Tag: SharePoint Online

Uploading Files Made Easy: A Guide to Using the Attachment Control in Power Apps

The Attachment control in Power Apps is a useful feature that allows users to upload and delete files, but it can only be used with data sources such as SharePoint List or Dataverse table. However, if you need to upload and delete files without using these data sources, you can create a custom component using the Attachment control or you can directly use this control in the app. I have followed the tip from Shane Young in this YouTube video to add the Attachment control to a component library.

By creating a custom component Library for the attachment control, you can upload and delete files similar to a Picture control but with the ability to handle any file type across any apps within an environment. This blog post is not a tutorial on how to create the component, but rather

  • How to use it
  • To Save the file in SharePoint Document Library using Power Automate Flow
  • How to customize the component to fit your needs.

How to use it – Add the Component to the Power Apps:

To incorporate this component into your app, you need to first import it into your environment. Please find below the steps to follow

Step 1: Download the component library from my github repo.

Step 2: Create a Blank Canvas App with a temporary name, on the studio command bar, click on the ellipsis > Click ‘Open’, browse to select the downloaded .msapp package. Save the App and then publish it. You would now be able to see the component from the Component Libraries.

Step 3: After following the instructions outlined in this documentation to import the Published component into your app, the component will be available for use in any app within the environment as shown below.

Step 4: Modify the input parameters of the component to adjust settings such as maximum number of attachments, border colour, attachment size, and other defined parameters of the component.

Step 5: To display the uploaded file content within the app or to send the file to a Power Automate flow, you can incorporate any of the following controls based on the file type:

In the Media Property of the control, the formula to display the file content is

First(FileAttachment_1.Attachments.FileAttachment).Value

The file content will be uploaded to the app as binary data with the URL appres://blobmanager/ for each file uploaded from the attachment control. To get the file Name:

First(FileAttachment_1.Attachments.FileAttachment).Name

Note: In the above screenshot, I have set the Max Attachments Component property to 1 in the Step 4

Send the File to Power Automate:

In order to send or store a file using a Power Automate flow, I needed to convert the file content to Base64 format. To accomplish this, I used a image control to capture the file content in binary format. Here is how I configured the image control:

This control works with any types of files to get the binary content.

After obtaining the binary content of the file using the JSON function, I performed some string manipulations to extract the binary content while excluding the Content-Type. Specifically, I used a combination of Split(), Left() and Last() functions to separate the content into an variable varExtractedFileContent.

Set(varFileContent,JSON(Image2.Image, JSONFormat.IncludeBinaryData));
Set(varExtractedFileContent, Last(Split(varFileContent, ",")).Value);
Set(varExtractedFileContent, Left(varExtractedFileContent, Len(varExtractedFileContent) - 1));

By performing these manipulations, I was able to extract the binary content of the file in a format that could be easily passed to a Power Automate flow or other API or action.

This allowed me to send the file to a Power Automate flow, which could then save the file in a SharePoint library or call some other API or action that required the data to be in Base64 format.

The Power Automate flow used to save the file to a SharePoint Document Library is simple. The flow consists of a Power Apps trigger and a SharePoint action Create File, which takes two input parameters: File Name and File Content.

I have used the base64toBinary() expression to convert the base64-encoded string to binary data. This expression is a prerequisite for the SharePoint create file action and ensures that the file is saved correctly to the SharePoint Document Library.

PowerFx to call the flow from Power Apps:

ProcessAttachments.Run(First(AttachmentComponent_1.Attachments.FileAttachment).Name,varExtractedFileContent);

If you need to upload multiple files to a library using the Attachment control, you can use Gallery control with the Image control, Collections, ForAll function, and the OnAddFile property from the Attachment control. First, create a collection to store the files that are uploaded using the Attachment control using the OnAddFile property. Then, use the Gallery control to load the binary of the uploaded files in the Image control. Next, use the ForAll function to iterate through each file in the gallery and call the Power Automate flow on a button click.

Customizing the Component:

The component I’ve created is a simple one for handling file attachments, but it does not have all the properties from the Attachment control. If you need more customization, you can easily modify it to suit your specific needs by adding additional input or output properties.

To add a new property, you can simply edit the component code and include the new property as an input or output parameter.

By customizing the component in this way, you can tailor it to your specific requirements and ensure that it meets all of your file attachment needs

Summary:

In summary, the Attachment control in Power Apps is a useful feature for uploading and deleting files, but it is limited to certain data sources. To work around this limitation, you can create a custom component using the Attachment control, which allows you to handle any file type and bypass the use of data sources like SharePoint or Dataverse tables. 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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Call SharePoint REST API in a custom connector (Power Apps/Power Automate)

The Power Automate action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint could come handy in many scenarios to execute SharePoint REST API queries but you will not able to use this action directly in Power Apps. In this blogpost, let us see how to call the SharePoint REST API in a custom connector which can be used either in Power Automate or Power Apps. There are many REST API endpoints available within SharePoint but the following use cases are not satisfied with a SharePoint standard connector in Power Platform

  • Creating a site
  • Adding user to a SharePoint group

Pre-Requisites:

Azure Active Directory Application:

To execute a SharePoint REST API in Power Apps or Power Automate there must be an Azure AD app registered with appropriate SharePoint permission intended for the operations through a custom connector. For this example I have registered an AD application with the delegated permissions AllSites.Read.

