With Power Automate cloud flow connectors, you can automate routine tasks and processes in apps like Excel, Outlook and SharePoint. Microsoft's large ecosystem of these connectors (which can be pre-built or custom) can enable you to connect apps, data and devices in the cloud. Examples of external connectors include Twitter, Dropbox, Eventbrite, but this blog post is going to focus on the most effective actions of in-built and standard connectors which talk to Power Automate to automate different scenarios.
When you 'Add an action' in a flow, a list of connectors will show - something that looks similar to the image above. When you click on an app's logo, it will then show a list of all the actions available for that connector. See below for an example of what is listed for OneNote (Business):
Here's a selection of some of the most commonly used (in-built and standard, not premium) actions for different connectors available in Power Automate:
1. The Control Connector - Condition
The Control connector is an in-built connector and the Condition action identifies which block of actions the automation should execute based on the evaluation of the condition input. It is a highly useful action and handy for any automation which requires a different set of actions for different scenarios. This means that if you wish to split a flow based on a specific value (or set of values), you can do so as long as you know what the parameters should be. When a condition that you define is met, the flow continues down the 'True' path, and if not, it will take the 'False' path and carry out any actions added there.
The example in this Microsoft Learn article explains how to add a condition to a cloud flow which sends an email if a certain number of retweets is reached: Add a condition to a cloud flow in Power Automate (contains video) - Power Automate | Microsoft Learn.
A more common use might be if you were using a Form and wanted a different set of actions dependent on respondents' answers to specific questions.
2. The Schedule Connector - Delay / Delay Until
The Delay action can be used to set a specific time period between actions occurring. You simply add in a number and set the unit as a second, day, hour, minute, or week and the flow will pause for the set amount of time, or if you use Delay Until, the following actions won't occur until a specified date and time (using the ISO8601 date stamp format). This can be useful if you want to delay sending out comms until a certain time, or if you want to leave a gap between actions to avoid overloading users with too many messages at once.
Note that the action has a limitation in that it can only be set for a maximum of 30 days (flows have a 30 day max runtime) so there should be no need to use the 'Month' option as a unit if using a delay.
Finally, a fixed Delay might also be an action you use if you're creating files within a flow then immediately getting that file content straight after. Adding in a 5 second delay can help to avoid a flow failure which could happen if you're asking PA to find a file that is still being created.
3. The Office 365 Users Connector / Get User Profile (V2)
Get User Profile (V2) is a really useful action to add into any flow where you are communicating with internal colleagues. It fetches information about a user which you can use to personalise emails, notifications and messages. It also means that if you have a flow where someone in your organisation completes an MS Form (non-anonymous), you don't need to ask them to fill in information like their name, department, job title again and again, because it can be pulled from their profile instead.
4. The Data Operation Connector / Compose
The more you use Power Automate, the more essential data operations and in particular the Compose action will become. It allows you to see what outputs you will get from different inputs before you use expressions elsewhere in your flow, or you can use them to store data to use later on. In the screenshots above, the following expression has been used as an input:
formatDateTime(addDays(utcNow(), -1), 'dd/MM/yyyy')
This is an expression to return today's date and time (Tuesday 9 April 2024) as a string in the date/month/year format, minus one day, which is why it has returned 8th April in the output screenshot. If you wanted to write out the date in words, you would use 'dddd dd MMMM yyyy' instead. The compose action can be used as dynamic content further down the flow - in the body of an email, for example.
Some common format strings for the formatDateTime function include:
- yyyy: four-digit year, e.g., “2024”
- MM: two-digit month, e.g., “04”
- dd: two-digit day, e.g., “25”
- HH: two-digit hour, e.g., “00”
- mm: two-digit minute, e.g., “00”
- ss: two-digit second, e.g., “00”
For further reading on customising date and time values, see this link: Customise or format date and time values in a flow | Microsoft Learn.
5. The Excel Online (Business) Connector / List rows present in a table
Excel Online and Power Automate integrate well as long as your excel data is stored in an online library (i.e. OneDrive or SharePoint) and formatted within a table with clear headers. It is also recommended that you rename each table so that when you're adding the parameters you know the difference between 'Table1' and 'Table2'.
Using this action, data from Excel can be listed (and sorted/reordered if you like) and filtered using OData queries, meaning that you can only look at a part of the data set using eq, ne, contains, startswith and endswith queries to restrict what is returned.
From there, you can decide what you would like to do with the data using other actions - it can be extremely useful for reporting and monitoring, cutting out tasks that would otherwise be very repetitive and time-consuming.
View some Power Automate templates that use this connector here: Excel Online + Power Automate | Microsoft Power Automate and read about known issues and limitations here: Excel Online (Business) | Microsoft Learn (essential reading if you are thinking of using this connector, especially with medium to large data sets).
