Surveys on Microsoft Teams with notifications using Microsoft Forms and Microsoft Flow

The objective of this article is to demonstrate the power of Microsoft services available to create survey/quiz and automate processes without using any code.

Let us first create a quiz/survey on Microsoft Form, and publish it on Microsoft Teams. Login to Microsoft Forms and create a new quiz with appropriate points. Click on Share to get the response link to the created quiz. This link is posted on Microsoft Teams to get responses (This is explained at the later point of this article).

Creating Quiz/Survey on Microsoft Forms

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

Automate Microsoft Teams Channel Creation Process with No-Code Configurations

The channels creation could be automated with the help of Microsoft Flow actions, and that is without writing any custom code. Microsoft Teams itself could be leveraged as medium for necessary user approvals.

As the Skype is sooner going to be replaced with Microsoft Teams, the necessary processes should be setup wherever required to ease the user and admin relationships.

Why do you need to setup such process? Let us consider a scenario, where your organization needs a process to create and setup channels in your Microsoft Teams tenant. Giving permissions for users/groups to create channels will end up with so much of test groups created. Instead, an approval process could be set to automate this process, to get necessary approvals for creating channels.

Configured Components

The implementation idea is going to very simple, with SharePoint and Microsoft Flow being used to automate this process. The following tools are being used for this demonstration.

• Microsoft Teams – Medium where this logic being applied 
• SharePoint list - an intermediate store for holding new channel registration information.
• Microsoft Flow – Configured steps to automate, 
• Send out necessary notifications to admins for approvals
• Based on approval decisions, create the necessary channels under respective team
• Send out an notification on channel creation

SharePoint/Teams Configuration

Set up the preliminary steps on SharePoint, for storing the requests.

• Setup a SharePoint list to get input of channel details form users. The input could be team name and channel name.
• Configure the list on any of the default teams channel tab.

The overall process is depicted in this picture.

Automate the Channel Creation Process - with no-code steps

Provide Anonymous User Access to Office 365 SharePoint Files for Specific Duration

In this post, let us look at giving the access to the files for specified interval. This requirement might be very useful in several aspects. Say for example, the scenario could be like the form/documents that needs to be filled within the specified deadline once generated.

Giving access doesn't mean working with file/item level permissions. This approach provides ways to generate links for SharePoint files with necessary permissions, that could be accessible for sometime.

In the previous article, we have seen ways to create and share links, which is scoped to users/groups/anonymous users.

• Create and Share Scoped Links of SharePoint Files to Users using Microsoft Flow

Microsoft has recently released an update, which has new set of actions. One such feature is stop sharing an item or file action.

Provide Access for Specified Time (Stop Sharing File)

From the previous post, we will go one more step ahead in revoking the provided access and sending out notification to user on the same.

Here 3 more actions are added.

• Delay: As per requirements, provide a delay/wait time for flow to pause.
• Stop sharing an item or folder: Revoke all the previously shared links.
• Send an email : Notification to say the permissions has been revoked.

Note: Stop sharing an item or folder, revokes/removes all the previously shared links, irrespective of any scope and target audience. So for example, let us consider previously two type of scoped links are created and shared for an item/folder. Executing stop sharing action will revoke/remove all the share links for that particular item/folder.

Create and Share Scoped Links of SharePoint Files to Users using Microsoft Flow

Assume a file is getting generated/getting created by users on the SharePoint online platforms. The business wants to share the file links with the targeted groups/users, which is view-able or editable. This business process is automated using SharePoint’s in-built sharing feature and Microsoft Flow.

SharePoint online has an inbuilt share feature, for creating links for items/files on it’s platform (At the end of this article, this OOB share feature snapshot is shown for reference). The scope of this feature is available in the following levels.

• Anonymous
• Organization
• Specific people

Microsoft Flow has a SharePoint action called “create sharing link feature for a file or folder”. At the time of writing, this action has the following scopes only.

• Anonymous
• Organization

Note: 

• The type of access could be either 
• view and edit
• or, view
• There is no scope for sharing it to specific people.

Capture and Document User Information with Image on SharePoint - Part II

This is second part of article on capturing and documenting user details on to Office 365 SharePoint. The previous article shows setting up the Microsoft Flow to capture and creation of document with user details.

• Capture and Document User Information with Image on SharePoint - Part I  (http://www.techwithnakkeeran.com/2019/06/capture-and-document-user-information.html)

In this article, recording of user details is discussed. PowerApps forms are used to capture the user details. The details includes user name, picture, etc. Then integrating the form with Microsoft Flow is discussed.