Obtain the Client ID from the Overview section 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. Add a Web Redirect URI https://global.consent.azure-apim.net/redirect as shown below

The Redirect URI is common and will be created while creating the custom connector.

Creation of Custom Connector:

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. Let us see how to create a SharePoint communication site with the below permission using a custom connector. In the Power Automate portal, expand Data on the left panel > Custom connectors > + New custom connector > Create from blank

In Host field, enter tenantname.sharepoint.com and some description about the connector.

Along this article wherever you find the keyword tenantname, replace it with the name of the organizations Microsoft 365 tenant.

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

Enter the Scope as AllSites.Read based on the permissions you have added on the Azure AD app. If you have multiple permission, 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 for the actions based on SharePoint API endpoint to

Create SharePoint Communication site:

Details about the REST API to create a communication site can be found here. Find below the HTTP request details

Mode: POST

Request URI: https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/_api/SPSiteManager/create

Headers: application/json

Body:

{
  "request": {
    "Title": "Communication Site 1",
    "Url":"https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/test-commsite2",
    "Lcid": 1033,
    "Description":"Description",
    "WebTemplate":"SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0",
    "SiteDesignId":"96c933ac-3698-44c7-9f4a-5fd17d71af9e",
    "Owner":"owner@tenantname.com",
    "WebTemplateExtensionId":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
  }
}

Replace tenantname and Owner in the body

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, enter the REST API details on the following screen per the information given above to create a site

Click Import and then make changes to the Headers and Body section as shown below

Make the parameter required and add the default values as shown below

After the above changes are done, click Update connector. The custom connector action to create a new communication site is ready to be tested. Click the Test tab and enter the body information for various parameters or enter the JSON directly by toggling the Raw Body property to On

In the response, you get the Site Object id of the newly created site.

Summary:

Many of the SharePoint REST API’s are available in Microsoft Graph’s ecosystem but there are still a few which is not but this method can solve that problem. If you are interested to know on calling a SharePoint REST API as an daemon application in Power Automate, go through this blogpost. 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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Deep Link SharePoint News post in Teams using Adaptive card and Power Automate

Microsoft Teams helps us bring together content from different Microsoft 365 services for easier collaboration. In Microsoft Teams connected SharePoint site, SharePoint News connector would help receive news updates from the site. In this post let us see how to create Notifications about new News post with deep link to the post from a communication site in an Adaptive card on a Teams channel using

  1. Adaptive card
  2. Stage View
  3. Power Automate cloud flow

The users from a Teams channel would be able to read & engage on the News post by click of a button as shown below

Adaptive card:

Adaptive Cards are a platform-agnostic method of sharing and displaying blocks of information using JSON across various host applications like Teams, Outlook, Bots etc. The above adaptive card has following information from the News Post

  1. Title
  2. Description
  3. Banner Image Url
  4. Author Profile picture
  5. Author Name
  6. Published Date
  7. Deep Link to the post

The card can be designed based on your requirements from the Adaptive Card Designer portal. The JSON content of the above adaptive card can be downloaded from here.

Stage View:

Stage View helps provide a seamless experience of viewing content in Teams. Users can view the content without leaving the context thus leading to have a higher engagement. For this post, I have used stage view through deep link for a SharePoint News post. Find the syntax below to deep link SharePoint News post

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/stage/teamsAppId/0?context={"contentUrl":" newsPostPageUrl","websiteUrl":"newsPostPageUrl","name":"Internal News"}

In the above syntax replace teamsAppId, newsPostPageUrl & title which I have named as Internal News.

teamsAppId: 2a527703-1f6f-4559-a332-d8a7d288cd88

newsPostPageUrl: The url of the News post in SharePoint.

In the adaptive card action set OpenUrl the following from the stage view syntax should be encoded

{
  "contentUrl":" newsPostPageUrl",
  "websiteUrl":"newsPostPageUrl",
  "name":"Internal News"
}

I have also tested stage view for Microsoft forms & Power BI. You can find the app id for other Microsoft 365 service here on this link

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/teams-configuring-builtin-tabs

Power Automate cloud flow:

The Cloud flow is used to send an adaptive card to a Teams channel with the SharePoint News post deep link whenever there is a new News post published in a Communication site.

Step 1: Let us start with creating the Automated cloud flow with SharePoint trigger When an item is created or modified. In the trigger, the Site Address should be url of the communication site and the List Name as the Site Pages Library GUID as shown below

Step 2: In the trigger settings enter the following trigger condition to fire only on the first major version of the News Post

@and(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/PromotedState'],2),contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/{VersionNumber}'],'1.0'))

For more information on trigger conditions for SharePoint online, go through this blog post.

