If the HTTP request you make in Power Automate cloud flow gets a 200 OK response, all is good but if the HTTP response has the status codes like 408 – Request Timeout, 429 – Too many requests, 522 – Connection Timeout, 404 – Not found, 400 – Bad request etc there is a problem which needs attention. This post will show you how to handle HTTP request failures using
Retry Policy
Custom Retry for requests which cannot be handled by Retry Policy
Take actions based on HTTP status code
Retry Policy:
A Retry Policy specifies how the action or trigger retries a request when the original request times out or fails. The retry policy handles the following HTTP status codes
408 – Request Timeout
429 – Too many requests
5xx – xx refers to any number like 500 – Internal server error, 503 – Service Unavailable, 522 – Connection timed out etc
HTTP Action supports retry policy and by default the action retries 4 times at exponentially increasing intervals if there is a request failure. To view or update the Retry Policy configuration settings for the HTTP action, navigate to settings as shown on below screenshot
If you have to retry the request for more than 4 times or set some custom interval between retries, you can do so by changing the retry policy from Default to Fixed interval or Exponential interval as shown below
The policy waits for a specified interval before sending the next request.
There will not be any retry if the policy is set to None. For more details on the retry policies, go through this documentation from Microsoft. Find below screenshot of a Fixed Interval Retry Policy which attempts to make a HTTP request 5 more times after the first failed request with a 10-minute delay between each attempt.
The retry interval accepts value in ISO 8601 format. In the above screenshot for the interval field with value PT10M
P is the duration designator and T is the time designator, where M is the minute designator. PT5S translates to 5 seconds. For testing the policy with the HTTP action you can get sample http request links with different status codes request url’s from https://httpstat.us/.
The retry information will be logged in the flow Run history as shown below
Custom Retry for requests which cannot be handled by Retry Policy:
The retry policy handles only HTTP status codes 408, 429 and 5xx. On this section let us see how to handle the other types of HTTP status codes or non-retry-able errors. Let us take an example with a requirement to retry HTTP request with status code 400 – Bad request till the request succeeds.
Step 1: Initialize a boolean variable ExecuteHTTPAction with the default value true. For the Boolean value use the expression true.
Step 2: Add a Do until control. The loop runs for a maximum of 60 times (Default setting) until the HTTP request succeeds or the condition is met. The Left side placeholder should have the ExecuteHTTPAction variable as a value and the right side should have Boolean variable False. Use Expression to enter the Boolean variable false.
Toggle between Edit in advance mode and Edit in basic mode if the right side placeholder to enter value is disabled.
Step 3: Add the HTTP request action and an action to Set variable ExecuteHTTPAction named as Set Variable – HTTP Action Success. Set the value of the variable to boolean false which means on HTTP action success (200 OK), there should not be any retry.
Step 4: Once the Set variable action is added, just above the action click + and Add a parallel branch as shown in the above picture. On the other side of the branch add an action Set variable named as Set variable – HTTP Action Failure to set the ExecuteHTTPAction variable to true which means there should be retry
Step 5: The last step is to configure Run after for the action Set variable – HTTP Action Failure. Find below screenshot for the Run after configuration
No change is required for Set variable – HTTP Action Success, just ensure the Set variable – HTTP Action Failure has the Run After has failed. You can add a Delay action after the parallel branch to make sure the HTTP request is made after certain interval based on scenario. You can also add scope controls for TRY, RETRY etc.
Alternative Method:
The other way to do this without adding the parallel branch is as shown below
Take actions based on HTTP status code:
If you have to take different actions based on the HTTP status code, for example call a different API when there is an HTTP 404 – Not found etc. The quick way to do this is get the HTTP status code of the HTTP request by adding the Compose action below the HTTP request action and select the Status code from the Dynamic content which is an Output of the action HTTP.
Now configure the run after for the compose action as shown below
The compose action would now be able to capture all type of HTTP status code. With the status code in hand, add a switch control to take different actions based on HTTP status code.
Summary:
On this post we have seen how to handle different HTTP request failures codes with options to Retry in your Power Automate flow. You can apply this technique to handle HTTP request made via custom connector, SharePoint Connector etc. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
SharePoint and Microsoft teams services in Microsoft 365 makes it easier to share content or collaborate with external users who is outside your organization. A guest or external user is someone who do not have a school or work account with your organization, they can be your partner, vendor, customer etc. In this article let us see how to build a self-registration experience for external users with the help of Microsoft Forms & Power Automate to onboard them to a
SharePoint online site
Microsoft Team
Microsoft Form to collect details from External User:
To start building this experience, create a Microsoft form with the setting Anyone can respond and with fields (Name, Email address etc) to collect information from the external user to send invitation.
Azure Active Directory Application registration:
The next step after creating the form is to register an application in Azure AD with Microsoft graph API permission to send invitation to external user. After the app is registered obtain the client id, client secret & tenant id to be used in the Power Automate flow further down this article to generate the JSON webtoken to access Microsoft Graph API for sending invitation. Find below screenshot with the permission User.Invite.All added to the app. Keep in mind the permission requires Admin consent.
There is also delegated permission available for User.Invite.All.