Setting up the User Form

In my scenario, there are only two user entries recorded.

• User Name
• User Picture

Let us set the form.

• Navigate to PowerApps portal/ app, and then select blank app.
• From insert option, select two screens-
• New blank screen - For user input
• New Success screen - For showing user success message.

Screens & Controls Configured on the Form

Capture and Document User Information with Image on SharePoint - Part I

In this article, let us see how user details including user picture could be captured and saved onto SharePoint as documents using PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.

Here is the detailed scenario: User details like Name, picture, etc. needs to be captured and documented, and has to be made available on SharePoint. This process could be automated with the help of Office 365 SharePoint, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.

The following points depicts this automated flow.

• Using PowerApps, Custom Form needs to be created showing the required fields.
• Microsoft Flow will be used to capture the information entered into the Form.
• The flow once captures the information, it will format the data and creates the document, before saving it to SharePoint. 
• Creation of documents is not straight forward approach. So in this case HTML file needs to be created. [The proper formatting could be done by taking HTML file creation approach.] 
• Then HTML file is converted into required format. Then the target document could be uploaded into SharePoint library.

Note: One Drive for Business connectors provides necessary actions for creation and conversion of documents. The same will be leveraged in this samples.

Adding Tasks to Office 365 Project Online Plan Schedules Using Microsoft Flow - Automate Project Management Process

Here let us look how to automate the addition of tasks into Project online using Microsoft Flow. Let us trigger this automation, on mail arrival. This article helps in automating project management processes.

As you are aware, MS flow helps connecting systems, with only condition that the services should be exposed. In this article, I have leveraged the inbuilt triggers and actions to achieve our requirement. This flow creates tasks on Office 365 project web app online plans, when an email arrives on to Office 365 outlook mailbox.

Scenario & Flow

Trigger can be from anything. Here for our basic understanding, I have thought of leveraging mailbox. So let us look at the flow.

• Trigger - In this use case, I have considered email trigger. i.e., mail arrives with specific subject. The subject contains the task detail. 
• Flow will be triggered, on arrival of any mail to the mailbox mentioned. 
• Flow checks few conditions. i.e., mail subject contains text for addition of task to project. 
• If condition is satisfied, then process the following. 
• Checkout project 
• Add task with task name. (Task name will be extracted from the subject of email) 
• Publish & Check-in the project. 

Hands-on session on Microsoft Flow

C# Corner Bengaluru Chapter Meet! Hands-on session on #MicrosoftFlow with Vijai Anand

Hands-on Microsoft Flow from Nakkeeran Natarajan

Using Azure Functions, Cognitive Services and Flow for classifying Office 365 SharePoint Word Documents - Part II

Let us look how to integrate Azure Function, Cognitive services into Microsoft Flow for extracting tags/categories and update the SharePoint document item.

This article series helps us to work on a special use case of extracting information of word documents uploaded to Office 365 SharePoint libraries and then analyze/classify the document content using Azure Cognitive Services. Then update the document with classified data as tags/categories. The article links are shown below.

• Using Azure Functions, Cognitive Services and Flow for classifying Office 365 SharePoint Word Documents - Part I (Previous Article) - Azure function is briefly explained with code to understand how the data is being extracted using open XML formats/references available.
• Using Azure Functions, Cognitive Services and Flow for classifying Office 365 SharePoint Word Documents - Part II (Current Article)

Extract Code From Github

The Azure function created in the previous article is available on Github repository (https://github.com/nakkeerann/analyze-sp-word-documents).

• Clone the code from the github repository to the local. 
• Open in visual studio and make necessary changes, like updating user credentials and SharePoint site and details.

Using Azure Functions, Cognitive Services and Flow for classifying Office 365 SharePoint Word Documents - Part I

This article series helps us to work on a special use case of extracting information of word documents uploaded to Office 365 SharePoint libraries and then analyze the document content using Azure Cognitive Services.

We have seen before extracting tags and metadata properties of image files from Office 365 SharePoint using Microsoft Flow and Azure Cognitive Services.

Microsoft Flow has a Get File content action, but that doesn't help extracting word documents content. Only it supports extracting content of notepad as straight forward approach. Since Microsoft Flow doesnt provide any option to read the word documents content, we will be using Azure Functions to extract the content. Once we have the content, we will use Azure Cognitive service to get the tags for the content extracted. Here Microsoft Flow is used to manipulate triggers and subsequent actions. So our algorithm is will be as follows.

