Tag: SharePoint

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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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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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.

Create Tile view card for custom List item image attachments using PowerAutomate & JSON row view formatting

In Modern SharePoint lists you can display list item content in a more modern way using the Tiles view layout. If you have very big list with multiple columns along with picture columns you get a horizontal scroll bar on the list view, the Tiles view can solve this issue since the content will be displayed on the tile card where you can design the layout of the tile card to display the different list column values.

There are many blog posts & PnP Samples which will help you to create a Tiles view using JSON row formatting. If you are new to JSON row formatting, I recommend you to go through this link from Microsoft. Microsoft has recently brought in interface to format the list item row & do conditional formatting by creating rules based on column values

On this blog post, lets see how to create Tiles view as shown above for the Images stored as attachments in the list item. If you add an attachment to list item in SharePoint list, the attachments are stored in the following path

https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/SiteName/Lists/ListName/Attachments/ItemID/attachmentName.extension

Components used in this blog post

  1. Power Automate Flow: To get the path of the attached file (Image file in this case), we will be creating an automated Flow which gets triggered on List item creation to get the path of the image & update it to the custom hyperlink list column (ProductPhotoHL).
  2. JSON: To create a Tile view layout using list row view formatting.

Pre-Requisites:

  • Create a SP List by the name ProductInformation with the following columns
    1. Title: Single line of text
    2. ProductPhotoHL: Hyperlink (to the image)
    3. ProductPhotoPic: Picture (to the image)
    4. ProductPrice: Number
    5. Features: Multiple lines of text
  • Couple of list items with Images as attachments after the Power automate flow is created
    1. Only images as attachments
    2. Not more than one image as an attachment

Power Automate to get the path of the Image attachment URL:

Create an automated flow with Trigger When an item is created and configure the trigger to the ProductInformation list. Add the Get Attachments action connected to the Product Information list & for Id parameter it should the List item Id (ID) selected using the dynamic content from the trigger When an item is created.

Now with the above action we have the attachment URL of the image, this must be updated to the list column ProductPhotoHL & ProductPhotoPic of the ProductInformation list in order to be displayed in the Tile view. To create the above shown Tile view ProductPhotoPic (Picture) is not required but I’ve used it show you that we can create a Thumnail of the image on the default list view using the Picture column ProductPhotoPic. By the time I am writing this post the Power Automate action Update item is not capable to update a column with Picture as a DataType but it can update a HyperLink column. Action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint to make HTTP requests to any SharePoint Rest endpoints, I’ve used this action to update the ProductPhotoPic (Picture) column as below

I’ve said this on the pre-requisite section that there should not be more than one attachment. In the Body of the HTTP request, the Url parameter for the ProductPhotoHL & ProductPhotoPic gets only the first attachment URL from the previous action “Get attachments” AbsoluteUri as dynamic content. To get the first attachment URL you can use any of the following formula from the expression

  • first(body(‘Get_attachments’))?[‘AbsoluteUri’]
  • body(‘Get_attachments’)?[0]?[‘AbsoluteUri’]

I’ve used the function first() to get the first item from the array. The flow is ready, add couple of items to the list by filling in information only for Title, ProductPrice, Features & a Image as an attachment. The flow gets triggered which will update the ProductPhotoHL & ProductPhotoPic with the image attachment url. You can download the flow template from the following GitHub repo link.

Create Tiles View layout using JSON:

I’ve used the sample from PnP List view formatting samples to create items in tile layout for images. On the sample JSON I’ve updated the column ProductPhoto to ProductPhotoHL. The updated JSON is available here for download. Now copy the JSON & go to the List view & click on the down arrow (All Items)>Format current view>Advanced mode as shown below

The Apply formatting to should be set to Entire Row & paste the JSON to box as shown on the picture and then Save it.

Now you will have another layout by the name Tiles added to the existing layouts List & Compact List as shown below, select it

Now its time to see the need for the column ProductPhotoPic of datatype Picture, with the default layout you can see the thumbnail of the image added as an attachment

Summary: There are many samples available in PnP Github repo for List Row View & Column view formatting. In document & picture libraries the Tiles view layout are added by default, there is also a Column by the name Thumbnail in a Picture library. You can display a Thumbnail view of Images in PowerApps gallery for the Images stored in Document library, go through this link for more information. If you are storing images on a seperate document library & not as an attachment, the url of the image can be added on the HyperLink column. Hope you find this interesting & helpful.

