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PowerShell Currency Conversion Using FRED

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Ian Hayse

I’m working on a project that requires currency conversions between the US dollar and the Euro. In the most basic case, the project has two requirements: backfill historical Euro amounts and get current Euro amounts using a transaction date and USD value. Plugging into an API to get the current currency exchange rate is simple enough, but finding an open or free dataset with 10+ years of currency transactions was another thing. Google and GPT/LLMs are littered with what appear to be free sites, but they are limited to ~100 API calls, or their dataset is not deep enough for my use case. I landed on a great tool provided by the Federal Reserve named FRED, short for Federal Reserve Economic Data. FRED is a free site with APIs sitting on a treasure trove of data. When I started this project, I simply went to the FRED and downloaded the dataset I needed (link), but I wanted to ensure that my process was current and could handle new transactions for years to come. Using the FRED API requires signing up for a free account. You will want a FRED API key to follow along with this demo.

What I’m going to demo in this post: creating a FRED account, using PowerShell to read from an Excel file, querying an API, writing back to the Excel file

FRED account:
Visit the https://fred.stlouisfed.org/ site, click My Account (top right), and click Create New Account when the modal opens. After you’ve created an account, navigate to the My Account page and click API Keys in the left nav. On the API Keys page, click the Request API Key button, input some text in the description box, click the agreement checkbox, and then click Request API Key. Link to the API Key page: https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys

For this demo, I’ve created a simple Excel file with the following columns and datatypes: TransDate (date), USD (currency), ConversionDate (date), EUR (currency)

To interact with an Excel file from PowerShell, I went with the ImportExcel module. In VsCode or your IDE of choice, run this command: Install-Module ImportExcel -Scope CurrentUser

I will test reading from the Excel file, loop through the rows, and output their values to get the ball rolling and ensure the ImportExcel module works.
$excelPath: location of the Excel file
$worksheetName: name of the worksheet/tab where the data is stored (optional)
$excelData: imported Excel data

$excelPath = "C:\code\CurrencyDemo.xlsx"
$worksheetName = "Historical"
$excelData = Import-Excel -Path $excelPath -WorksheetName $worksheetName

foreach($row in $excelData){
    Write-Output "Transction date: $($row.TransDate) Amount: $($row.USD) USD"
}

Next, I will test my connection to the FRED API, returning a sample transaction. There are two important things to note in the next script. The $series variable is bound to the USD to Euro Spot exchange rate value; if you need to work with a different currency, visit the Daily Rates page and filter by the Geographies or use the site search if you cannot find what you are looking for there. If you type Peso in the site search, it will suggest the Mexican Peso to U.S. Dollar. Clicking on the search result will open the page for that conversion, and the page will reveal the $series value needed for the conversion. The Peso to USD series is DEXMXUS (look at the URL or the value to the right of the conversion overview). The next important variable to note is $date; this is obvious for this example, but you can query the API for larger data ranges if needed and work with the larger API response.

# Your FRED API Key
$apiKey = "75fa2e6ce85_taco_805016ea4d764c5"

# Set the parameters
$series = "DEXUSEU"  # This is the series ID for USD to Euro exchange rate
$date = "2024-01-16"

# Construct the API URL
$url = "https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred/series/observations?series_id=$series&observation_start=$date&observation_end=$date&api_key=$apiKey&file_type=json"

# Make the API request
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url -Method Get

# Check if we got a result
if ($response.observations.Count -gt 0) {
    $usd_to_eur_rate = [double]$response.observations[0].value
    $eur_to_usd_rate = [math]::Round(1 / $usd_to_eur_rate, 4)
    Write-Output "The USD to Euro conversion rate on $date was: $usd_to_eur_rate"
    Write-Output "The Euro to USD conversion rate on $date was: $eur_to_usd_rate"
} else {
    Write-Output "No data available for the specified date."
}

In the last script for this demo, I will combine all the parts and provide an example for dealing with input dates that are Saturday or Sunday. From what I’ve learned on this journey, currencies are not typically traded seven days a week, so if an input date falls on a weekend, there needs to be an offset to the preceding Friday. This script must be extended in a production scenario to deal with major holidays.

function CurrencyConversion {
    param (
        $convDate,
        $usdAmount
    )

    # Parse the input string into a datetime object
    $parsedDate = [datetime]::ParseExact($convDate.Date, "M/d/yyyy HH:mm:ss", [Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture)
    $apiDateValue = $parsedDate.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd")