Onboard External users to a SharePoint online site:
Once the Microsoft form is ready, we can start building the Power Automate flow which can send the email invitation to the external user and for granting access to the SharePoint site. The external sharing features of SharePoint Online enables users in your organization share content with people outside the organization. There is no limit to the number of guests you can invite to SharePoint sites as per this SharePoint online limits documentation. Find below steps to create the Power Automate flow with a custom approval on a Microsoft Team
Power Automate Flow:
Create an Automated flow with the trigger When a new response is submitted with the above form name selected on the dropdown and then add the action Get response details with the Response Id selected from the dynamic content for the trigger to get the form details submitted in the Microsoft form by the external user. Find screenshot below
Adaptive card for Teams Approval:
For the Approval in Microsoft Teams, I have used a custom card created from the Adaptive card designer with elements ColumnSet, TextBlock to display information submitted in the form & action button Approve and Reject to take further action by a Microsoft teams user to proceed with Invitation for the Guest account creation. Find screenshot below from the adaptive card designer
After the card is designed, copy the card payload from the designer and go to the flow and then add the action Post adaptive card and wait for a response and make appropriate selection on the available fields as shown below
Post as: Flow bot
Post in: Channel
Message: Payload copied from designer. Replace the fields for usrName & userEmail selected from the dynamic content from the outputs of the action Get response details. The created on textBlock element has the flow expression formatDateTime(utcNow(),’g’) to display the current datetime information on the card.
Update Message: Custom message which appear after an action taken in Microsoft Teams
Team: Select the Team where you would like to post the card
Channel: Select the channel from the Microsoft Team where you would like to have the approval adaptive card posted
The above adaptive card is used to get approval from the Organization teams user based on the information submitted by the external user in the Microsoft form to proceed with the next steps for sending the guest account invite. Now we will have to identify if the user has clicked the button Approve or Reject. This information can be easily obtained from the Outputs of the action.
Note: Adaptive card can also be sent using a Microsoft Graph API with the card payload in Attachments field
Adaptive card for Teams – Dynamic content Missing:
As of the time I am writing this article there is an issue in getting the output as dynamic content for the Post adaptive card and wait for a response action if there is dynamic content added on the JSON Payload (Name, Email from Forms). The fix is to run the flow till the post adaptive card action and take an action on Microsoft teams by clicking either Approve or Reject and then go to the Flow run from the history as shown below
From the above screenshot, we can see if the user has clicked the Approve or Reject button from the field submitActionId. To get this value in Flow, use the expression
To get the submitActionId, enter the expression outputs(‘Post_adaptive_card_and_wait_for_a_response’).body.submitActionId in the compose action, then add a condition control to decide action based on users approval
I have observed this issue occurs in other team’s adaptive card actions as well, the above fix should work. Now we can implement the logic to send the Guest Invitation using Microsoft Graph API. To send the invite, we will use the Azure AD application registered above.
Generate JSON Web token to Access Graph API:
Be ready with the ClientId, Client Secret and Tenant Id collected from the AD app registration you have done initially. The only authentication flow to generate a access token for application permissions is Client credentials.
To generate a token
Store the Client Secret on a String variable or a compose action
Make a HTTP request using the HTTP connector with the following details. Make sure to replace the string for tenantId, azureAdAppclientId and azureAdAppclientSecret
Add a HTTP connector action to the flow for making a POST request per the following information
For the client secret make sure to URL encode using the expression encodeUriComponent(variables(‘clientSecret’)) else the request may fail due to the presence of special characters.
In the above screen, I have added a compose action to store the SharePoint site address to be used for granting the external user access to. To extract the token from the above request, add the parse JSON action with Content from the HTTP request body and the following schema
Include the access token when calling the Microsoft Graph API in the Headers section or raw as shown in the next section.
Send Invitation using Microsoft Graph API:
Before sending the invitation, validate if the user already exists in your organization AD tenant by using the email address of the external user with the help of the action Search for users as shown below
If there is null response for the action Search for users, then the user does not exist. This can be calculated using the expression length and by passing the value as a parameter, if it is equals zero then the external user does not exist. If the user already exists, we can directly proceed to granting the external user access to SharePoint.
Graph API to check if a guest user already exists:
{
"invitedUserDisplayName": "External User Name",
"invitedUserEmailAddress": "External User Email Address",
"sendInvitationMessage": true,
"inviteRedirectUrl": "SharePoint site URL or any URL",
"invitedUserMessageInfo": {
"messageLanguage": "en-US",
"customizedMessageBody": "Welcome to the M365PAL SharePoint site! Click the link below and sign in."
}
}
In HTTP request body, use the dynamic content of the form to populate the fields invitedUserDisplayName & Emailaddress. The invite redirectUri is the output of the compose action which has the SharePoint site url. I have added a delay of one minute before granting access to SharePoint site for the external user, this step is to make sure there is an entry in Azure AD for the external user/guest account.
Grant Access to SharePoint site for the external user:
As soon as the guest account invite is sent from the above Microsoft graph API request HTTP action, it is time to grant access to the SharePoint site for the external user. There is a SharePoint REST API endpoint to add a user to a SharePoint group (Owners, Member, Visitors), find below the request details
For the external user, the email address used to send the invite works.
Go back to the flow and add the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint to call the above REST api. Find below the screenshot of the action
The above action uses delegated permission, the user of the connection should have access to the SharePoint site. As of now, there is no Graph API for adding the user to a SharePoint group but you can register an app in Active directory and add permission for SharePoint to call the above REST API. Refer to the documentation Granting access via Azure AD App-Only for calling the REST API using the registered AD app.
Testing the flow:
The whole flow can now be tested by submitting the form which sends the adaptive card on Teams first as shown below
After the card is approved, the invite is sent to the external user. After the external user accepts the invite, the user should be automatically redirected to the SharePoint site with the appropriate access. The access to the SharePoint site for the external user can be validated by the checking the membership of the SharePoint group in the site even before the user accepts the invitation. The site members can also be validated by accessing the URL for All users list:
This approach of granting access to SharePoint site for external user can be applied to internal users by turning off the access requests.