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

Create/Delete a SharePoint custom theme using PowerAutomate

In a modern SharePoint site you can create custom themes using PowerShell, REST API & CSOM. In this blogpost I will show you how to create themes using PowerAutomate. The following REST endpoints are available

There is an online Theme Generator tool that you can use to define new custom themes. At the time of writing this post, the endpoints are open to everybody & not just to the SharePoint tenant admins which seems to be quite buggy. Laura Kokkarinen has written a very detailed blog post about this topic. I’ve got the inspiration to write about this topic from John Liu who has recently recorded a video about this. Find screenshot from the Theme generator tool:

Once you have defined the theme from the tool, click on the Export theme button on the Right top corner of the tool to export the theme as a code block in JS, JSON & PowerShell. In this case, click JSON & Copy the generated block

{
  "themePrimary": "#50AFC6",
  "themeLighterAlt": "#f7fcfd",
  "themeLighter": "#def1f6",
  "themeLight": "#c3e6ee",
  "themeTertiary": "#8ecddd",
  "themeSecondary": "#61b8ce",
  "themeDarkAlt": "#489eb3",
  "themeDark": "#3c8597",
  "themeDarker": "#2d626f",
  "neutralLighterAlt": "#faf9f8",
  "neutralLighter": "#f3f2f1",
  "neutralLight": "#edebe9",
  "neutralQuaternaryAlt": "#e1dfdd",
  "neutralQuaternary": "#d0d0d0",
  "neutralTertiaryAlt": "#c8c6c4",
  "neutralTertiary": "#d9d9d9",
  "neutralSecondary": "#b3b3b3",
  "neutralPrimaryAlt": "#8f8f8f",
  "neutralPrimary": "gray",
  "neutralDark": "#616161",
  "black": "#474747",
  "white": "#ffffff"
}

Flow for Creating or adding the Theme to the tenant:

Let’s create an instant flow with trigger Manually trigger a flow to add a theme to the tenant. Add two Compose actions as shown below

The first compose action is the actual definition copied from the theme generator tool

{
  "palette" : 
JSON block copied from the Theme generator tool
}

The second compose action has the name of the theme & its stringified JSON from the output of the previous compose action. To convert the JSON to string add a string expression on the dynamic content pane

{
"name":"My first Custom theme created using FLOW", 
"themeJson": @{string(outputs('Compose_-_Custom_Theme_Pallete'))}
}

Now add the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint with the following parameters

Site Address: https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename

Method: POST

URI: /_api/thememanager/AddTenantTheme

Headers:

Key: Accept

Value: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal

Body: Output of the Second compose action (Compose – Theme Name)

Now you are ready to test the flow. Once its successful you can apply the custom theme to the site

Click cog wheel on the site to select the theme by selecting the Change the look link

For deleting the theme, add the action Send a HTTP request to SharePoint with the following parameters

Site Address: https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename

Method: POST

URI: /_api/thememanager/DeleteTenantTheme

Headers:

Key: Accept

Value: application/json;odata.metadata=minimal

Body: { “name”:”the name of your custom theme” }

Summary: Hope you find this post useful & informational. Let me know if there is any comments or feedback below.

Automated trigger recurrence frequency – Power Automate

Have you ever noticed on your Automated flow with trigger for e.g Item created or modified on a SharePoint list will not run immediately as & when there was an item either created or modified in the list? The reason is all the automated triggers has a recurrent frequency schedule which is set to 3 mins, it means it looks for the changes in the SharePoint list every 3 mins. To check this, go to Peek Code on the trigger to check the interval frequency

For the When an Item is created trigger

This setting cannot be changed in Power Automate but with Azure Logic Apps you can adjust this setting. For more details on the pricing, refer to this link

If there is further delay in the trigger to get fired, check your flow plan since it has a dependency. As per information gathered from the Flow community forum

The maximum flow frequency for User based or App based plans is 1 minute, however if you are using Free plan it will be 15 minutes. And if it is Flow for Office 365 (Plan from your Enterprise license E3, E5 etc) and Flow for Dynamics 365 it will be 5 minutes.

From the FAQ page in the Microsoft site for Flow, it says

Your plan determines how often your flows run. For example, your flows may run every 15 minutes if you’re on the free plan. If a flow is triggered less than 15 minutes after its last run, it’s queued until 15 minutes have elapsed.

The same trigger with Logic apps which has options to update the recurrent frequency interval

If you are new to Logic Apps, follow this article from Microsoft to get started. The other advantage with Logic apps is there is a code view to update & Save which is not the case with Power Automate. In Power Automate, you can only view the code & not update

Hope this information was useful in some way. If you have any comments, let me know on the comments section.

Collect response from a user with Adaptive Card in Teams using Power Automate

This is in continuation to my earlier post using Adaptive card for collecting information in Outlook also known as Outlook actionable message. On this post I am going to show you how to collect information from a user in Teams and storing the values back in a SharePoint list. The following Power Automate actions under Microsoft Teams connector are now available in preview mode which helps us to capture data back from a Teams adaptive card meaning you would be able to make POST calls back to the flow by click of a button (Action.Submit) on the Adaptive card

  1. Post an adaptive card as the Flow bot to a Teams user, and wait for a response
  2. Post an adaptive card as the Flow bot to a Teams channel, and wait for a response