    # Your FRED API Key
    $apiKey = "75fa2e6ce85_taco_805016ea4d764c5"
    $seriesId = "EXUSEU"

    # Construct the API URL
    $apiUrl = "https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred/series/observations?series_id=$seriesId&api_key=$apiKey&file_type=json&observation_start=$apiDateValue&observation_end=$apiDateValue"

    # Make the API call
    $response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $apiUrl

    # Check if there are any observations for the given date
    if ($response.observations.count -gt 0) {
        # Assuming the first observation is the one we're interested in
        $usd_to_eur_rate = [double]$response.observations[0].value
        $eur_to_usd_rate = [math]::Round(1 / $usd_to_eur_rate, 4)
    }
    else {
        Write-Host "No data found for ................................................ $parsedDate"
    }

    $convertedValue = $usdAmount * $eur_to_usd_rate
    return $convertedValue
    
}

function DateConversion {
    param (
        $conversionDate
    )

    # Check if 'conversionDate' is not null or empty
    if (-not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($conversionDate)) {
        # Parse the input date into a datetime object
        $targetDate = [datetime]::Parse($conversionDate)

        # Check if the day is Saturday or Sunday
        if ($targetDate.DayOfWeek -eq [DayOfWeek]::Saturday) {
            $conversionDate = $targetDate.AddDays(-1).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd")
        }
        elseif ($targetDate.DayOfWeek -eq [DayOfWeek]::Sunday) {
            $conversionDate = $targetDate.AddDays(-2).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd")
        }
    }

    return $conversionDate
}

$excelPath = "C:\code\CurrencyDemo.xlsx"
$worksheetName = "Historical"
$excelData = Import-Excel -Path $excelPath -WorksheetName $worksheetName

foreach ($row in $excelData) {

    $transDate = $row.TransDate
    $amountUSD = $row.USD
    $submittedDate = $null

    # Get the date for the currency conversion
    if (-not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($transDate)) {
        $submittedDate = DateConversion -conversionDate $transDate
    }

    # Check if both Submitted Date and USD are not null or empty
    if (-not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($submittedDate) -and 
        -not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($amountUSD)) {
        $convertedValue = CurrencyConversion -convDate $submittedDate -usdAmount $amountUSD
    }

    Write-Output "Converted value for $($amountUSD) USD on $($submittedDate.ToShortDateString()): $convertedValue"

    #update the excel row with the output
    $row.EUR = $convertedValue
    $row.ConversionDate = $submittedDate
}

# Export the updated data to Excel
$excelData | Export-Excel -Path $excelPath -WorksheetName $worksheetName

To streamline the script, I created two helper functions. One handles the weekend-to-Friday conversion, and the other makes the API call to FRED. The script will loop over all of the rows in the spreadsheet, handle the currency conversion, and then bulk-write the output to the target Excel file. The highlighted values notate where a weekend date was passed, and the script handled the offset to the preceding Friday.

Yes, some places in the script need improvement, but I wanted to provide a simple example for handling currency conversion with PowerShell and historical dates. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out or leave a comment if any part of this doesn’t make sense or if there’s a more-better way of doing things.

Note:
Be mindful of the number of calls you make to the API in a given timeframe. I was testing this process and hammered on the API with ~1,000 calls and hit an API limit error. Adding a simple pause to the script fixed the problem. i.e. after X calls, pause for X seconds.

Power Automate: Sending Emails Using Excel Data

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Ian Hayse

Recently, a user asked me how they could send emails using a flow, with Excel as the data source. I’m going to provide an in-depth guide that covers every step needed to accomplish this.

What’s needed to follow along:
Access to a Power Platform environment
URL: https://make.powerautomate.com/
OneDrive (but you can use SharePoint)
Excel file

Open a new Excel file and populate it with the following columns:
RowID, Employee Name, Manager Email, Email Sent
Enter data in each of the cells, but ensure that RowID has a unique value for each row.

After the data is entered, you will want to create a table encompassing the cells that were just populated. With one of the cells selected, click the Insert tab at the top of the file, then click Table.

When the Create Table popup opens, ensure it includes the rows and columns you created, and the my tables has headers box should be checked. Click Ok to close the popup.

From the File tab, click Save As and save the file to a OneDrive location. You can save the file to your desktop or another location, then copy it to a folder in OneDrive. It makes no difference how the file gets there, but for this flow to work, it needs to be in OneDrive or a SharePoint location you have access to.

From a browser, navigate to https://make.powerautomate.com/. On the left side of the screen, click on My flows. After the page refreshes, click + New flow and select Instant cloud flow.

