Efficiency

Remember Clippy? The little paperclip that popped up in Microsoft Office with helpful (and sometimes not-so-helpful) suggestions? Well, I’ve built a browser extension that brings him back — sort of. Clippy for Copilot swaps the Microsoft Copilot icon in Office web apps with one of four classic characters, and honestly, it’s the most fun I’ve had building something in a while. Why Clippy? Why Now? Look, I love Copilot. It’s genuinely useful and it’s changing how we work with Office. But there’s something about that little Copilot icon sitting in the toolbar that just felt like it was missing… personality. And then it hit me — what if Clippy was back? Not the annoying assistant that interrupted you every five minutes, but just his face, sitting quietly in the corner where the Copilot button lives. ...

I built a browser extension. Honestly, I never thought I’d say that — but here we are. TabHawk is my first foray into the world of Chrome extensions, and it’s been one of the most rewarding side projects I’ve taken on. If you’ve ever looked at your browser and thought “how did I end up with 47 tabs?” — or if you’re someone whose brain just works a bit differently and keeping focus means keeping things tidy — this one’s for you. ...

If you’ve ever tried to find the latest official icon for a Microsoft product — say, the new Fluent 2 Forms icon or the current Power Apps logo — you’ll know the pain. Icons are scattered across CDNs, GitHub repos, documentation pages, and download packs. Some are outdated. Some are JPGs. Some are the 2019 version sitting next to the 2025 version with no way to tell which is which. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Need to evenly distribute tasks, form submissions, or emails across your team using Power Automate? Round-robin allocation is the answer, and I’ve got two straightforward approaches you can implement — one using a Microsoft List and another using a Security or Distribution Group. Important: For both solutions, you must limit Concurrency Control and set Parallelism to 1 concurrent flow run. This ensures flows run in serial order and assign users in strict chronological sequence. ...

The ultimate free solution, parse any CSV file to a JSON Array via a Power Automate Flow. This flow will parse any CSV file, no matter the encoding. It will handle Unix, Windows, or Mac files. The key values (i.e. the header row) will be dynamically mapped and it will handle CSV files of all shapes and sizes. Whilst I have previously blogged about parsing an array with a select action, this solution did not handle varying header lengths automatically. ...

Need to send personalised emails with unique attachments — like monthly invoices — to a list of customers? In this post, I’ll show you how to build a mail merge with attachments in Power Automate, pulling customer data from Excel and attaching the right file for each recipient automatically. If you have a requirement for creating invoices in an automated fashion please take a look at some of my other ideas here: ...

Got a CSV file you need to turn into a JSON array in Power Automate — without premium connectors? In this post, I’ll share a copy-and-paste Select Action that does exactly that. Just paste it into your flow, adjust the columns, and you’re done — no Apply to Each loops required. I’ve recently covered how to efficiently parse a CSV here vs the age-old apply to each solution. Updated Solution Available Note, that I now have an ever more improved parsing solution. Handle the column keys dynamically. Any shape or sized CSV without the need to edit the existing flow. Retrieve data from OneDrive, SharePoint and Outlook Attachements. ...