Limit External Sharing by domain:
The external sharing on SharePoint can be restricted based on domain of the external user. To enable the setting login into the SharePoint admin center > Policies > Sharing > Enable the checkbox Limit external sharing by domain > Add domain
Onboard External users to a Microsoft Team:
To onboard the external user to a Microsoft Team, the only change to the above flow is, instead of adding the user to the SharePoint group the user must be added as a Member to the Microsoft 365 group connected to the Microsoft Teams. The graph API to add a member to a Microsoft Team is
The expression to get the user object Id of the external user as per the below screenshot is
outputs(‘HTTP-SendGuestInvitation’).body.invitedUser.Id The expression can be used in a compose action to get the Object Id of the external user which can be used in the Graph API request to add the member to a Team. HTTP-SendGuestInvitation is the name of the HTTP Action.
Permission for the Azure AD App to add a member to a Microsoft Team:
The application permission Group.ReadWrite.All has to be added on the Azure AD app, if you are going to be using the same JSON webtoken generated above. There is delegated permission as well for adding members.
Summary: With this, the Power Automate flow should send the invitation as shown below to the external user.
If it is for a Microsoft Team, the external user should be licensed for teams service to open it on their teams client. The same flow can be also configured for Microsoft 365 group. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
Microsoft 365 CLI helps you manage configuration settings of Microsoft 365 tenant and its various services like SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps, Microsoft Graph etc and to build automation scripts on any platform. Refer to this post Resubmit your failed Power Automate flow runs automatically using M365 CLI and REST API for the steps to execute & to get started with M365 CLI commands. Find below the cmdlet to cancel a flow run
You can run the M365 CLI commands stored in a file like PowerShell cmdlets. Find below the M365 CLI cmdlets stored in a PowerShell file (.ps1) to cancel the running flow runs automatically.
$flowEnvironment=$args[0]
$flowGUID=$args[1]
$flowRuns = m365 flow run list --environment $flowEnvironment --flow $flowGUID --output json | ConvertFrom-Json
foreach ($run in $flowRuns)
{
if($run.status -eq "Running")
{
Write-Output "Run details: " $run
# Cancel all the running flow runs
m365 flow run cancel --environment $flowEnvironment --flow $flowGUID --name $run.name --confirm
Write-Output "Run Cancelled successfully"
}
}
The above script stored in file with .ps1 extension can be executed as shown below on the Power Shell command line by passing the Flow Environment ID and the Flow ID in the command line
To get the Flow Environment Id and Flow Id, refer to the below screenshot
The script to cancel all ongoing flow runs can be downloaded from my GitHub here. Find below screenshot after running the script.
Power Automate REST API:
There are Power Automate REST API endpoints to list the Flow Runs and to cancel a run. Go through the following blog post for more information on how access the Power Automate REST API endpoints
The above-mentioned blogpost will help you to call the following Power Automate REST APIs from a custom connector and programmatically from other applications.
Summary: I would recommend getting familiar with Microsoft 365 CLI which has various cmdlets to make your job easier. The syntax of all commands is well documented with examples. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
Have you ever been forced to resubmit lot of failed Power Automate flow runs manually, if so this blog post will help you to automatically resubmit the flow runs using
CLI for Microsoft 365
Power Automate REST API
Power Automate Management connector
CLI for Microsoft 365:
Microsoft 365 CLI helps you manage configuration settings of Microsoft 365 tenant and its various services like SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps, Microsoft Graph etc and to build automation scripts on any platform.
Getting started: The CLI for Microsoft 365 is available and distributed as an NPM package. To use it, install it globally using:
npm i -g @pnp/cli-microsoft365
To install the beta version
npm i -g @pnp/cli-microsoft365@next
To update to the latest stable version
@pnp/cli-microsoft365@latest
Next, login to Microsoft 365 CLI using the following command.
m365 login
You will be presented with a code and a login URL https://microsoft.com/devicelogin, navigate to the URL and enter the code > Sign-in using the Microsoft 365 work account. The above command uses device code flow to authenticate and authorize the user through an Azure Active directory app PnP Management Shell. If you are accessing M365 CLI for the first time, you may have to consent for permissions. After the sign-in process is completed, you can enter various commands available within Microsoft 365 CLI.
Let us start with a basic command to list all Power Automate environments in your Tenant
m365 flow environment list
You can try the various cmdlets available as shown in the below screenshot with in Microsoft 365 CLI from the following url
There are cmdlets which accepts JMESPath to query. You can run the M365 CLI commands stored in a file like PowerShell cmdlets. Find below the M365 CLI cmdlets stored in a PowerShell file (.ps1) to resubmit the failed flows automatically.
$flowEnvironment=$args[0]
$flowGUID=$args[1]
$flowRuns = m365 flow run list --environment $flowEnvironment --flow $flowGUID --output json | ConvertFrom-Json
foreach ($run in $flowRuns)
{
if($run.status -eq "Failed")
{
Write-Output "Run details: " $run
#Resubmit all the failed flows
m365 flow run resubmit --environment $flowEnvironment --flow $flowGUID --name $run.name --confirm
Write-Output "Run resubmitted successfully"
}
}
The above script stored in a file can be executed as shown below by passing the Flow Environment ID and the Flow ID in the command line
You can modify the script to Resubmit flow run according to your requirement, for e.g. within a certain date range since there is information on the run start date. There are sample scripts available in the github repo for M365 CLI submitted by community members
There are Power Automate REST API endpoints to list the Flow Runs and to re-submit a run. Go through the following blog post for more information on how access the Power Automate REST API endpoints
The above-mentioned blogpost helps you to call the following Power Automate REST APIs from a custom connector and programmatically from other applications.
There is also an action to Resubmit flow run from the Power Automate management connector. Find the action below to resubmit a flow run with the details filled in. The environment and the flow value has to be selected from the dropdown.
For the trigger name, you can get the exact name from the flow definition file or using the expression trigger() added to the flow on a compose action.