In the Flow name field, input a name for your flow. From the Choose how to trigger this flow, select Manually trigger a flow, then click the Create button.

In the flow design canvans, click the + below the Manually trigger a flow action, and select Add an action.

When the Add an action window opens on the left side of the screen, you will notice that you have a bunch of actions to choose from. The first box can be used to search for actions; here, enter Excel list rows. Note how the actions are grouped by the connector type, in our case, Excel Online. The other key to note here is to see more blue text to the right of the Excel Online group. If you don’t see the action you are looking for, always remember to click the see more link. Doing this will disable all available actions for the group. Go ahead and click on the List rows present in a table action.

From the Location dropdown, select OneDrive if that’s where you saved your file; else, select SharePoint or wherever you saved the file. For this example, the file must be in a storage location to which the flow can connect. Next, click the dropdown for the Document Library. In my example, you’ll notice that I have several options to choose from; if you get the same result, you’ll need to select each option and then click the File dropdown to see if you are in the correct location. Yes, it’s annoying.

Once you have the correct Document Library selected, click the dropdown for the File option, navigate to where your Excel file is stored, and select it.

From the Table dropdown, select the available option. In my example, the only table from the Excel file is Table2. There is a good chance yours is named something else.

You can verify the table name by returning to your Excel file, clicking the Table Design tab, and then noting the Table Name value.

Returning to the flow design canvas, click the + Add an action below the Excel action.

From the search box, enter send email. With the list of actions narrowed down, select the Send an email (v2) option. If you are reading this in the future, the option might (V_something else), but make sure you are in the Office 365 Outlook group of action. Do NOT use the action from the Mail group.

In the Send an email action, click in the To field. If the dynamic content is not visible, click the Enter custom value text and the little lightning bolt icon.

When the dynamic content window opens, you will see a few options for fields you can select to populate the To value of the Send an email action. From the list of options, select Manager Email. This will pull in the manager’s email from the spreadsheet.

Click in the Subject field and enter some text; here, you will notice I input Example. After you’ve entered some text, click the lightning bolt icon again, but this time select Employee Name.

The last thing we will populate in this action is the Body of the email. Again, feel free to input some text here, and like the other fields, you can use values from the dynamic content menu to use values from the Excel file.

The completed email action will look like this.

You will notice that a For each was automatically added to the flow design canvas. Why? If you think about what the flow is doing from a process standpoint, it added the For each to loop over each row in the Excel file. For each row in the spreadsheet, do ____. In our example, it will send an email, and each email will reference the current item in the loop.

Below the Send an email action, click + Add an action.

From the add an action search box, enter excel update row, and select the Update a row action. We will use this action to update the spreadsheet for each email sent.

In the Update a row action, navigate to where your Excel file is stored. The steps you followed when connecting to the file a few steps back in this process will apply here. Once you’ve connected to the file, click in the Key Column and select RowID from the available choices.

Click into the Key Value field, open the dynamic content window, and select RowID. We are telling the action that we want to update the Excel file row corresponding to the current item in For each loop.

Click the dropdown for the Advanced parameters field and select Email Sent. I entered Yes in the Email Sent field.

The completed flow should look like this: We trigger the flow, get the table from the Excel file, loop over each row in the table (for each), send an email, and update the spreadsheet for each item in the loop.

At the top of the screen, click Save, then Test

Select Manually when the next window opens, click Continue, and last but not least, click Run flow.

When the flow is finished running, you should see green check marks next to each flow action.

The emails were sent to each manager with their employee in the subject and body of each email. To test sending emails, I like to use https://temp-mail.org/en/

Navigating back to the Excel file, the Email sent value is Yes for each row in the file.

That’s it! There are lots of steps, but I hope it covers everything you need to create a workflow that does the exact same thing.

Use Python to upload a LARGE file to SharePoint

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Ian Hayse

In this post, I will quickly show how to use the Office365-REST-Python-Client library to upload a large file to a SharePoint library.