High level architecture for classifying SharePoint Word Documents

Connecting Office 365 SharePoint with CDS using Microsoft Flow

How many of you have heard about CDM and CDS? These two components are availabe on Microsoft platform. CDM stands for Common Data Model and CDS is Common Data Service.

CDM is a secured database stored on Microsoft Azure, which contains business standard entities. Those entities can be used by users for various purposes including integrations. This is commonly used for integrating two Microsoft Systems, with the help of templates/entities.

CDS is a basically a service, that utilizes common data model to enable cross platform reporting capabilities. It is most commonly used on Power BIs for report generations.

Scenario

Think of a scenario, where some application uses common data service for storing the data. And some application uses Office 365 SharePoint as the storage point. And both of these applications deals with the same data sets. In this case, both of these storage system needs to be synchronized.

The solution which we are looking at may not be a full end to end solution, but let’s see how we can push data from SharePoint to CDS. There might be many ways, but here let’s look how it can be done easily using Microsoft Flow with just configurations.

Error Handling for Office 365 SharePoint Actions on Microsoft Flow

In this post, let us look how we are going to handle the Office 365 SharePoint action errors that occurs on Microsoft Flow platform.

Problem Statement: There is an option to get the user profile property on Microsoft Flow using SharePoint REST API. We need to handle if there is any error to this action. Let us see how to handle/catch the error and send a mail with error details.

Sometime back I have published an article for updating user display names for items created on SharePoint using Microsoft Flow. We will use the same concept here, but only we will see how to catch and send the error details over mail.

The flow to get and update the user profile property is as follows.

• Create a trigger to fire the flow whenever an item is created.
• Create a SharePoint action “Send an HTTP request to SharePoint”, to get the user profile property details as explained in the article mentioned above.
• Parse JSON data to get the exact required property (user display name).
• Update the same item with author name field with the value retrieved.

Handling Error:

The following steps shows how to configure the flow to handle the error and configuring appropriate send email action.

• Just after the “Send an HTTP request to SharePoint” action, add a parallel branch with an action. 

Protecting Office 365 SharePoint Data on Microsoft Flow

Here, let us look how we can protect the Office 365 SharePoint application data on Microsoft Flow.

Microsoft Flow is used for connecting multiple services and applications. The data flows between multiple platforms, with the help of Microsoft Flow.

Imagine there are business critical data available on SharePoint and your organization doesn’t let data to move out of its controlled systems. As administrator, you can build environments and restrict the data flow with the help of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies.

DLP policies are created to restrict the data flow between business connectors and non-business connectors. The restrictions are made with help of data groups. The Data groups are of two types, Business data only and No business data allowed. The connectors can be added to these two data groups.

If you don’t want data to be available on social media platforms like Facebook or twitter, you can keep the social media connectors on “No business data allowed” group. The restriction cannot be made just for social media connectors; it can be applicable to any connector, if the connector is not listed under “Business data only” data group.

Analyze and Classify Images on Office 365 SharePoint using MS Flow and Azure Service

Let us see how the Office 365 SharePoint library images are analyzed using Microsoft Flow and Azure Cognitive Service. By analyzing the images, we can classify the images. Also, we can extract the image description, tags or taxonomy data of image, locations present on images, or even the image categories.

Azure Cognitive service provides Computer Vision API, which helps providing tools to understand the content of any images. Computer vision API helps in classifying the image, identifying captions of image and even image categorizations. Further API helps in recognizing celebrities and landmarks, reading out text from images, analyzing video in real time and generating thumbnails for the videos.

Computer vision API can be leveraged on multiple platforms. Microsoft Flow is one such powerful platform, where we integrate computer vision API for analyzing the images uploaded to SharePoint.

Use Case: Let us see how the images uploaded can be analyzed classified on SharePoint images library. At the end of article, you will know how the below image uploaded can be updated classification and description data.

Making Office 365 SharePoint REST API calls on Microsoft Flow

In this post, let us look how we can work with the SharePoint data using the REST APIs explicitly in the Microsoft Flow. We will be using this approach when no action/connector are available OOB for processing the required SharePoint data on the MS Flow. Person who have knowledge on the APIs used will prefer to use this approach.

In my previous post, we have built the connectors/actions using the REST APIs. The objective of my previous post, was to show how any connector/action can be created and published on the portal. Such actions can be shared with other users and it is readily available as OOB actions for other/end users. Connectors/Actions will be created by developers and the business users will use such connectors on their flows.

