Blog

Managing exchange email distribution lists manually is tedious, especially during onboarding. In this post, I’ll show you how to add members to a distribution list using Power Automate — and how to check if a user already exists. Whether you’re feeding this from a Power App or Microsoft Form, it’s easily achieved with a single action. Update January 2023 I’ve written a new bog post detailing how this can be achieved with PowerShell and an Azure Runbook. Check it out here Add user to Distribution List - DamoBird365 ...

Want to @mention an entire Team or Channel from a Power Automate flow? The default Teams actions don’t support it out of the box — but with a simple Graph API call, it’s surprisingly straightforward. In this post and video, I’ll walk you through exactly how to set it up. First, choose your Team and Channel By using the List Channels Action in Power Automate, we are able to obtain a list of Channels for a particular Group, but not only that, we are able to retrieve the Group ID from the Input Parameters as shown in the last of the four actions below (the Compose - GroupTeamID). We are going to post on the General Channel, and for us to obtain the Channel ID, we filter the array from the List Channels Action for “General” and then retrieve the first() and most likely the only object returned by the filter by using a compose and selecting the Id. ...

Need to generate sequential, zero-padded unique IDs in Power Automate — for invoices, filenames, or SharePoint list items? In this post, I’ll show you how to increment your unique ID based on the last file or list item and pad it with leading zeros, all without storing the ID in a separate table. List of Invoices Above is an example Microsoft (SharePoint) List with 3 invoices and a sequential InvoiceID. The key requirement here is that previous invoice ID’s, list items or filenames, will not be deleted as we will use the last known ID as a lookup in the next action. Please also ensure that you DO NOT turn on trigger concurrency, as we must assign the ID during each unique flow run when calling get items. ...

Want to automatically add comments to Microsoft List items using Power Automate? In this post, I’ll show you how to use the SharePoint REST API to both post a comment and read ALL comments on a list item — including how to handle the tricky mentions array. Surprisingly, adding a comment is a single action, reading all comments into a convenient format when there is tagging involved, is rather complex as tagging is handled by a separate array. The SharePoint REST API is well documented here as are the Microsoft List comment features, like the ability to tag and therefore trigger an email, notifying the user of a mention in a list comment. The email is a feature of Microsoft Lists and therefore does not depend on a Flow. If you create a comment on a list item and tag a colleague, they will be emailed with a link direct to the associated item. ...

I was diagnosed with ARVC (Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy) in April 2020. Nearly aged 40, I had participated in sport competitively for almost 30 years. From the age of 8, I ran my first competitive 10k in under 1 hour. In my teens, I played cricket as a batsman for my local teams Highland CC and Nairn CCC and in my 20s I played for Aberdeenshire CC as well as taking up squash. In my early 30s, I began running and cycling. I ran several 10km races and completed the Aberdeen 1/2 Marathon. In 2015 I took up cycling, taking part in many an Etape (Caledonia and Loch Ness) and even cycled coast to coast of Scotland with my brother, completing 300km unaided over two days. ...

Ever wanted to automatically control your Microsoft Teams status — Available, Busy, or Do Not Disturb — without touching the app? In this post, I’ll show you how to use Power Automate with a couple of undocumented API endpoints to set your presence, update your status message, and even configure an expiry. The method is undocumented and for you to explore and test independently, but based on my initial tests, it works. Interested in giving this a try yourself? Then please read on. ...

Need a quick way to let people register for your events and automatically send them a calendar invite? In this post, I’ll show you how to combine Microsoft Forms with Power Automate and Outlook to build a simple attendee registration system — no premium connectors required. Update Sept 2022 - looking to automatically disable your form or maybe trying to prevent attendees from receiving duplicate emails and anonomise attendees? Check out those links and see how it is done. ...

Ever tried to post an email attachment directly to a Teams channel using Power Automate, only to find the built-in actions don’t support it? If you receive emails with attachments or generate regular documents, you might want to post them direct to Teams. In this post, I’ll show you how a custom connector makes this possible. I have covered how to build the custom connector in my recent post How To? Build It! Custom Connector. In this post, I will use this connector and share with you my flow. ...

Have you ever fancied your own trigger or action that you can call from Power Automate? This very same connector can be used in PowerApps too or you can build one specific for your Logic App. I am going to show you how I built a custom connector for the Graph API. The API call in question will allow me to post an attachment to Teams chat. This is currently not supported by the native Teams actions in Power Automate. I also have an article on how the flow is built here. ...

Want to generate charts from Excel data and automatically send them to Teams, email, or embed them in Word and PDF documents? In this post, I’ll show you how to use Office Scripts with Power Automate to create dynamic charts as images and distribute them however you need. These charts can be created and returned as images to Power Automate and then used in any document of your choice. Send the chart via Teams. Send the chart(s) to external users via email. Embed the charts into Word, HTML, or permanent PDF files using Premium or regular actions. ...