For this to work, you will need a certificate, Azure App registration, and access to the target SharePoint site. I outlined all the necessary parts in this post: Modernizing Authentication in SharePoint Online Note: the linked post will output a .PFX cert, and the script below will need a .PEM cert. You can use this Python command to convert the cert:

from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import serialization
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives.asymmetric import rsa
from cryptography.hazmat.backends import default_backend
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives import hashes
from cryptography import x509
from cryptography.hazmat.primitives.serialization import pkcs12

# Load the PFX file
pfx_file = open('C:\\path_to_cert\\EXAMPLE.pfx', 'rb').read()  # replace with your pfx file path
(private_key, certificate, additional_certificates) = pkcs12.load_key_and_certificates(pfx_file, None, default_backend())

with open('NewCERT.pem', 'wb') as f:
    f.write(private_key.private_bytes(
        encoding=serialization.Encoding.PEM,
        format=serialization.PrivateFormat.TraditionalOpenSSL,
        encryption_algorithm=serialization.NoEncryption()
    ))
    f.write(certificate.public_bytes(serialization.Encoding.PEM))

# install this library if needed
# pip install cryptography

Ok, with that out of the way, you can use this script to upload to a SharePoint library. In the script, I’ve commented out the line that would be used to upload to a folder within a library.

import os
from office365.sharepoint.client_context import ClientContext

cert_credentials = {
    "tenant": "abcxyz-1234-4567-8910-0e3d638792fb",
    "client_id": "abcddd-4444-4444-cccc-123456789111",
    "thumbprint": "7D8D8DF7D8D2F4DF8DF45D4FD8FD48DF5D8D",
    "cert_path": "RestClient\\NewCERT.pem"
}
ctx = ClientContext("https://tacoranch.sharepoint.com/sites/python").with_client_certificate(**cert_credentials)
current_web = ctx.web.get().execute_query()
print("{0}".format(current_web.url))

filename = "LargeExcel.xlsx"
folder_path = "C:\\code\py"

def print_upload_progress(offset):
    # type: (int) -> None
    file_size = os.path.getsize(local_path)
    print(
        "Uploaded '{0}' bytes from '{1}'...[{2}%]".format(
            offset, file_size, round(offset / file_size * 100, 2)
        )
    )

#upload to a folder
#target_url = "Shared Documents/folderA/folderB"

target_url = "Shared Documents"
target_folder = ctx.web.get_folder_by_server_relative_url(target_url)
size_chunk = 1000000
local_path = os.path.join(folder_path, filename)
with open(local_path, "rb") as f:
    uploaded_file = target_folder.files.create_upload_session(
        f, size_chunk, print_upload_progress, filename
    ).execute_query()

print("File {0} has been uploaded successfully".format(uploaded_file.serverRelativeUrl))

If you receive an error stating you don’t have access, double-check that you’ve added the App Registration to the target SharePoint site permissions. Again, this is noted in the blog post linked at the being of this post.

Consider this a workaround until MS Graph is out of its latest beta and there’s more support for easily uploading to SharePoint.

What if you need to upload a file and set a column value? When working with SharePoint via the API, you must be mindful of the column names. The column name in the UI might not be the same as the internal name, so I will use the script above as my starting point and add the following script to the end. In this example, I’m setting two fields: ReportName and ReportDate.

#get the file that was just uploaded
file_item = uploaded_file.listItemAllFields

# Define a dictionary of field names and their new values
fields_to_update = {
    "ReportName": "My TPS Report",
    "ReportDate": datetime.datetime.now().isoformat(),
    # Add more fields here as needed
}

# Iterate over the dictionary and update each field
for field_name, new_value in fields_to_update.items():
    file_item.set_property(field_name, new_value)

# Commit the changes
file_item.update()
ctx.execute_query()

print("Report fields were updated")

How do you get a list of all the columns in a list or library? The script below will output all the column’s internal and display names.

from office365.sharepoint.client_context import ClientContext

cert_credentials = {
    "tenant": "abcxyz-1234-4567-8910-0e3d638792fb",
    "client_id": "abcddd-4444-4444-cccc-123456789111",
    "thumbprint": "7D8D8DF7D8D2F4DF8DF45D4FD8FD48DF5D8D",
    "cert_path": "RestClient\\NewCERT.pem"
}

ctx = ClientContext("https://tacoranch.sharepoint.com/sites/python").with_client_certificate(**cert_credentials)
current_web = ctx.web.get().execute_query()
print("{0}".format(current_web.url))

# Get the target list or library
list_or_library = ctx.web.lists.get_by_title('TPS-Reports')

# Load the fields
fields = list_or_library.fields.get().execute_query()

# Print the field names
for field in fields:
    print("Field internal name: {0}, Field display name: {1}".format(field.internal_name, field.title))

SharePoint Audit Using Purview

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Ian Hayse

Today, I had a customer ask the following question:
“How can I pull a report showing all of the files in a library that have not been viewed?”
Typically, users request a report showing all the items or files accessed, so this request was unique.

You can run an audit search on most everything in a cloud tenant using Microsoft Purview. Every file downloaded, viewed, list item opened, edited, deleted, page views, Onedrive actions, Teams actions, and the list goes on and on.

