Office 365 Tips

[wdimagineer2b]

@themajor

This it can do as I had this option

Ooh! New options!? I’ll have to play later.

Edit.
Who am I kidding… I couldn’t wait.
Ahh yes. There it is now, along with the ability to categorise as well. Fantastic.

Here’s how I did it:

Get response details “List of response notifications Response Id” - That grabs the user ID of the person submitting. i.e. for cadets it’s [CIN]@rafac.mod.gov.uk. If a CFAV completes the form it would return joseph.bloggs100@rafac.mod.gov.uk

Obviously, the Cadet’s CIN isn’t too helpful on its own, so I then use the “Search for Users” action to lookup up that ‘email address’ and return a handle to the user.

Then we have an ‘Apply to each’ container. That should appear automatically and is required because the Search for Users action could return multiple matches depending on what we search on (in this case it will only ever return one match because we’re searching on a unique ID, but we can’t control this behaviour.)

Inside the ‘Apply to each’ we take the handle to the user from the previous lookup step and create the task. As you can see, I set it so that the task appears in planner with the cadet’s name in the Title. eg. “UNIFORM REQUEST from - Bloggs, Joseph”

I set the start date for the task as the time the process ran and I make it due in 2 weeks by using the formula “addDays(utcNow(),14)”.
Now, we can also assign the task here to the Stores officer, by entering their personal Bader email.

Finally, I delay for 20 seconds. This prevents errors, since creating the task can take a few moments. Without the delay, the flow will immediately move on and try to Update the task - which doesn’t yet exist in Planner.

Then I update the Task description using the “get response details” dynamic content. The original questions - check boxes, radio buttons, free text, &c - from the MS Form are available.

The task appears in planner and when you open it, those details appear in the ‘notes’ section.

Sadly, it appears that we still can’t set the “Show on card” option from a flow, but that’s fairly minor.

One could also create checklist items such as “Item ordered from Parent Station”, “Item ready for issue” or whatever, if one wishes.

[themajor]

This is amazing

[themajor]

I’ll put together a guide to share with the wing and on here, but basically @wdimagineer2b has it nailed on.

[Paracetamol]

We just use a paper form… no chance for tech fails then…

Ok, admittedly we have to sharpen the pencil. But lost time is seconds.

Am impressed though.

[ccw34]

@wdimagineer2b

“Search for Users” action to lookup up that ‘email address’

what’s the purpose of this step?

[wdimagineer2b]

We used to use a paper form. But I found they had a habit of getting lost.
The paper fall-back is always there. As is the option to speak to the stores officer at the monthly ‘tailor’s parade’.

This way just provides a techy option which allows the requests to be automatically compiled. They appear right there in planner and are assigned to the Stores Officer. He can then see what he’s got coming up at the next monthly.

I enjoy a techy solution and it was probably only half hours work the first time for some googling.
Since then I’ve played with flows for a number of other applications and it takes only a few minutes to set up.

@ccw34

what’s the purpose of this step?

The previous step only returns the cadet’s username eg 0112340021001@rafac.mod.gov.uk
The “Search for users” function allows me to feed that username, find the cadet profile it belongs to, and pull out the cadet’s forename and surname, which I can then plug into the planner task.

[Paracetamol]

I’m just jealous!

[wdimagineer2b]

There are lots of tutorials out there, but I found the best way was to poke about looking at the various ‘actions’ to see what they could do. It is a massive tool though, with connectors for so many applications. Microsoft and Third party…

[themajor]

My next task is to try and tweak a flow so I get a teams notification to a chat thread for IBNs, that I’ll then turn into a wing wide email.

Currently it’s doing all Key Docs as it’s a single library, which is frustrating, but I like a challenge

[ccw34]

@wdimagineer2b

find the cadet profile it belongs to

I didn’t even know that data existed in O365 yet. Does it also automatically send an email, or do you have to remember to log into planner at regular intervals to check if someone has filled the form in. And, is there any advantage to this than just getting the form to email the Stores officer directly? (it probably doesnt help that I hate Planner with a passion because of my experiences of it in my day job… Although I’ve never used Power Automate. I’d rather write real code, than use an interface, cos I’m weird )

But anyway, this solution seems a bit overkill for the 4 cdts we get turning up atm…

[themajor]

When a task is allocated it generates an email, or you could add it to the flow to send an email.

The way I’m seeing it is not have a stores Officer, but with teams on mobile and planner embedded, just check for any new submissions to sort if you have a spare 10 mins at the sqn.

[wdimagineer2b]

Yeah, that’s one of the advantages with having it in planner. It’s there for the whole staff team to see and action / update as appropriate.

[InterestedAdult]

Does anyone else find it annoying that in the web Outlook it keeps defaulting to having the reading pane open regardless of whether you turn this off in settings?

[InterestedAdult]

Are you able to add the Outlook RAFAC calendar to the iPhone calendar app?

[ccw34]

Any Flow / Power Automate nerds experts fancy helping me? (@wdimagineer2b / @themajor / @JoeBloggs) - this is the first time I’ve ever tried to use Flow!

I’d like to transfer a large number of files (several gb) from my personal OneDrive folder to my ‘Business’ one (work, not RAFAC). I’ve found a Flow template titled “Move files from a OneDrive folder (Personal) to OneDrive (Business)” (Move files from a OneDrive folder (Personal) to OneDrive (Business) | Microsoft Power Automate),

I can edit the Flow like in the screenshot below, but:

• this only seems to run if files are modified (despite the template name) - is there a way to trigger the Flow to move all files in 1 go? I can’t find an Action that seems to be able to do this
• I’ve tried testing the Flow (second screenshot) - clicking “Save and test” for the automated test does nothing; clicking it for a manual test generates a spinning wheel of doom that then seems to do nothing!

What am I doing wrong?!

[themajor]

My advice would be have both sync to the PC and then Copy/Paste…

But 55GB might take a while.

I’ll have a look

[AlexCorbin]

Definitely an over night job

[wdimagineer2b]

I too would be looking for a non-flow approach in this instance. Though it could still be done with Flow… You’ll need to replace that “When a file is modified” trigger with another trigger.
That could be anything really, a button in the mobile app, or a scheduled time might be easiest.
But you’d also have to add in a loop to go through all the files and folders to pull out the same details as the “…is modified trigger already does”.
More trouble than it’s worth I reckon.

Copy/Paste via the PC is one option but you will lose metadata. That might not be a problem for you.
I wonder if it might be possible to share the files from your personal account with your work account, and then transfer them all from within the onedrive web interface; removing the need to have them download/upload via your PC…

It appears that you can’t share them from personal to business in the required way.
In which case this is +1 vote for using the desktop app.