Step 3: The compose action Compose-StageViewURL with the following code

{
  "contentUrl": "@{triggerOutputs()?['body/{Link}']}",
  "websiteUrl": "@{triggerOutputs()?['body/{Link}']}",
  "name": "Internal News"
}

The trigger output Link should have the url of the News post.

Encode the content in the compose action Compose-StageViewURL using the expression encodeUriComponent() and form the remaining part of the URL.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/stage/2a527703-1f6f-4559-a332-d8a7d288cd88/0?context= @{encodeUriComponent(outputs('Compose-StageViewURL'))}

on another compose action Compose-StageViewURL-Encoded.

Step 4: Add the action Get user photo to display the picture of the author in the adaptive card. The User (UPN) property of the action can be provided from the trigger output Created By Email. The next step is to convert the output of the Get user photo action to Base64 encoded string using the following expression

concat('data:',body('Get_user_photo_(V2)')?['$content-type'],';base64,',body('Get_user_photo_(V2)')?['$content'])

Step 5: Add the action Post Adaptive card in a chat or channel as shown below

In the adaptive card JSON, find below the mapping information of each property from the output of trigger or action

  1. Title: {triggerOutputs()?[‘body/Title’]
  2. Description: triggerOutputs()?[‘body/Description’]
  3. Banner Image Url: triggerOutputs()?[‘body/BannerImageUrl’]
  4. Author Profile picture: outputs(‘Compose-Base64ProfilePic’)
  5. Author Name: triggerOutputs()?[‘body/Author/DisplayName’]
  6. Published Date: formatDateTime(triggerOutputs()?[‘body/Created’], ‘g’)
  7. Deep Link to the post: outputs(‘Compose-StageViewURL-Encoded’)

The export version of the flow can be downloaded from this GitHub link.

Summary:

The adaptive card with stage view to a SharePoint News post allows the users to open and view the content without leaving the context. The user can also Like or Comment on the News post. 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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Effective Audience Targeting for SharePoint online NEWS Post using Term Store and Power Automate

In SharePoint Online sites, Audience targeting feature enables you to target relevant content to specific audiences enabling personalization through Microsoft 365 group, Azure AD Security group, Mail Enabled Security group or any combinations of these. The Membership type of the groups can be both Assigned and Dynamic. Target audience(s) can be defined on modern SharePoint pages, News post, Navigation links and as well as items on document libraries. I have used this feature for my customers on many instances to target News articles to specific audiences, but the challenging part is the content creator or Author of the News post should remember the name of the groups. In this post, let us see how to make the audience targeting for SharePoint online News post easier using

  • Term Store
  • Power Automate Cloud Flow

Find below the snapshot from the Page Details section of the News page

Isn’t the above easier than remembering name of the groups to target content?

Pre-requisite:

  • Access to create Power Automate cloud flow
  • SharePoint
    • A SharePoint site with Audience Targeting enabled
    • Site Owner or Administrator access
    • Access to Create terms @ tenant level or site collection level
  • Azure AD Groups
  • Service account with the permission level Full Control or Contribute on the SharePoint site with the Audience Targeting enabled

Term Set Creation & Group Mapping:

The first step is to create a Term set at tenant level or local (Site Collection) level for storing the group information based on your organizational hierarchy. The term set will be used to target content in SharePoint News post. Find below the term set Audiences I have created at tenant level under the term group People

Based on the hierarchy or needs, you can enable or disable tagging at any term level

After you identify the Azure AD groups to be mapped against each term, have the group object id in the below format

Microsoft 365 Group Claim

c:0o.c|federateddirectoryclaimprovider|m365-group-object- id-guid-xx-xxxx

Azure AD Security group Claim

c:0t.c|tenant|security-group-object- id-guid-xx-xxxx

Select the appropriate term which is available for tagging, click Edit to add the group object id in the above format in the description field as shown below

After the mapping of term set & groups are done in the Term Store Management interface, copy the Unique Identifier (GUID) of the Term Group (People) and Term Set (Audiences) and keep it handy which will used in the Power Automate flow later

Settings in SharePoint Online site for Audience Targeting:

In the SharePoint online communication or Teams site

Step 1: Enable the audience targeting feature on the page library as per the instructions in this article. As soon as the feature is Enabled, there will be a column Audience added to the Site Page content type at the Page Library level. There can be a maximum of 50 groups added to the audience field.

Step 2: Create a Managed Metadata site column by the name Audiences with the setting Multiple Value Field mapping to the termset Audiences created above from the Term Store management. The managed metadata column can also be created at a Term level instead of a Term set. Once the site column in created, add the site column to the content type Site Page as shown below

Step 3: Hide the default Site Column Audience from the Site Page content type at the Pages Library settings as shown below

Click the Audience field and make it hidden as shown below

Step 4: Grant the Service account access to the SharePoint site, either as a Site Administrator or Site Owner. The Service account will used in the Power Automate flow to update the Audience field from the values obtained from the Managed metadata column.

