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.