In 2020, I survived a suspected cardiac arrest and crashed my bike. An implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) — a small device placed under the skin of the chest to monitor and treat dangerous heart rhythms — was implanted as my safety net. Apart from greatly reducing my exercise levels due to the nature of my diagnosis, ARVC, I was living a relatively normal life. I even took part in Caledonia Etape on an Ebike in September 2021 — until I started noticing my neck swell and jugular veins pop out when I bent over, went swimming, lightly exerted, vacuumed or stirred a sauce for dinner. ...

If you’ve heard of Microsoft’s Power Platform but aren’t sure exactly what it includes, this post gives you a clear overview of all five components. Power Platform is a collection of low-code, no-code tools created by Microsoft that allows users to automate business processes, create custom apps, build chatbots, visualise data, and publish web pages — spanning five main components: Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Power BI, and Power Pages. ...

Ever since Microsoft removed the ability to add users to Exchange Distribution Lists via the Graph API, Power Automate users have been stuck. In this post, I’ll walk you through a workaround using PowerShell and Azure Runbooks to get distribution list management back into your flows. It’s been over 12 months since I wrote my blog post Add members to a distribution list – Power Automate where initially it was possible to add members directly. That functionality was removed by design and has never made a comeback. Fortunately, I came across PowerShell commands to both add and remove users from a distribution group — and we can bring this to an Azure Runbook. For more details on the Graph API limitation, see Working with groups in Microsoft Graph. ...

Need to filter a deeply nested JSON object in Power Automate without burning through your API limits? In this post, I’ll show you how to repurpose and filter a JSON array in just two actions — no Apply to Each required — saving you thousands of API calls when working with large datasets. Here is an interesting sample JSON object {}, that contains a JSON array [] with 3 objects. The final solution will have 3000 objects. The aim is to retrieve two key values from the object whilst checking another nested array for a common string ‘ACABA’. Whilst it is perfectly acceptable to use an apply to each and loop through all 3000 objects, this will eat into your 24 hour API limit on the Power Platform and whilst this hasn’t really been a concern in the past, Microsoft are lowering those limits and will begin enforcement once a new admin level report has been released. ...

Need to load a bunch of tasks into Microsoft Planner without clicking through the UI one by one? Using Power Automate and Excel (or any other available data source 😉), you can bulk import tasks into Planner in a single flow run. I have previously recorded a video on this process and use both a tasks table and a config table to support this cloud flow. This will enable you to dynamically choose the group and plan name, as well as import planner tasks involving a title, bucket id / name, start and due date, assigned user ids, a category, priority, check list and file attachment(s)! This flow is not for the faint hearted but should support you with your goal to build a Planner Power Automate integration. ...

Power Automate has an action “Export to File for Power BI Reports” which enables you to export a Power BI Visual or Page as a PDF, Power Point (PPTX) or Image (PNG) file. Below you will learn about the Workspace requirements, how to identify the report page and visual names and how to implement a report level filter. We will explore common errors, how to setup your Power Automate Cloud flow, some of the limitations, the Power BI Playground and finally saving the exported file to SharePoint and sending via Teams or Email. ...

Have you ever needed to automatically disable a Microsoft Form — say, when an event reaches capacity? In this post, I’ll show you how to programmatically close a form using Power Automate with a single HTTP action, and we’ll explore some practical use cases for this technique. Why Disable a Form Automatically? It is technically possible to disable a Microsoft Form from Power Automate. Why would you want to do this? Maybe it’s time limited - ok sure you can specify an end date via the existing UI. But what if that date or time was to be dynamic? ...

If you’ve ever used the standard Outlook Events connector in Power Automate, you’ll know the frustration — every time you add a new attendee, everyone on the invite gets notified, and all attendees can see each other. In this post, I’ll show you how to use the Graph API and the Update Event call to add attendees without notifying others and hide all attendees from each other. Related: Event Registration with Microsoft Forms I’ve previously blogged about managing events using Microsoft Forms. Put simply, enable users to register for a specific event using Microsoft Forms and Power Automate. But unfortunately this resulted in all attendees receiving an update when someone new completed the form. If you combine this blog with my solution above or watch my video on my YouTube, you can buildyourself a very handy event registration system using Power Automate. ...

Ever had a user accidentally delete a critical Power Automate flow? Until May 2022, your only option was to raise a support call with Microsoft — but that all changed when the Restore-AdminFlow cmdlet was released. In this post, I’ll walk you through restoring deleted flows with PowerShell and show you how to build a self-service solution using Azure Runbooks, Power Automate, and Power Apps. There are native actions in Power Automate for adminstering flows but there is no current timescales for releasing an action to restore flows directly. If you were wondering if it was possible to restore flows from Power Automate or Power Apps using the Platform, then I have a solution for you - Azure Runbooks. I have a blog post showing you how I built a Runbook to change the sharing options of SharePoint using Power Automate. ...

Need to split a large Excel workbook into multiple worksheets — or even separate files — based on a column value? With Office Scripts and Power Automate, you can automatically detect unique values in a key column, create a sheet for each one, and populate them with the relevant data in seconds. Furthermore, if you would rather unique workbooks for each of those distinct names, I’ve got a solution for that too and you could use the final script just to bulk load data into Excel efficiently, without using any add a row actions. ...