Automated Power Automate Cloud flow:

The Power Automate cloud flow will be used to get the claim information of the group stored in the description field of each Term in the Audiences Term set. This flow will be triggered after the News Post is published by the author.

Step 1: Create an Automated flow with the SharePoint trigger When an item is created or modified. The trigger Created or Modified is to make sure it fires whenever there is a change in the Audiences managed metadata column information. Enter the site address of the SharePoint site in context and the Library Guid of the Site Pages Library.

Step 2: Add the action Initialize variable of type Array as shown below

The Array variable will be used to create an array of group claim values selected from the Term description field.

Step 3: This step is to create the array of group claims based on the users selection from the Managed metadata column.

  1. Add a Compose Action and add the property Audiences TermGuid from the trigger When an item is created or modified. This step will automatically create the Apply to each control, since the Managed metadata column allows multiple selection
  1. Add the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint with the below parameters

Site Address: https://yourTenant.sharepoint.com/

Method: GET

Uri: _api/v2.1/termStore/groups/term-group-guid-xxxx-xxxxxxxx/sets/term-set-guid-xxxx-xxxxxxxx /terms/@{outputs(‘Compose_store_audience_GUID’)}

Replace the term group and term set guid on the Uri based on the information copied earlier from the Term Set Management interface. In the Uri, after terms it is the output of the compose action added in Step 2. If your Term Set is at the Site collection level, the site address should be the site URL

For references on the API endpoints, refer to the Graph API documentation for Taxonomy

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/termstore-store?view=graph-rest-1.0

It supports only Delegated permission.

  1. Add a compose action to store the term description (Group Claim) extracted from the Term set api response. To directly get the description value from the response, the following expression will work
body('Send_an_HTTP_request_to_SharePoint_-_To_fetch_Term_Store_Description')?['descriptions'][0]?['description']

In the above expression, the text inside the body depends on how you have named the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action

{
  "Claims": @{outputs('Compose-TermStoreDescription')}
}

Step 4: The information to update the audience field is available in the array variable targetAudiencesClaims. So the next step is to update the Audience property in SharePoint News post, to do so add the action Check out file, Update file properties and Check in file as shown below

Enter the Site Address and Library Name information, the Id field should be from the dynamic content of the trigger When an item is created or modified. The Audience property in the action Update file properties should be the output of the Array variable targetAudiencesArray

Note: Click the button T on the property Audience to switch to input entire array from the variable.

Trigger Conditions:

There is an issue with the above update, the flow will result in infinite trigger loop due to the trigger type When an item is created or modified. To overcome this problem, the update must be done using a service account and Trigger conditions. Find below the connection setting using a service account for Update file properties action, replicate the same setting for the Check out file and Check in file

Add the following Trigger Conditions from the settings of the trigger When an item is created or modified for

  1. To trigger only when a News post with major version is published
@and(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/PromotedState'],2),contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/{VersionNumber}'],'.0'))
  1. To avoid infinite trigger loop
@not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/Editor/Claims'],'i:0#.f|membership|serviceaccountupn@domain.com'))

For more information, go through this blog post

Conditional Power Automate flow triggers for SharePoint Online Pages and NEWS Post

Summary:

Target audience feature is SharePoint is one of the most useful feature in setting up intranet leveraging Microsoft 365 services and I hope this can complement the rich features Microsoft 365 already has. I will write in future how to deploy this flow automatically to different SharePoint sites. 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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Conditional Power Automate flow triggers for SharePoint Online Pages and NEWS Post

SharePoint Online Pages library is a container for different type of pages (News post, Page, Space, News Link) created in a Communication or Team site. There can be various scenarios to have a Power Automate Flow associated to a SharePoint Site pages library to handle additional processes after a Page or a News post is published. In this blog post, let us see how to

  1. Trigger the flow if a News post is published
  2. Trigger the flow only for Major versions
  3. Trigger the flow for a specific Content Type
  4. Avoid infinite trigger loop on an Item Created/Modified trigger if a page/list item is updated by the flow

using Trigger Conditions. Trigger conditions can be used on a trigger to stop your Automated Flow from running if the conditions are not met. Unnecessary flow runs can spend your quota limits based on the license types without providing any value. To begin with, create an automated cloud flow with the SharePoint trigger When an item is created or modified and configurations for the Site Pages Library. Once you provide the Site URL where your Site Pages library exists, you will notice the Site Pages library doesn’t show in the drop-down. In the List Name property, just provide the guid of the library instead.

To get the guid, browse to the Site Pages library on the SharePoint site, go to Library settings and select the value after the List= parameter on the URL after decoding.

Trigger the flow if a News post is published

There can be scenarios to trigger the Flow when a News post is created or modified. A SharePoint property PromotedState can help identify if the SharePoint page is a News post or a normal page since all the different types of pages are stored in the same library.

LabelValueWhat it means
NotPromoted0Regular Page
PromoteOnPublish1News post in draft mode
Promoted2Published News post

The trigger condition will make sure the trigger is fired only when ever there is a News Post is published or Saved as draft (All Major and Minor versions).