6. The Microsoft Teams Connector / Post message in a chat or channel
There are over 30 different actions to choose from with the Teams connector but this is one of the most popular. It allows you to post as yourself (a user) or as a Flow bot to a chat or specified channel. You can use dynamic content from the outputs of previous actions to fill the message with different values.
In the example above the message will be posted to a channel and it will populate the message with the name of a person who filled out a form and the time that they completed it. This sort of message could provide a team with a quick snapshot of responses (and you could post these based on conditions if desired - i.e. a message is only posted if a response contains a certain value), or alert members about something important that comes into their inbox - an email from a manager, or an email containing the word 'Urgent', for example.
Note that you can post messages to any kind of channel (including private) but if posting to a private channel, you can only post as a user, not as the Flow bot.
Get started with a Teams template here: Teams + Power Automate | Microsoft Power Automate.
7. The Forms Connector / Get response details
There are only two Microsoft Forms actions available to use with Power Automate: the trigger 'When a new response is submitted' and this one, Get response details. And there is no need for any others because these two do everything necessary!
The power of this action is in what you do with it afterwards, but also in how you set up your form initially. When you are thinking about a process and putting all the parts together to figure out how it will work, if the form is going to be complex in any way (for example if it will use branching or ask similar questions at different points), you need to think about how that will work when it comes to automating the response data. If you want to stick to being as 'low code' as possible, simplify the form wherever you can because it will make later steps in the process easier for you.
These are some of the common ways that people use Microsoft Forms with Power Automate:
- Send an email when there's a new form response
- Send an email to the form responder
- Send an approval request with the form details
- Add form responses to an Excel worksheet
- Get an attachment from a form and send it in an email
For a step-by-step walkthrough of each of these scenarios, visit this article: Power Automate and Forms Common Scenarios | Microsoft Learn
8. The SharePoint Connector / Create item
The SharePoint connector has a wide range of possibilities. The Create item action is useful because it allows you to add an item to a SharePoint List and if you need to do this repeatedly, can remove the manual element and help to avoid errors.
Similar to previous advice in this post, you will need to make sure that before trying to add an item, you have already set up a List in a suitable place and created the columns. Carefully consider who should be able to view your List and check who has access to your SharePoint site before automating any creation of items there.
Note that every time you create an item, a unique ID is created, so if you needed to update the item later on in the flow or refer to it at another point, you can then use the 'Update item' action and add further information or change what was already there. This is particularly useful if you are waiting for a response or decision - in this case you could instruct the flow to update a Choice column from 'Pending' to 'Approved' or 'Rejected', for example.
There are plenty of templates that utilise this action, including using SharePoint items to manage approval workflows.
9. The Office 365 Connector / Send an email (V2)
For personal productivity, this must be one of the most used actions. The Send an email action has the potential to revolutionise how we communicate and hugely reduce the amount of time spent sending similar emails, while still remaining personal. Mail Merge has existed for a long time, but with Power Automate you can do that and then some.
With this action you can send an email to recipients that you either type in the 'To' field, or they could be stored elsewhere - in which case you would use dynamic content from a previous action to populate this instead. Everything is customisable, and if you dip into the Advanced parameters you can start thinking about the importance, sensitivity, and any attachments you would like to include with a message.
Note that there is a separate action called 'Send an email from a shared mailbox (V2)' if you would prefer to send automated emails from a team email address.
10. The Approvals Connector / Create an approval
The integration of Approvals with Power Automate can streamline a multitude of processes where there are one or more layers of sign off required.
It is an action that can be customised to suit each case and approvals can be 'signed off' by the first person to respond, or you can set the action to wait for everyone to respond. Approvals can also be custom so that it isn't just a case of needing to 'Approve' or 'Reject' as is the standard set up, but you could choose your own wording so there are different choices.
From a user point of view, when an automated approval request is triggered, it is received via email on Outlook and Teams, but the approver only has to respond to one of these for their role within the process to be considered complete.
If you're wondering how you would go about setting up different types of approval processes, this article might give you a few ideas: Approvals How-Tos | Microsoft Learn. Alternatively, you could follow this tutorial to put approvals into practice: Create an approval flow that requires everyone to approve | Microsoft Learn.
Hopefully this list has given you some ideas about the connectors and actions you could be using with Power Automate to increase productivity and efficiency in your day to day working practices. If you end up using any of these, or others, we want to hear about your innovations! Please share your experiences with the Power Community of Practice on Teams.
Finally, to view the entire list of connectors available in the Power Automate library, see this Microsoft Learn web page: Connector reference overview | Microsoft Learn.
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