To get the flow definition file go to the flow and export it as a Package.zip
Open the Zip package, go to the path Microsoft.Flow\flows\{flowGUID} and then open the file definition.json. Search for the keyword triggers, you can find the name of the trigger
In a Power Automate flow, you can get the flow run details using the following expression.
workflow()
Find below test result of a flow run using the expression workflow() on the compose action which has the runid and other details of the flow run.
With these possibilities you can automatically resubmit a failed flow run (time out, failure due to config change etc) if the details of the failed flows are logged somewhere.
There is also PowerShell support for Power Platform, do look at the following documentation to get to know the list of available cmdlets:
Cmdlet Get-FlowRun, gets all the flow runs of a particular flow.
Summary: I would recommend getting familiar with Microsoft 365 CLI which has various cmdlets to make your job easier. The syntax of all commands is well documented with examples. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
Power Automate Management connector enables interaction with Power Automate management service to manage your flows with different actions to create, edit and update flows. If you want to do more but you were not able to find an action with this connector for e.g. get details on the Runs the flow has made, as of now there is no action which gets the run details of a flow with the Power Automate Management connector. So how to get the Runs the flow has made and even more actions like turning on/off/disable a flow etc? There are REST APIs with different endpoints for Power Automate, as of now there is no documentation from Microsoft on these API’s but there is documentation for Azure Logic Apps REST API. It is quite easy to convert the Logic Apps REST API for Power Automate operations. The APIs are secured with Azure AD OAuth 2.0, in this blog post let’s see how to call these API’s using
Custom Connector
Authorization code flow
Implicit flow
Let’s start this post with the API endpoint to list the flow runs for Azure Logic Apps & Power Automate. Find below the API endpoint for Azure Logic apps as per this documentation to list the Workflow Runs
The API version for Power Automate can be different in Microsoft 365 when compared against Azure Logic Apps. This information can be identified using fiddler or any browser-based developer tool (Network) by analyzing the http request traffic the portal makes to API endpoints for different operations after logging in to the Power Automate Portal. Find below screenshot regarding the API version on the home screen of the portal
As a first step towards accessing the API endpoint for Power Automate, there must be an Azure Active directory app registered in the AD tenant of the Microsoft 365 environment which has the Power Automate environment.
Azure Active Directory App Registration:
Register an application in Azure AD and obtain the client id, client secret & tenant id for the registered application. After the app is registered, follow the below steps to grant permission for the app to call the Power Automate Flow APIs:
In the App, click the API permission under the Manage blade and then click + Add a permission. Under the Microsoft APIs tab, click Flow Service as shown below
The flow API as of now supports only delegated permission (User Context). Now select the Permission based on the requirement. For this post, I have selected the permission Flows.Manage.All for listing the runs of the flow
The app is registered with the necessary configurations, let us now see how to call the Power Automate API using a custom connector. The custom connector takes care of generating the authorization token required to access the API using the authorization code flow.
Custom Connector to call the Power Automate APIs:
A custom connector is a wrapper around a REST API (Logic Apps also supports SOAP APIs) that allows Logic Apps, Power Automate or Power Apps to communicate with that REST or SOAP API. In the Power Automate portal expand Data on the left panel > Custom connectors > + New custom connector > Create from blank
After entering the connector name, in the General information enter the description and Host name to api.flow.microsoft.com
Now click Security on the right bottom corner to enter the Azure AD application information for the OAuth 2.0 authentication type. Under the section OAuth 2.0
Change the Identity provider to Azure Active Directory
Enter the Client id & Client secret of the Azure AD application
After the above information is filled in, click Create connector which autogenerates the Redirect URL https://global.consent.azure-apim.net/redirect. This is the URL we have added as a Redirect Web URI in the Azure AD application. The connector is now ready for the actions to list the flow Runs with the help of Power Automate REST API endpoint.
Action to List Flow Runs:
The Power Automate REST API endpoint to list the flow runs is
After the custom connector is created in the above step, now click the Definition tab of the Custom Connector > click + New action to enter Summary, Description & Operation ID of the action > Click + Import from sample to enter the above API endpoint to list the flow runs in URL box and Verb as GET > Click Import
Click Update connector. To the test the action, click Test at the bottom right corner. In the following screen, create a connection and then pass the parameters for Power Automate Environment, Flow GUID & API Version of the Power Automate REST API. Flow GUID & Environment ID can be obtained from any of your existing flow in the environment. To get these information navigate to the My Flows section in the Power Automate portal and click any flow, the information will be on the URL as shown on the below sample
After entering the details, click Test operation to get the list of run details the flow had till now. You can get details like the status of the flow, flow start time & endtime, flow run id etc on the response
Copy the Response body from the above screen to add it to the default response for the action. Click the + Add default response on the action definition screen > Click + Import from sample > Paste the copied value to the Body section > Click Import.
The above step is recommended to parse the information of the response either in Power Automate or Power Apps. The sample Custom connector used for this blogpost can be downloaded from here.
Find below some REST API endpoints for different operations:
The above operations are just some samples, if you would to get the REST API endpoint details for different operations, go through the Logic Apps rest API documentation. You can also use Fiddler tool or browser developer tools to help you in finding the corresponding API endpoints after logging in to the Power Automate portal and then performing various operations within the portal interface.
Custom connector takes care of generating the token automatically to call the Power Automate REST APIs secured with OAuth but if you have to call these API programmatically in an application, you can use any one of the below authentication flows to generate the token.