@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/PromotedState'],2)

Now add the above trigger condition in the settings of the trigger as shown below

The above trigger condition will have the flow triggered for all major versions (1.0, 1.1 .. 2.0, 2.1, ..).

There can be multiple trigger conditions which accepts Boolean value (True or False), all conditions must be True for the trigger to fire.

To trigger the flow only on first Published version of the flow, add the following trigger condition.

@and(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/PromotedState'],2),equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/{VersionNumber}'],'1.0'))

To trigger the flow only on major versions and on News post, add the following trigger condition

@and(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/PromotedState'],2),contains(triggerOutputs()?['body/{VersionNumber}'],'.0'))

Trigger the flow only for Major versions

The following trigger condition will make sure to fire only for Major versions (1.0, 2.0, 3.0 etc) and not for minor versions aka draft version (0.1, 0.2 etc)

@contains(triggerBody()?['{VersionNumber}'],'.0')

Trigger the flow for a specific Content Type

Content types in SharePoint are a set of columns that are grouped together to serve a specific type of content (Crisis News, Marketing News etc). A Page or a News post in a SharePoint site can be associated with content types. The trigger condition for the flow to be triggered only for a specific content type is

@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/{ContentType}/Name'], 'Name of the Content Type')

Avoid infinite trigger loop on an Item Created/Modified trigger if a page/list item is updated by the flow

In your Automated cloud flow, if you have the Created or Modified trigger with an action to update the same item then there will be an infinite trigger loop.

The Flow checker will provide you a warning Actions in this flow may result in an infinite trigger loop. To overcome the above warning, trigger condition to the rescue.

How it will be done

The update item action on the flow should use a different connection (Service Account) in the flow, other than the user who will be using the site to create or update pages. The trigger condition will make sure the flow run will not happen if the update to the Page or News post is done by the service account using the Update item action. SharePoint Library and List has the out of the box column Modified By which holds the information on who has recently updated the item be it from the SharePoint UI or through program. The trigger condition will be written based on this column Modified By, if the column value has a different value other than the service account then the flow will be triggered.

Step 1: Create a service account with password never set to expire. Licenses are not required for this account if the flow connection is going to be used only on SharePoint connectors. Password setting Never Expires will make sure the connection is not invalidated due to a password change on the account.

Step 2: Grant edit access for the service account to the SharePoint site. This step allows the account to updates to the List or Library item.Step 3: Add a new connection to the service account

Step 4: Add the following trigger condition to the SharePoint trigger if the service account does not have an Exchange Email License

@not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/Editor/Claims'],'i:0#.f|membership|serviceaccountupn@domain.com'))

Replace the serviceaccountupn@domain.com with actual UPN of the service account.

If the service account has email address or a license to email service, then the trigger condition should be

@not(equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/Editor/Email'],'serviceaccountemail@domain.com '))

Tip to write the trigger condition:

Before adding the condition to the trigger, evaluate the condition on a compose action using expressions and data fields selected from Dynamic content.

After the condition is added on the compose action, click Peek code

Copy the expression from the inputs parameter

The condition to be added on the trigger must be True for the trigger to fire.

Summary:

Trigger conditions are powerful if used wisely to avoid unnecessary runs. I’ve shown some examples from the SharePoint pages library but it can be used on List trigger as well. The trigger can be written based on any data available on the trigger output. 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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Call a SharePoint REST API as an Application in Power Automate HTTP Connector

SharePoint connector in Power Automate is very rich with various actions that can make the developers or makers life simple when it comes to interacting with SharePoint data. There might be some actions like

  • Breaking permission to a list item
  • Creating a site
  • Adding user to a SharePoint group etc

which is not possible through the SharePoint standard connector or MS Graph API as of the time I am writing this article, SharePoint REST API to rescue. The SharePoint online REST API enables developers to remotely interact with SharePoint data. There is an action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint which could come handy in many scenarios, the point to note here is the action uses the context of user aka flow creator while executing the API. In this blogpost, let us see how to call a SharePoint REST API to create a Modern SharePoint communication site as an application in a Power Automate cloud flow using the HTTP connector with the help of a Self-Signed certificate. Find below the list of steps to enable calling the SharePoint REST API using certificate credentials

  1. Creation of Self-Signed certificate
  2. Application Registration in Azure AD Portal
  3. Creation of Power Automate cloud flow with the HTTP Connector
    • Method 1: Without using Azure Key Vault
    • Method 2: Azure Key Vault to store Certificate

Pre-Requisites:

Creation of Self-Signed certificate:

The first step is to create a certificate. Refer to this blog post for instructions creating a self signed certificate using the PnP utility

https://ashiqf.com/2021/07/05/call-microsoft-graph-api-using-a-certificate-in-a-power-automate-http-connector#self-signed-certificate

Application Registration in Azure AD Portal:

Register an application in Azure AD and obtain the client id & tenant id for the registered application. In this example I have added the Sites.Read.All Application permission with Admin Consent to create the SharePoint communication site, this permission is more than enough to create the site as an Application. Grant appropriate permission based on the requirements, for e.g to break permission on list items grant Sites.Manage.All. Find below screenshot for your reference for granting permissions

To add the above created self-signed certificate, click Certificates & secrets under the Manage blade. Click Upload certificate > Select the certificate file MSFlow.cer > Add

Creation of Power Automate cloud flow with the HTTP Connector:

Let us see below how to access the SharePoint REST API to create a SharePoint site with & without using the Azure Key Vault.

