal department at Contoso Inc. (as most of you know, Contoso is the world’s largest imaginary corporation). You want to send out an approval request whenever a new document is uploaded to the Legal folder in a SharePoint document library. To inform approvers and ensure everyone has visibility into any feedback, you want to notify your teammates on Microsoft Teams. With the Flow integration in Teams, you can quickly create a flow and boost your team’s productivity. Let’s learn how.

Install the Flow app

To get started, install the Flow app from the Teams’ Store. To access the Store, click on the icon at the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar. Then, choose the Flow app from Top picks or type “Flow” in the search box.

Create a new flow in Teams

Once you’ve installed the app, you’ll notice four tabs – Conversation, Flows, Approvals, and About. The Conversation tab enables you to interact with the FlowBot, the Flows tab allows you to create new flows and manage existing ones, and the Approvals tab lists your received and sent approval requests. Click on the Flow tab and Sign in.

Then, click on the Create from template button.

You can choose from several templates, connecting your Team to services like SharePoint, Microsoft Forms, Dynamics, Twitter, PowerBI, and UserVoice. Select the template titled Start approval for new documents and notify via Teams.

Clicking on the template, will open the Flow designer.

For the trigger, When a file is created, select the SharePoint site and library hosting the data for your team.  For the Post message actions, select the Team and Channel for the Legal department. Finally, enter the names of your teammates for the Start approval action.

Note – All of the SharePoint files triggers and actions are usable for your team’s file library as the underlying data source is SharePoint.

Save the flow by clicking the Create flow button.  

Do your approvals in Teams

Let’s see our flow in action. In the Legal channel, navigate to the Files tab and upload a new file.

Notice that the Flow is immediately triggered and a message is posted in the Legal channel asking the team to approve the newly uploaded file. This message matches the values we entered while creating the flow. The message is posted on behalf of the flow creator.

Click on the ellipsis to see your personal apps and switch to the Flow app. Now navigate to the Approvals tab. You’ll notice a pending approval for the newly uploaded file.

Once you’ve reviewed the file, click on Approve or Reject, enter a comment, and click Confirm.

Bam! A new message is posted to the Legal channel with details about the approver and his/her comments.

Use the bot to launch Flows

The Flow integration in Teams also includes a Bot that enables you to run manual flows. Currently, this is limited to flows that run on a schedule, with support for all manual flows coming soon.

Continuing with our earlier example of the Legal department at Contoso, let’s imagine that we have a flow that runs daily and posts a message to the Team reminding everyone to review certain files for due diligence. You can check out this blog post on how to create such a flow.

Using the Flow bot, we can run this flow immediately. Head over to the Conversation tab. To see the list of flows you can run, enter the command List flows.

Once you get back a list of flows, enter the command run flow followed by the index of the flow you want to run. For example, run flow 1.

You’ll notice the Flow immediately runs and posts a message in the Legal channel.

This is just the beginning

We see our integration in Teams as just the beginning of a long journey in making you and your team more productive. We’d like to seek your help in shaping the roadmap, so please leave us suggestions below and post on our Ideas forum. We hope you enjoy this new update and stay tuned for more!

The post Introducing Flow Integration in Microsoft Teams appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.