Once an Adaptive card is posted in Teams using the above actions, the flow run will not continue until the recipient or someone in the channel (if sent to channel) responds to inputs that are required within the card till then the flow is put on wait for maximum period (Async calls) of 30 days as per the documentation. Post that period the flow will time out if no one responds to the card. There can be use case to collect responses from users in Teams & post it to Azure services like SQL etc, this avoids the users to have access to premium services or license since the card is sent using Power automate. The use case I’ve chosen for this post is to collect Name & Email address of a teams user by sending them an input form which stores the responses in a SharePoint list after the user responds. Find the resources I’ve used for this example

  • Adaptive Card Designer for creating JSON
  • Automated Flow with action to post an JSON Adaptive card using the connector MS Teams
  • SharePoint custom list with columns Name & Email
  • Microsoft Teams with the Flow App installed

Adaptive Card Creation:

Let’s start by designing the card using the Adaptive card designer. Click on Open Sample, select Input Form as shown below

Then change the host app from the default Bot Framework Webchat to Microsoft Teams – Light (Optional Step). Remove the Phone number Text Block [Element] & the corresponding Text.Input [Inputs] field to keep it simple & I’ve also changed the Adaptive card image URL on the right column to the following URL since the image default image on the sample has got some issues rendering on teams. Find some information on image size & resolutions limits here.

Click Copy Card JSON from ribbon for this card to be used on the flow. We now have the adaptive cards JSON ready with us, let’s go ahead and the create the flow using Power Automate. Find the generated JSON below

{
    "$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
    "type": "AdaptiveCard",
    "version": "1.0",
    "body": [
        {
            "type": "ColumnSet",
            "columns": [
                {
                    "type": "Column",
                    "width": 2,
                    "items": [
                        {
                            "type": "TextBlock",
                            "text": "Tell us about yourself",
                            "weight": "Bolder",
                            "size": "Medium"
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "TextBlock",
                            "text": "We just need a few more details to get you booked for the trip of a lifetime!",
                            "isSubtle": true,
                            "wrap": true
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "TextBlock",
                            "text": "Don't worry, we'll never share or sell your information.",
                            "isSubtle": true,
                            "wrap": true,
                            "size": "Small"
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "TextBlock",
                            "text": "Your name",
                            "wrap": true
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "Input.Text",
                            "id": "myName",
                            "placeholder": "Last, First"
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "TextBlock",
                            "text": "Your email",
                            "wrap": true
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "Input.Text",
                            "id": "myEmail",
                            "placeholder": "youremail@example.com",
                            "style": "Email"
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "type": "Column",
                    "width": 1,
                    "items": [
                        {
                            "type": "Image",
                            "url": "https://download-ssl.msgamestudios.com/content/mgs/ce/production/SolitaireWin10/dev/adapative_card_assets/v1/tile_spider.png",
                            "size": "auto"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "actions": [
        {
            "type": "Action.Submit",
            "title": "Submit"
        }
    ]
}

Flow Creation:

Create an Instant flow with trigger “Manually trigger a Flow”, this will post an Adaptive card to a Teams user with the Input form which collects response to a SharePoint list. Create a SharePoint list with two columns for us to store the Name and Email submitted from the adaptive card on Teams.

Add the flow action “Post an adaptive card as the Flow bot to a Teams user, and wait for a response”, on the action

  1. Enter the email address of the user in the Recipient field
  2. Paste the JSON copied from the card designer in the Message field
  3. Enter information to be shown to the user on the field Update message after the Submit button is clicked
  4. Field Should update card to be set as Yes

Now add the action “Create item” to store the form response in the SharePoint list created above with the request body information mapped to Name (myName) & Email (myEmail) using the dynamic content. The dynamic content has also information about the user (Email, Display Name, Response time etc) responded in Teams

The flow is ready, Run the flow to test it. The recipient would have received the card in Teams as below

After the user keys in the Name & Email address on Teams and clicking Submit button will complete the flow till then the flow will be in wait state for a period of 30 days maximum. The data will be submitted to the SharePoint list and the card will be updated with the update message as below

There is an Adaptive card designer in Power Automate which is an experimental feature currently with which you would able to design/update Adaptive card in the Power Automate action. To enable it, click the cog wheel on your flow environment and click  “View All Power Automate settings”. On the popup toggle the Experimental Features to On and click Save button.

Go back to the flow in Edit mode, the Teams action will now have an Adaptive card designer as shown below

Senior Program Manager for Power Automate Audrie Gordon has a great video on Adaptive cards for Power Automate which has lot of information.

If you run in to an error while submitting the form or triggering the flow, look at the Troubleshooting tips for Adaptive cards. There are few known issues documented here with regards to using this action on Power Automate.

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/overview-adaptive-cards

Collecting responses from Multiple team users:

If you want to collect from responses from multiple users, refer the following blog post

https://ashiqf.com/2020/09/07/collect-response-from-multiple-users-with-adaptive-card-in-teams-using-power-automate/

Summary: You now have created an input form for collecting information from a user in teams. To know the future road map for Adaptive cards, click here to know. There are couple of amazing templates available in the Flow environment, just search for Adaptive card in templates where you get template for different use cases. Hope you have enjoyed reading this post and find it useful. If you have any comments or feedback, please provide it on the comments section below.