  1. Method 1: Without using Azure Key Vault
  2. Method 2: Azure Key Vault to store Certificate

Method 1: Without using Azure Key Vault

In the cloud flow, add a Compose action to store the PfxBase64 value copied during the creation of the certificate. Now add the HTTP action to create a Modern Communication site

Request Type: POST

URL: https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/_api/SPSiteManager/create

Headers:

Key: accept

Value: application/json

Body:

{
  "request": {
    "Title": "Communication Site from Cloud Flow",
    "Url": "https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/commsitefromPA",
    "Lcid": 1033,
    "ShareByEmailEnabled": false,
    "Description": "Description",
    "WebTemplate": "SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0",
    "SiteDesignId": "6142d2a0-63a5-4ba0-aede-d9fefca2c767",
    "Owner": "UPNoftheSiteAdministrator@domain.com",
    "WebTemplateExtensionId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
  }
}

Change the SiteDesignId for the different site teamplate Topic, Showcase, Blank

Authentication: Active Directory OAuth

  • Tenant: TenantId
  • Audience: https://tenantname.microsoft.com
  • Client ID: Azure AD Client Id
  • Pfx: Output of the compose action
  • Password: Certificate password given during the creation

Find below screenshot for your reference

Run the flow, it should be able to create the Site. Find below screenshot of the flow run

Method 2: Azure Key Vault to store Certificate

Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for storing and accessing secrets enabling your applications accessing it in a secure manner. Follow my blog article which I have written to call a Microsoft Graph API with Certificate using a Azure Key Vault to store the certificate

https://ashiqf.com/2021/07/05/call-microsoft-graph-api-using-a-certificate-in-a-power-automate-http-connector/#azure-key-vault

Summary:

Custom Connector can be used to call a SharePoint REST api in the context of the user. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.

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Handle SharePoint site creation response – The site address is unavailable

There is a possibility to change the SharePoint online site address of an existing site by a SharePoint admin or Global admin. There are different options to change the site URL from

  1. SharePoint Admin center
  2. SharePoint online management shell

I’ve recently faced a scenario recently, after renaming a site URL https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 to https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/site2 from the Admin center I was still not able to use the url https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 while trying to create another site though the url has to be available. I’ve tried to create the site from the SharePoint start page & SharePoint admin center, I was getting one of the following message

  • The site address is unavailable
  • Couldn’t create the site, please go back and try again.

SharePoint Online PowerShell to the rescue, run the following command as an Administrator after creating a site with some address from the start page or admin center to rename the URL

Connect-SPOService -Url https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com/
Start-SPOSiteRename -Identity https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/someaddress -NewSiteUrl https://m365pal.sharepoint.com/sites/site1

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.

Collect response from multiple users with Adaptive Card in Teams using Power Automate

This post is in response to a comment in one of the most viewed article from my blogsite to post an Adaptive card to an user in Teams using PowerAutomate. Assume we have a use case for using Adaptive card for collecting response from n number of users based on the data from an Excel, SQL database etc. The response must be unique for users so there has to be separate instance of Adaptive card flow to each user since the flow has to wait till it gets response from the user.

To handle this scenario, we are going to create two flows

  1. Flow 1 – Send Adaptive card to collect response: This flow creates an adaptive card to collect response from each user
  2. Flow 2 – Microsoft Teams User Details: The main flow which has the user details

For this example, I will be storing the user details on an Array variable but you can dynamically generate user details or based on the data from various datasources like Excel, Database etc. Let us go ahead and create the flows

Flow 1 – Send Adaptive card to collect response

This flow will be called from flow 2 to create the Adaptive card for the team user to collect response.

Step 1: Create an Instant flow with trigger type “When a HTTP request is received” and select the method type to Post by clicking Show advanced options. Now click Use sample payload to generate schema under the section Request Body JSON Schema and the enter the following data for the team user email address and click Done to generate the schema

{
“Email”:”user@domain.onmicrosoft.com”
}

The email address of the Teams user will be passed from Flow 2 on the request body.

Step 2: Add the action Post an Adaptive card to a Teams user and wait for a response. The only change is for the field Recipient which should be Email (request body json schema) from the dynamic content of the trigger When a HTTP request is received.

Step 3: Add Create item for collecting the Team user response to the SharePoint list. Refer to the blogpost Adaptive card to an user in Teams using PowerAutomate for detailed explanation.

Step 4: Saving the flow automatically generates the HTTP POST URL, the URL will be used in the Flow 2. The complete flow should be looking like the below

We are now good to create the second flow from where the Adaptive card collect response flow will be triggered from.

