Analyse and Enable Users to Adopt to Microsoft Teams early

As we are marching towards the transition phase from Skype to Microsoft Teams, let us look how you could enable/advice users to adopt to new technology early. The article helps you understand how you could automate the process of identifying users who are not of Microsoft Teams system, and sending them reminders to adopt to the latest technology. The approach explained here is one way of identifying and enabling users to adopt to Teams sooner. There are multiple ways to enable such adoptions.

Scenario

Let us first see how technically you could identify users and notify users on the usage. For this process, we will leverage Azure Logic Apps to create automated flows to identify the user pattern (usage and reports). The usage reports will be available on the Office 365 user activity reports. To access and manipulate the user patterns, we could leverage Microsoft Graph with necessary permissions.

As an example, we will consider logged in date as a parameter for this process. We will initially analyse the Microsoft team’s usage statistics on Office 365 report center and look for user logged in activity. If there are no activity present for any user, we will trigger an automated email for earlier adoption. Let us create a flow to achieve the entire process.

The below picture depicts the high level flow. In the below section, we will see each and every action in detail.

Azure Logic Apps Flow - To Identify Users not using Teams and Send Automated Mails

Office365 SharePoint: Validate & Transform XML Data from Enterprise Systems into SharePoint using Azure Logics App

In this article, you will understand how the XML content from enterprise systems is first validated and converted/transformed to JSON, and pushed to Office 365 SharePoint online lists. We will be leveraging the power of Azure services, to achieve everything with just configurations.

The services used under Azure will be

• Logics App
• The entire flow will be set here. 
• Integration account.
• With in integration account, we will store the schema and map files to validate and transform the data.

In my previous article, you have seen how the JSON content from enterprise systems is flowing into SharePoint online. There, we have not focused on validating the JSON data, since HTTP trigger by default validates.

• Office365 SharePoint : Converting Enterprise System Data using Azure Integration Account Map Component and Logic Apps

We have seen the introduction to the features being leveraged in the previous article. Let us get directly into the business scenarios.

Business Scenario

Assume an enterprise system exposes XML data to multiple systems. We will consider source system to be HTTP service (for our POC) and the target system to be SharePoint. The XML data from source system cannot be directly feed into SharePoint. For this purpose, we need to transform the XML content, into the required format. The following picture depicts the transformation. The data being transformed is a SharePoint list item entry, along with metadata properties required for the list item.

Data Representation between two systems. Left - XML data from HTTP service, and Right - JSON data compatible for SharePoint list

Office365 SharePoint : Converting Enterprise System Data using Azure Integration Account Map Component and Logic Apps

This article explains the advantages of using Azure Integration account along with Azure Logics App for integrating enterprise systems with Office 365 SharePoint.  

Azure Integration Account & Logic Apps:

Azure Integration account provides ways to store and manage the components/artifacts, that includes agreements, maps, schemas, etc. In this article, let us look at leveraging maps component and also look at advantages of using it.  

Maps component is used for mapping the data from one system into another system. The mapping of two systems, those using different form of data. These scenarios are handled by using liquid template mapping or XSLT mapping formats. Here in this article, liquid templates are used for mapping the data. 

Azure Logic apps is leveraged to explain the enterprise integrations scenarios, along with usage of Azure Integration account’s map. In the scenarios explained below, I have shown the data flow between HTTP service and SharePoint for easy understanding. 

Business Scenario & Mapping:

We are considering two services. One HTTP services that uses JSON for representing the data, and other SharePoint REST API that again uses JSON to represent the data. But there is variation in format that is being used between these two services. Say for example, we are using services to move the book details from one HTTP post request to SharePoint. The following picture depicts the data transformation. 

Data Representations between two services/systems considered

Note: Assume HTTP service as another system, which posts data. For our easy/better understanding, i have simplified the logic with simple data representations.