At the end, both the approaches yield the same results. Both the approaches will be used only when no connector is available for users to work with the required data. Hope the above explanation differentiates two approaches available for working with the SharePoint data.

Let us look how we can retrieve the required SharePoint data using the REST APIs available. We can use the OOB action “Send an HTTP request to SharePoint”. This action supports any type (GET, PUT, POST, PATCH or DELETE) of service calls. In the sample below, let us only look at the GET operation.

Use Case: Retrieve the use profile properties of item author, whenever an item created on SharePoint list.

Configure Microsoft Flow for Sending Office365 SharePoint File Attachments in the Mails

Here, let us look how to configure Microsoft Flow for sending mails with Office 365 SharePoint library files as attachments.

Imagine there is a requirement of sending mails with SharePoint library files as attachments, if a file/item is created/uploaded. Previously we were creating tools for such requirements. Unfortunately, SharePoint designer doesn’t provide option for attaching files in the mails, in the configurations.

Microsoft Flow provides a solution for the above requirement. The solution just includes few configuration steps, which might take one or two minutes of your effort J

Use Case: Whenever a file is created in the folder, send out a mail notification with the uploaded file as attachment to a particular mail box.

Steps Involved:

The following steps shows the detailed configuration steps.

• Create a Microsoft Flow with a blank template as base.
• Select SharePoint connector, search and select “When a file is created in a folder” trigger. In the trigger, Provide the site address URL and select the necessary library/folder path.

Creating Office 365 SharePoint Custom Connectors on Microsoft Flow

Here, let us look how the custom connectors can be created for accessing SharePoint data on Microsoft Flow.

Microsoft Flow provides multiple connectors from various services including SharePoint to work with the data. The connectors contain multiple triggers and actions. For SharePoint connector by Out of the Box, Microsoft provides 8 triggers and 28 actions on Microsoft flow.

UseCase: Imagine you want to retrieve the SharePoint user profile data of some user. Currently there is no action available for MS Flow developers to retrieve SharePoint user profile data. Such triggers and actions can be created by developers on the Microsoft Flow platform. In this post, let us look how one such custom action can be created and used on the Microsoft Flow platform.

The configuration involves the following steps.

1. Configuring Azure AD Application, which provides necessary permissions and helps in authenticating the calls made from Microsoft Flow.
2. Generating the collection file (Swagger) using postman tool, which will be used as base file while building the custom connector.
3. Configuring the custom connector, which will make call to SharePoint to get the required data with necessary inputs.
4. Testing the custom connector created above.
5. Creating/Configuring the flow, which will also use the custom connector we have created above.

Configure Azure AD Application for Flow Authentications:

• Create a new app on the Azure Active directory.

Content Classification on Office 365 SharePoint using MS Flow and LUIS

In this post, let us look how the Office 365 SharePoint list content can be classified using Microsoft Flow with the help of LUIS text prediction techniques. Text added to Office 365 SharePoint list are classified and saved back to SharePoint using Microsoft Flow and LUIS.

Consider a scenario of having queries list, and admin wants the queries to be auto classified before routing the queries for solution. Microsoft Flow provides a LUIS connector, which helps in predicting and classifying the text being saved to SharePoint.

Note: In a layman scenario on LUIS portal, categories will be intents and queries will be utterances.

Connecting SharePoint and LUIS using Flow

The solution consists of three steps.

• Query is created on SharePoint: Flow is triggered, whenever a new item is created in the SharePoint list.
• Query category is predicted using LUIS: Flow uses LUIS Get Prediction action for classifying the item created. The action predicts the data using the trained app created on the LUIS portal. The output of this step will be matching intents (predicted scores) with the relevant scores.
• Query is updated with the category predicted: After classification, the top scoring intent from the above step is saved to the respective SharePoint list item’s category field.

Text Translation on Office 365 SharePoint

Let us look how the text added to Office 365 SharePoint list are translated and saved back to SharePoint using Microsoft Flow and Translator.

Consider a business scenario of having multi-lingual content to be available in SharePoint list and you need write the text in all the required languages. Instead, Microsoft Flow can be leveraged for translating the content on Office 365 SharePoint for the required languages with the help of Translator service.

There are several ways available for implementing the above scenario. The best possible solution is explained in this post.

Note: This article only focuses on translating content present on SharePoint lists. For enabling multilingual feature for whole portal, you can refer to the Microsoft article here.