Flow 2 – Microsoft Teams User Details:

This flow is the primary flow which triggers the Flow 1 for the posting the adaptive card to multiple team users.

Step 1: Create an Instant flow with the trigger type “Manually trigger a flow” and add a Array variable to store the user email address for sending the Adaptive card to collect response from multiple users.

Step 2: Add the Parse JSON action to parse the email address from the array variable and then click Generate from sample

Paste the array data as given below and click Done to automatically generate the schema for us. Then for the Content parameter in the action, select Teams Users (array variable) from the dynamic content.

[
{
“Email”: “user1@domain.onmicrosoft.com”
},
{
“Email”: “user2@domain.onmicrosoft.com”
}
]

Step 3: Add a compose action and the select the email attribute from the Parse JSON output to automatically generate a Apply to each loop as below

Step 4: Add the HTTP action to make a Post request to the HTTP url created from the first flow to post an Adaptive Card to the teams user. Find the parameters below

Method: Post

URI: HTTP Request flow URL (when a HTTP request is received) copied from the Flow 1

Headers: Key: Content-Type Value: application/json

Body:

{

  “Email”: Output of JSON Parse action (Email)-to be replaced

}

Authentication: None

This should now create Adaptive card to collect responses from multiple users irrespective of the users response to the Adaptive card.

Summary: On this post we have seen how to send adaptive card to multiple teams users using Power automate. There should be a question? Why cannot we use a Child flow concept to call the Adaptive card from the parent flow using the action Run a Child Flow available in Power platform solutions. Since we are using a For Each loop in Flow 2 Step 3 it will go to the next loop only if the first user responds to the adaptive card since there will be an action Respond to a PowerApp or flow at the end of a child flow (must have in child flow). We will have to keep in mind about the action (HTTP) and triggers (When a HTTP request is received) used in this flow are Premium. Let me know any feedback or comments on the comment section below

SharePoint Online & MS Graph API Metadata service document

I have recently received a request from a customer to break the inherited permissions of a SharePoint document library folder, as of now there is no Power Automate action to break the permission of a folder but with the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint you can call any SP REST API endpoint. Then I started exploring the Rest API endpoint to break the permission, have found the API endpoint

_api/lists/getbytitle(‘Documents’)/items(itemID)/breakroleinheritance()

I was trying to understand the method breakroleinheritance() in the endpoint and its parameters. This method passes two Boolean parameters, copyRoleAssignments and clearSubScopes.

  1. copyRoleAssignments parameter specifies whether to maintain the current role assignments already inherited from the parent site collection or Web site or List/Library,
  2. clearSubScopes parameter specifies whether to clear unique permissions of child objects so that they will subsequently inherit permissions from the parent Web site or list

So how to know that the method breakroleinheritance() accepts two parameters

  1. Documentation from Microsoft
  2. API Metadata document

The metadata document ($metadata) is published at the service root for SharePoint & Graph API (v1.0 & beta versions). It describes about endpoints, methods, parameters, properties, associations etc

SharePoint Online API Metadata:

To access the metadata document for SharePoint REST service, hit the following URL from the browser after authentication

https://yourdomain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/_api/$metadata

The response to the request will be an XML document. If I search on the XML file for breakroleinheritance, I found the following information

It will not give you information about the HTTP method [GET, POST, PUT etc] to use but it will provide you some insights on the API metadata. I understand it is difficult to search the XML document, a big shout out to Sergei Sergeev who has created an excellent project SharePoint REST API Metadata Explorer to handle the difficulty. Find the link below to access the project

https://s-kainet.github.io/sp-rest-explorer

As per the information on the project, the metadata is getting updated daily.

MS Graph API Metadata:

To access the metadata document for MS Graph service, make a GET request in MS Graph Explorer to the following URL based on the versions you would like to get the metadata

Microsoft Graph API v1.0 metadata

https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata

Microsoft Graph API beta metadata

https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/$metadata

The response metadata will be in JSON.

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/traverse-the-graph

Hope this helps someone. Sharing is Caring.

Batch SharePoint requests [GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE] in PowerAutomate and MS Graph

Batching helps you in optimizing the performance of your application by combining multiple requests into a single request. SharePoint Online & MS Graph APIs supports the OData batch query option. Batch requests MUST be submitted as a single HTTP POST request to the batch endpoint of a service as below for

The request body of the above POST request must be made up of an ordered series of query operations [GET] and/or ChangeSets [POST or PATCH or DELETE]. You can have different combination of change sets.

In this blog post, I am going to show you how to batch multiple SharePoint requests for Creating, Reading, Updating & Deleting List items in

  1. PowerAutomate
  2. MS Graph

Pre-Requisites:

Have the following items ready to follow along this post

  1. SharePoint Site
    1. Site Id [GUID of the Site]
    2. Create a SharePoint List by the Name EmployeeInformation with the schema
      1. Title [Default]
      2. Location [Custom: Single Line of Text]
    3. List Id [GUID of the above list]
  2. Graph Explorer to test the Graph batching

Batch SharePoint requests in PowerAutomate:

If there is a requirement for multiple requests to be performed in SharePoint from your flow, the batch request with SharePoint Online REST API helps in reducing the execution time of your flow by combining many operations into a single request to SharePoint. Create an Instant Flow with trigger “Manually trigger a Flow” and the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint to send the batch requests.