Authorization code flow for token generation:
As the first step to generate the token using Authorization code flow, add the Redirect URI in the Azure Active directory app for your application. For this example, I have added http://localhost/ as a Redirect URI for the Web platform as shown below
Make the above change on the Azure AD application which was registered initially in this post to access Power Automate REST API. Construct the following URL after replacing the tenantId and azureAppId to generate the code in any browser for generating a token
After the above URL is accessed in the browser, you will be prompted to sign-in. Once the sign-in is complete, a code will be generated in the below format on the browser address bar as a response to the sign-in
The code can be used to redeem for an access token. Make the following HTTP request to generate the access token after replacing the tenantId on the request URL
Replace the AzureAppId, code value copied from the above request and the appClientSecret.
Headers:
Key: Content-Type
Value: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Find screenshot below for the Postman request
The generated token can be used to access different Power Automate REST API endpoints based on the permissions you have consented to the Azure AD application by passing the token on the Authorization header as Bearer.
After any of the above URL is accessed in the browser, you will be prompted to sign-in. Once the sign-in is complete, access token will be generated in the below format on the browser address bar as a response to the sign-in
Also go through this documentation from Microsoft which has information of the different types of connectors to automate tasks with Power Automate.
Summary: On this post we have seen how to use Power Automate REST API to manage your cloud flows. These APIs works for both individual flows (My Flows) and flows which is part of the solutions. Power Automate REST APIs are very powerful to manage your cloud flows. I can think of scenario where in you can resubmit all your failed flows programmatically leveraging these API endpoints. Microsoft has documented WEB API for Power Automate flows included in solutions. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
I had a recent requirement to call a GraphQL based API secured with OAuth2 in Power Automate, this blog post is to share my learnings on GraphQL & how to call them in Power Automate. Let us quickly see some introduction to GraphQL
GraphQL is an open-source query language for your APIs with a service-side runtime for executing the queries based on pre-defined schema. It is not tied to any specific database but rather backed by your existing code and data.
A GraphQL API is different from a REST API in that it allows the client application to query for certain fields of resources. Send a GraphQL query to your API and get exactly what you need, like the name of a user and only receive that data.
GraphQL APIs get’s all the data a client needs in a single request.
It replaces multiple REST requests with a single call to fetch the data you specify.
Provides an abstraction layer to the client, which means that clients do not need to query multiple URLs to access different data.
Find some comparisons against REST
REST
GraphQL
HTTP Verbs (GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, DELETE) determines the operation to be performed
You will provide a JSON body aka GraphQL query whether you have to read or fetch values (GET) or a mutation (POST, PATCH, PUT, DELETE) to write values
When a HTTP GraphQL request is made with a query, the GraphQL server parses the query and respond back with data usually in a specific JSON format. There can also be variables in a query which makes it more powerful and dynamic. In GraphQL, the HTTP verb is predominantly POST but there can be implementations where Query & Variables are sent in URL encoded query parameters in the URL. I have used GitHub to learn & test GraphQL queries against my GitHub account.
GitHub GraphQL Explorer:
Github has GraphQL API that allows you to query and perform operations against repositories, users, issues, etc. To follow along this blogpost, sign in with your GitHub account on the GitHub GraphQL explorer URL https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/overview/explorer for testing some GraphQL queries
Create a Repository in your GitHub account
Get all your existing repositories
Let’s make first query on the explorer to get your GitHub Id for creating a new repo, the query is
{
viewer {
login
id
}
}
In Explorer
Type your queries on the left side panel and hit play to see the JSON response on the right side. Click the Docs link on the right top corner to go through the documentation. The GitHub graphql explorer can be a great starting point to learn and to write queries
Tip: Hitting Ctrl+Space on the explorer will show you all the available fields that you can query against the API.
Create a Repository in your GitHub account:
Find below the query & variables to create a Repo in your GitHub account. The ownerId on the query variables should be value copied from the previous query. The other observation on the query is we are using mutation since we are creating a repository
Query to create a Repo with out passing a query variable:
Find below the query to get all your existing repositories
{
viewer {
name
repositories(first: 100) {
totalCount
nodes {
name
}
}
}
}
Till now we have seen couple of example queries in GitHub explorer, let us now see how to consume them in Power Automate
Call a GraphQL query in Power Automate:
HTTP connector in Power Automate can be used to call a GraphQL query based API but you will have to first convert the GraphQL query (Query+Variables) to a HTTP request with raw body. You can use the Postman utility to help you with the conversion. To call the above mentioned GraphQL query to create a Repo in Postman, the first step is create a Personal Access token. Create the token as per the instructions given in the following documentation with the scope repo selected
Token value should be the Personal Access token you have generated above. Find below screenshot for your reference in order to set the authorization token
In the request Body tab, enter the Query and GraphQL variables for creating the repo after selecting the Body type to GraphQL from none
On the query tab, CTRL+Space also works in Postman which autoprompts with some suggestions for fields.
Execute the request by clicking Send button which will create a New repo by the Name GraphQLDemo-blog in your github account. To call this GraphQL query in Power Automate, click the Code button as shown above on the right panel of the postman request and then select HTTP to auto generate a code snippet for making a HTTP request with raw body
Copy the request body as shown above. On the Power Automate HTTP connector, enter the following details to create the Repo
Summary: On this post we have seen how to call a GraphQL query based API from Github in Power Automate using a HTTP connector to create a Repo, this can be replicated to consume any other GraphQL based APIs. You can also construct dynamic request body on the HTTP connector for various operations. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
With the assumption that you already know about Microsoft Graph and its capabilities I will directly jump in with the steps and instructions to call Microsoft graph Endpoints as a daemon app using Application permissions with the help of HTTP connector. Calling graph from a flow opens a wide range of possibilities which are not available with the prebuilt connectors. As of now you will not be able to call Microsoft graph with application permissions using a custom connector.
Pre-Requisites:
Access to HTTP Premium Connector in Power Automate
Register an application in Azure AD and obtain the client id, client secret & tenant id for the registered application. In this example I have added the Application permission Calendars.Read to access all the recent events of a user from Outlook.
