Blog

Working with dates in Power Automate can be frustrating — especially when you hit the dreaded “The datetime string must match ISO 8601 format” error. In this post, I’ll walk you through every action and expression available for manipulating dates, and show you exactly how to reformat date strings so they play nicely with Power Automate. You can read up about ISO 8601 here but ultimately it means [YYYY]-[MM]-[DD], I explain how to repurpose your date time string below - click here ...

Ever wished you could populate an Excel invoice template as easily as a Word template in Power Automate? Excel doesn’t offer a built-in “Populate Template” action, but Office Scripts in Excel On the Web (currently in preview as of March 2021) changes everything. In this post, I’ll show you how to use TypeScript and Office Scripts to dynamically complete an Excel invoice via Power Automate. Watch the demo here ...

Believe it or not, there’s no built-in SUM function in Power Automate. If you need to add up a list of numbers, you’re typically stuck using an Apply to Each loop with a variable — and for large lists, that’s painfully slow. In this post, I’ll show you a creative hack using the Select action that summed over 600 numbers in literally zero seconds. I also cover how to handle negative numbers and floats. ...

Looking to convert a CSV to JSON in Power Automate without using an Apply to Each? In this post, I’ll show you a super efficient method using the Select action that processes your entire CSV in zero seconds. If you’ve been looping through rows one by one, you’ll want to see this. Background Are you looking to parse any CSV to JSON without having to worry about the file encoding, the header names, or the length and shape of the CSV? I have a new one solution fits all method here (May 2021) which I encourage you to try. The method I propose below is off the back of my demo of the Union, Except, Intersect actions in Power Automate where I learned something new. How to use the Select Action. How about using this action to create an efficient method for converting CSV to JSON? ...

Need to compare two datasets in Power Automate — finding what’s common, what’s unique, or combining them all? In this post, I’ll show you how to efficiently perform Union, Intersect, and the elusive Except operation without using a single Apply to Each loop. The results are dramatically faster. Image from EssentialSQL.com Watch my demonstration or continue reading below ...

Looking to automate ServiceNow with Power Automate Desktop? After my previous post demonstrating how PAD can close down ServiceNow calls and save admin time, I was asked to do a step-by-step build video. Below you’ll find a 20-minute walkthrough covering the entire process. End to end build demo ...

Ever come back to your Power Automate environment and have no idea what half your flows do? A little housekeeping goes a long way. In this quick tip, I’ll share my naming convention for keeping flows organised and easy to find. Keeping things nice and tidy The Problem with Default Names It sounds pretty obvious really, you build a solution and you give it a meaningful name or next time you return to your environment you cannot remember what on earth your automatically named flow does or what it was for? ...

I wanted to explore just how good Microsoft’s AI services really are, so I set up Azure Cognitive Services to detect celebrities from Twitter photos and gauge their emotions. Here’s what happened when I pointed Face and Computer Vision APIs at #breakingnews tweets — and how I shaved 12 months off Bill Gates’ age. Microsoft gives you a 12 month Azure free trial and so I thought I would have a play with some of their Cognitive Services API’s. ...

Ever needed to quickly pull a list of members from your Microsoft 365 Groups and export them? In this quick post, I’ll share a simple PowerShell script using the Get-UnifiedGroup cmdlet that does exactly that — filters your groups and dumps all members into a tidy CSV file. The PowerShell Script Use the Get-UnifiedGroup CMDLet and if your sites are prefixed like mine, filter on the DisplayName. $CSVPath = "C:\Temp\AllGroupMembers.csv" Connect-ExchangeOnline $list=Get-UnifiedGroup -Filter "DisplayName -like 'SitePrefix*'" foreach ($Group in $list) { #Get Group Members and export to CSV Get-UnifiedGroupLinks –Identity $Group.Id –LinkType Members | Select-Object @{Name="Group Name";Expression={$Group.DisplayName}},` @{Name="User Name";Expression={$_.DisplayName}}, PrimarySmtpAddress | Export-CSV $CSVPath -NoTypeInformation -Append } Output The above script will return a CSV. ...

What if you could run PowerShell scripts directly from Power Automate? After attending the Global Automation Bootcamp and seeing demos by Ben Stegink and Jaap Brasser, I was inspired to build a PowerShell Azure Runbook called from Power Automate using the Azure Automation Create Job step. Here’s how I did it. The Problem — SharePoint External Sharing My employer has a policy where all new SharePoint sites are setup with external sharing disabled and the only way to change this setting (as of today) is via the Admin GUI or PowerShell. We have a requirement to change the default setting to existing guests if manager approval has been granted, PowerAutomate has Approvals built in. This is the perfect opportunity for PowerShell to meet PowerAutomate. ...