Lets now prepare the parameters to be passed for the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action:

Site Address: https://mydevashiq.sharepoint.com/sites/test77

Method: POST

Headers:

  • Key: accept Value: application/json;odata=verbose
  • Key: content-type Value: multipart/mixed; boundary=batch_cd329ee8-ca72-4acf-b3bf-6699986af544

The boundary specification with batch_guid used on the content type header can be any random guid. In the request body the batch_guid will be used. To understand more about the OData batch operation, go through this documentation.

Body:

The request body given below is for reading all the items [GET], creating a list item, deleting an existing item & updating an existing item on the EmployeeInformation List using REST API endpoints. A ChangeSet (random guid) is used to group one or more of the insert/update/delete operations and MUST NOT contain query operations [GET]. For the query operation there must be separate batch as per the example below

--batch_cd329ee8-ca72-4acf-b3bf-6699986af544
Content-Type: application/http
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

GET https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('EmployeeInformation')/items?$select=Title,Location HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json;odata=nometadata

--batch_cd329ee8-ca72-4acf-b3bf-6699986af544
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="changeset_64c72699-6e7c-49c4-8d9b-6b16be92f7fc"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

--changeset_64c72699-6e7c-49c4-8d9b-6b16be92f7fc
Content-Type: application/http
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

POST https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('EmployeeInformation')/items HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json;odata=verbose

{
    "__metadata": {
      "type": "SP.Data.EmployeeInformationListItem"
    },
    "Title": "Mohamed Shaahid Faleel",
    "Location": "England"
}

--changeset_64c72699-6e7c-49c4-8d9b-6b16be92f7fc
Content-Type: application/http
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

DELETE https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('EmployeeInformation')/items(37) HTTP/1.1
If-Match: *

--changeset_64c72699-6e7c-49c4-8d9b-6b16be92f7fc
Content-Type: application/http
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

PATCH https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename/_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('EmployeeInformation')/items(30) HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json;odata=nometadata
If-Match: *

{
    "Title": "Mohamed Faleel",
    "Location": "USA
}

--changeset_64c72699-6e7c-49c4-8d9b-6b16be92f7fc--

--batch_cd329ee8-ca72-4acf-b3bf-6699986af544--

Once the above action is executed the response can be parsed to get the required information if you’ve used a GET request as per this documentation from Microsoft. PFB the screenshot of the action

The request body can be generated dynamically based on the requirement.

Batch SharePoint requests in MS Graph:

As we have done batching using the SharePoint REST APIs, in a similar manner you can combine multiple requests in one HTTP call using JSON batching for MS Graph. Here I will use the MS Graph explorer to test the batch request. Find the request parameters

Endpoint URL: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$batch

Method: POST

Body:

I’ve used the Site Id and List Id for the EmployeeInformation list to construct the SP endpoint URL’s as per the documentation for Creating, Reading, Updating & Deleting SP list items.

{
    "requests": [
      {
        "id": "1",
        "method": "POST",
        "url": "/sites/{77b3a8c8-549f-4848-b82c-8bb6f4864918}/lists/{2f923934-d474-4473-8fc0-3486bd0c15c5}/items",
         "body": {
          "fields":{"Title":"Test from Graph","Location":"Oslo"}
        },
        "headers": {
          "Content-Type": "application/json"
        }
      },
      {
        "id": "2",
        "method": "GET",
        "url": "/sites/{77b3a8c8-549f-4848-b82c-8bb6f4864918}/lists/{2f923934-d474-4473-8fc0-3486bd0c15c5}/items"
      },
      {
        "id": "3",
        "url": "/sites/{77b3a8c8-549f-4848-b82c-8bb6f4864918}/lists/{2f923934-d474-4473-8fc0-3486bd0c15c5}/items/44",
        "method": "PATCH",
        "body": {
            "fields":{"Title":"Mohamed Ashiq Faleel","Location":"Stockholm"}
        },
        "headers": {
          "Content-Type": "application/json"
        }
      },
      {
        "id": "4",
        "url": "/sites/{77b3a8c8-549f-4848-b82c-8bb6f4864918}/lists/{2f923934-d474-4473-8fc0-3486bd0c15c5}/items/50",
        "method": "DELETE"
      }
    ]
  }

On a same way you can batch different APIs endpoint from MS Graph. JSON batching also allows you to sequence the requests. Find below the screenshot from Graph explorer

Graph explorer also generates code snippets for the different programming languages

JavaScript Code snippet

Summary: On this post we have seen how to batch SharePoint requests using PowerAutomate & MS Graph. Microsoft has used request batching on many first party features. Hope you have found this informational & helpful in some way. Let me know any feedback or comments on the comment section below