It is not required in the Azure AD application to have a redirect URI.
Power Automate Flow:
It is now time to generate the graph token using the HTTP connector in flow which is a pre-requisite to call the Graph API endpoint. The only authentication flow to generate a access token for application permissions is Client credentials.
To generate a token
Store the Client Secret on a String variable
Make a HTTP request using the HTTP connector with the following details. Make sure to replace the string for tenantId, azureAdAppclientId and azureAdAppclientSecret
Method 1:
Add a HTTP connector action to the flow for making a POST request per the following information
For the client secret make sure to URL encode using the expression encodeUriComponent(variables(‘clientSecret’)) else the request will fail due to the presence of special characters.
To extract the token from the above request, add the parse JSON action with Content from the HTTP request body and the following schema
Summary: I have written a blog to get the attendee details of a meeting using this approach to Microsoft graph event endpoint API. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do take a look at my other Microsoft graph in Power Automate blogposts.
If you have a requirement to access graph endpoint as a signed in user/account on an instant/automated/scheduled flow, this blog post will help you with instructions and steps to access the Microsoft graph API with delegated permissions using the
HTTP connector
Invoke an HTTP request connector
There are resources (Presence information, Planner etc) in Microsoft graph which is available only as delegated permissions and not as application permission. Application permissions can be granted only by an administrator but users can register an application with delegated permission (Except All permission) unless the IT team has restricted the app registration by users.
Access Graph API using HTTP connector:
I have used the HTTP connector to generate a token for accessing the Graph API using the OAuth resource owner Password Credentials grant authentication flow supported by Microsoft Identity platform with the User ID and Password. Once we have the access token, the request to the Graph API endpoint will be made. To follow along this post be ready with the following
Pre-Requisites:
Access to HTTP Premium Connector in Power Automate
Register an application in Azure AD and obtain the client id, client secret & tenant id for the registered application. In this example I have added the delegated permission Presence.Read to get the presence information of the service account.
Add the redirect URI for the web http://localhost as shown on the screenshot below.
The Web redirect URI http://localhost/ is required to provide consent for the Azure AD application for the permission scope by the service account. The consent can be provided by an admin to use this application in flow by all users or the consent has to be provided by an individual user. To provide consent by an individual user in this case by the service account, construct the following url using the tenant ID, Client ID and the scope (ex. Presence.Read)
Now login to Office.com with the service account and enter the above User Consent url on a separate tab for the consent which will bring up a screen similar to the one shown below
Now Click the Accept button to provide consent for the requested permission for the service account. After the Accept button is clicked there will be a message stating that this site cannot be reached or something similar with the url like below on the browser address bar
The consent is provided, to validate the consent login to My Applications link url and the select the Azure AD application from the list and then click Manage your application as shown below
Find below screenshot with consent for Presence.Read permission. To revoke the permission, click Revoke permissions
To provide Admin consent for all the users to use this app in the flow, the URL is
Now we are ready to generate the graph token using the HTTP connector in flow which is a pre-requisite to call the Graph API endpoint. To generate a token in Flow
Store the Client Secret on a String variable
Make the following HTTP request using the HTTP connector
For the client secret and password (only if there is special character), make sure to URL encode using the expression encodeUriComponent(variables(‘clientSecret’)) else the request will fail due to the presence of special characters.
If there is no consent provided by the user/service account for the Azure AD application then the above HTTP request will generate the following error
{“error”:”invalid_grant”,”error_description”:”AADSTS65001: The user or administrator has not consented to use the application with ID ‘xxxxxxx-65xx-47e0-xxxx-xxxxx0bb22′ named AzureADAppName’.
To extract the token from the above request, add the parse JSON action with Content from the HTTP request body and the following schema
Add the Body from the dynamic content from the HTTP – GET Token action to the content of the Parse JSON action
Include the access token when calling the Microsoft Graph API on the Headers sections as shown below. The access_token is from the output of the Parse JSON action
If you run the flow, you can now see the response with the presence information of the service account as shown below
Use Azure Key vault connector to secure the Client Secret & Password information in the flow.
Invoke a HTTP Request connector:
This connector can be used to fetch resources from various web services authenticated by Azure AD including Microsoft Graph in more easier way. Look for the action with the keyword invoke an HTTP request
If it is accessed for the first time, enter https://graph.microsoft.com on both Base and Azure AD resource URI and then click Sign In
Enter the Graph API endpoint on the Url of the request and select the Method
The API is executed in the context of the action’s connection as shown below. In this example it gets the profile information of the serviceaccount
If you get an error similar to { “error”: { “code”: “Forbidden”, “message”: “” } }, then it could be because the connector has a limited set of scopes. Getting Presence information is not supported with this connector as of now. If your scenario requires something more advanced or not currently supported by the connector, please use the �HTTP� connector as shown above or create a custom connector.
Summary: There are many endpoints available with Microsoft graph which can be leveraged for different use cases. Keep in mind the HTTP connector in Power Automate is Premium, you can also consider using this approach in Azure Logic apps. The access token is valid only for an hour, if you have to call a graph api after an hour from the initial token generation time the token has to be obtained again. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do take a look at my other blogposts.
Microsoft graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365 which connects multiple services like SharePoint, Teams, Planner etc and devices. Microsoft graph has one common endpoint that is RESTful Web API enabling you to access Microsoft Cloud service resources. With that said if you want to communicate with Microsoft Graph Services or any API services, custom connectors can be used to address needs which are not available as prebuilt connectors in Power Apps and Power Automate. The purpose of this blog post is to show how to
Call Microsoft Graph API in Power Apps using custom connector
Call Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate using custom connector
Custom connector supports the following authentication types
Anonymous (No Authentication)
Basic Authentication (UserName & Password)
API Key
OAuth 2.0
As of the time I am writing this article, custom connector supports only authentication flow Authorization code & not client credentials. If you use OAuth 2.0, it means you can use only delegated permissions & not application permissions as permission type in the custom connector. To be more precise, the logged in user from PowerApps or flow actions/trigger connection user should have access to the resource to be accessed from Microsoft Graph & cannot access the resource as a daemon app (Application Permission). Find below the pre-requisite for the custom connector
Premium Plan (App/user based) for all users intended to use the custom connector in Power Apps or Power Automate. To test the custom connector you can also get a community plan if you do not have a premium plan.
Create & setup Custom Connector to call Microsoft Graph API:
Custom connector can be created from Power Apps maker portal or Power Automate portal. Custom connector created from any of the above-mentioned interfaces can be used in a Power App or Power Automate cloud flow. A custom connector is nothing but a wrapper around a REST API that allows Power Apps or Power Automate and Azure Logic Apps to communicate with that REST API.
Azure Active Directory Application:
To access the Microsoft Rest API there must be an Azure AD app registered with appropriate graph permission intended for the operations through a custom connector. For this example I have registered an AD application with the following delegated permissions
Calendars.Read
To display the users recent events in Power Apps gallery control
Sites.Manage.All
To create a New list item in SharePoint list from Power Apps and Power Automate
User.Read
To display users profile information from an Extension Attribute in Power Apps
Obtain the Client ID from the Overview section of the Azure AD app and create a secret from the Certificates & secrets under Manage blade. Once the secret is created, copy the value to be used in the custom connector.
The Redirect URI is common and will be created while creating the custom connector. Now we are ready to create the custom connector, go to Power Automate portal and expand Data on the left panel > Custom connectors > + New custom connector > Create from blank
After entering the connector name, you will get the below screen. Do not have the word SharePoint part of your connector name to avoid issues.
Enter graph.microsoft.com on Host and some description about the connector. You can also change the logo to a custom one. Now click Security on the right bottom corner to enter the Azure AD application information for the OAuth 2.0 authentication type. Under the section OAuth 2.0
Change the Identity provider to Azure Active Directory
Enter the Client id & Client secret of the Azure AD application
Enter the Scope as Calendars.Read Sites.Manage.All User.Read based on the permissions you have added on the Azure AD app. Leave a space between each permission
After the above information is filled in, click Create connector which will autogenerate the Redirect URL https://global.consent.azure-apim.net/redirect. This is the URL we have added as a Redirect Web URI in the Azure AD application. The connector is now ready to add actions based on Graph API endpoint to
Get users recent events from the users default Outlook calendar
Create a List item in SharePoint List
Get users custom extension attribute from users Active directory profile
Get users recent events from the Outlook calendar:
After the custom connector is created in the above step, now click the Definition tab of the Custom Connector > click + New action which will create the following screen to enter information about the action
After the Summary, Description and Operation ID is entered. Click + Import from sample under the Request section to the enter the Graph API endpoint url https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/calendar/events.
It is Okay to exclude the url https://graph.microsoft.com since we have provided the information in the Security tab.
Now we are ready to provide default response for the action. To get the request response sample for the graph api endpoint, SignIn to the Graph Explorer with your organizational ID to copy the response of the API request to be used in the custom connector action
After running the query in the graph explorer tool, copy the whole content (CTRL+A) from the Response preview section as shown on the above screenshot. If there is any error related to permissions while executing the http request in the explorer tool, make sure you have consented to the permissions in the Modify permissions tab.
Click + Add default response and then paste the content copied from the graph explorer tool on Body as shown below
Click Import and then click Update connector. Let us add the second action to create a list item in a SharePoint list
You should replace the SiteId and listId in the above URL. Easy way to get the ListId and SiteId is by viewing the Viewing the page source of the SharePoint site with the list open
Request Body:
For this example I have a SharePoint list with a default column Title and a single line of text column by the name Location.
Once again click + New action on the Definition tab to add an action for creating a new list item.
After the Summary, Description and Operation ID is entered click + Import from sample under the Request section to the enter the Graph API endpoint url with the Verb now selected as POST and the request body or payload
Click Import. To get the request response sample for the graph api endpoint, go to the graph explorer to copy the request response as shown below for the above POST request to create the list item
Click + Add default response and then add the response copied from the graph explorer tool on the Body section as shown below
Click Import button and then click Update connector. Let us add the second action to read the users active directory profile to extract extension attribute information
Get users custom extension attribute from users Active directory profile:
On my tenant I have added additional properties on extension attribute in Azure AD profile of the user & displayed them on the User profile card using the profile card graph API. The graph API to get the extension attribute information of the user is in Beta as of now
Once again click + New action on the Definition tab to add the third action for getting the users profile information from Azure active directory.
After the Summary, Description and Operation ID is entered click + Import from sample under the Request section to the enter the Graph API endpoint url with the Verb selected as GET
Click Import. Go to the graph explorer to copy the request response for the GET request for https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/me and then click + Add default response to paste the request response copied from the graph explorer tool. Click Import button and then click Update connector. We have till now added three actions which can be tested in the same interface
Test the Action:
To test the different actions added in the connector, click the Test tab and then click + New connection.
You will be prompted to sign in using the Organization ID and provide a consent for the permissions requested as a scope on the custom connector.
After the connection is created, you can test the different actions available as shown below for one of the action CreateListItem in SharePoint
The custom connector creates the Swagger definition, you can also view and update the Swagger definition by turning on Swagger Editor
If you look at the security definitions in the above screenshot for the connector we have created till now, the authentication flow used to authenticate the user is Authorization code which supports only delegated permissions and not application permissions in MS Graph. The Swagger definition file can be downloaded from interface shown below
The Swagger definition file can be used to re-create the custom connector by clicking the Down arrow and then by clicking Import an OpenAPI file. On the popup window enter the Connector Name and select the downloaded Swagger file to recreate the connector after filling in information on the Security tab.
You download the Swagger definition file of the custom connector with the above mentioned actions from this github link.
Call Microsoft Graph API in Power Apps using custom connector:
To call a custom connector in Power Apps, the first step is to add the connector to the Power App by the app maker. Click Data on the left panel and then click the button Add data > look for the connector by the name > Click the connector name to create a connection.
Once the connection is created & added, you will be able to use it in the different controls added to the app
I added the following controls to
Label – To display the Extension attribute of the user from the action GetUserProfile
Gallery – To display the users recent calendar events from the action
Button – To create new item on the list and to get information from Graph about the user calendar events and to get the users AD profile
A Button control to load the data from Microsoft Graph GET actions GetUserProfile & GetMyEvents on a context variable.
Once we have the data loaded on the context variable using the OnSelect button click event, the data can be displayed on different controls. Use the graph explorer tool to validate the response of the request and to help with display the data on a control. Find below the response for the me endpoint which provides the profile information of user including the extension attribute.
To display the Extension attribute1 information on a label control, the code is
I have added a gallery control to display the calendar events. First step is to bind the gallery control to the context variable (userCalendarEvents) using Items property of the control
Items: userCalendarEvents
On the gallery control fields
field1: ThisItem.subject
field2: ThisItem.organizer.emailAddress.name
For constructing the above formula (Field1 and Field2) for displaying the information on the different fields in the control, graph explorer response preview will help you
I have added a button control to create the list item using the action CreateListItem with the following formula on the OnSelect event
The user has to create a connection to the Custom Connector & provide consent for the Graph permission (User.Read Sites.Manage.All Calendars.Read) for the first time
The users of the app should have premium license (App/user based)
Call Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate using custom connector:
To use a custom connector by a user in a flow Instant/Scheduled/Automated, it
Must be shared to the user by the custom connector Owner/creator
Premium license for the flow user
Consent to be provided for the graph permissions. The consent can be individual or admin consent
Add the action to the flow by clicking Custom and then select the custom connector as shown below
Now select the action
It will ask you to Sign In to create the connection and there will be a prompt to provide consent to the permission for the AD application for the first time as shown below
Enter the parameter values to create the list item
Summary: Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate are great and simple to get started with no code. If you are a pro developer and want to extend the capabilities with Microsoft Graph & other external/custom RESTFul API’s you can do so with the custom connector. Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do take a look at my other blogposts.
As per this announcement made on Feb 2021, Microsoft graph now provides option to have granular permissions level using Sites.Selected application permission for the AD application instead of granting permission for all the sites in the tenant. The permission Sites.Selected does not provide access to any SharePoint site collections for the application unless the AD application has been assigned with permission roles read or write by an Admin. On this post let us see how to grant a site permission (Read or Write) to an AD Application with Sites.Selected permission by using postman client. As of the time I am writing this post there is no user interface to assign permissions to specific site collections for the application.
Pre-Requisite:
Register Azure AD Application (APP 1) in Azure AD Portal with the following permissions
Sites.Selected (Admin Consented)
Another AD Application (APP 2) with following permission only for the admins to assign selected roles to the above App
Sites.FullControl.All (Admin Consented)
App Registration:
Start with registering the above said two Azure AD applications
Another app for admins for granting roles to APP 1
Grant permission role to the SharePoint site for the Azure AD Application:
This step is grant permission for the Azure AD application with Sites.Selected application permission to a given site collection. Perform the following steps to grant the role (Read/Write or Read and Write) to the AD app (APP 1)
Gather the Client ID, Tenant ID and Client secret of the admin app
In PostMan, make a HTTP request to generate the access token for the admin app – APP 2
Copy the access_token to be used for granting roles.
Get the Client ID of the Azure AD Application – APP 1 with Sites.Selected permission
Decide on the Role (Read or Write) for the granting the Site specific role for the APP 1 with Sites.Selected permission.
Get the SiteId of the SharePoint site to be assigned permissions for the application (App 1). An easy way to get the siteId is by viewing the page source from the browser with the site open.
In PostMan, make a HTTP request to grant the site role to the APP 1. Replace the siteId with the actual siteId which will be a guid
Paste the access token on the token box as shown below with Authorization type selected as Bearer Token
Send the request for granting the role for APP 1. After the request is made the APP 1 with the Sites.Selected permission has access to the site with write role we have granted to. The same way you can assign app access to multiple SharePoint sites.
Grant the Role using PnP PowerShell:
There is a PnP PowerShell cmdlet to grant access to SharePoint site for the registered AD application with Sites.Selected permission. The command to grant permission can be executed by the Site Collection administrator after creating a connection to the site
You will be prompted to enter credentials including the second factor. After the connection is created, enter the following command to grant Write permission to the AD App
To install PnP PowerShell module on the local workstation, enter the following command
Install-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell
There is also a PnP cmdlet to register an AD app in the Azure Active directory.
Grant the Role by an Admin using the Graph Explorer tool:
Role can also be assigned by an admin with out having the admin AD app (APP 2) using the graph explorer tool. This can be done only by an Admin
If there is any error related to permissions, make sure the admin consents to Sites.FullControl.All for the Graph tool. There is also an SPFx community webpart developed by a community member with User Interface for this operation
On this post we have seen how to grant access to Azure AD which has the Sites.Selected permission. You can also grant permission/role to an app with sites.selected permission programmatically. If you are using SharePoint API instead of Graph API in the Azure AD app registration, Sites.Selected is available on Application Permission as shown below
Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.
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Mohamed Ashiq Faleel 