In Purview, click on the Audit link in the left nav, and it will open the audit search page.
Select the time range you want to target
Activities: Accessed file
Record types: SharePointFileOperation
Search name: this can be anything you want, i.e. SP Library Search
File, folder, or site: https://taco.sharepoint.com/sites/test/TheLibrary/*
Workload: SharePoint
The key items to note are the record type and file options. You can use a wildcard * to return results for everything in the target library. This will return much information, so filtering after the report is downloaded is needed. Once you’ve populated the fields, click Search, then wait a bit for it to complete. The amount of data in your tenant and current workloads will determine how long the search will take.

The completed search will look like this:

Clicking on the report name will open a detailed view of the audit search. From the results page, click the Export button and wait a few minutes for the file to be generated. If the page gets stuck at 0%, refresh your browser, and it should trigger the download.

Next, I needed to get all the files in the SharePoint library. To do this, I used PowerShell to connect to the target site and then downloaded the file info to a CSV.

# Connect to the SharePoint site interactively
Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://taco.sharepoint.com/sites/test" -Interactive

# Specify the target library
$libraryName = "TheLibrary"

# Get all files from the target library
$files = Get-PnPListItem -List $libraryName -Fields "FileLeafRef", "ID", "FileRef", "Created", "Modified", "UniqueId", "GUID"

# Create an empty array to store the file metadata
$fileMetadata = @()

# Loop through each file and extract the relevant metadata
foreach ($file in $files) {
    $fileMetadata += [PSCustomObject]@{
        FileName = $file["FileLeafRef"]
        ID = $file["ID"]
        GUID = $file["GUID"]
        UniqueId = $file["UniqueId"]
        URL = $file["FileRef"]
        Created = $file["Created"]
        Modified = $file["Modified"]
    }
}

# Export the file metadata to a CSV file
$fileMetadata | Export-Csv -Path "C:\code\library_audit.csv" -NoTypeInformation

If you take anything away from this post, please take note of this: Purview uses a field named ListItemUniqueId to identify a SharePoint file or list item. My first thought was to use the GUID from the SharePoint library to match up to the Purview data. This is 100% incorrect! From SharePoint, UniqueId is the field that matches the Purview field ListItemUniqueId.

Basic logic:
SELECT SharePoint.* FROM SharePoint INNER JOIN Purview ON SharePoint.UniqueId = Purview.ListItemUniqueId

I used Power BI to format and mash the exported Purview data with the SharePoint data. Power BI is unnecessary; you can easily use Power Query in Excel to do the same thing. Below, I’m including my M code statement that parses the JSON from the Purview file, and counts how many times the files were accessed and the last time they were accessed.

let
    Source = Csv.Document(File.Contents("C:\ian240329\Purview_Audit.csv"),[Delimiter=",", Columns=8, Encoding=1252, QuoteStyle=QuoteStyle.None]),
    #"Promoted Headers" = Table.PromoteHeaders(Source, [PromoteAllScalars=true]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Promoted Headers",{{"RecordId", type text}, {"CreationDate", type datetime}, {"RecordType", Int64.Type}, {"Operation", type text}, {"UserId", type text}, {"AuditData", type text}, {"AssociatedAdminUnits", type text}, {"AssociatedAdminUnitsNames", type text}}),
    #"Parsed JSON" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Changed Type",{{"AuditData", Json.Document}}),
    #"Expanded AuditData" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Parsed JSON", "AuditData", {"ListItemUniqueId", "SourceFileExtension", "SourceFileName", "ObjectId"}, {"ListItemUniqueId", "SourceFileExtension", "SourceFileName", "ObjectId"}),
    #"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Expanded AuditData",{"AssociatedAdminUnits", "AssociatedAdminUnitsNames", "RecordId"}),
    #"Renamed Columns" = Table.RenameColumns(#"Removed Columns",{{"ObjectId", "File URL"}, {"SourceFileName", "File Name"}, {"SourceFileExtension", "File Extension"}}),
    #"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Renamed Columns", each ([File Extension] <> "aspx")),
    #"Filtered Rows1" = Table.SelectRows(#"Filtered Rows", each true),
    #"Removed Columns1" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Filtered Rows1",{"Operation", "RecordType"}),
    #"Grouped Rows" = Table.Group(#"Removed Columns1", {"ListItemUniqueId"}, {{"View Count", each Table.RowCount(_), Int64.Type}, {"Last Viewed", each List.Max([CreationDate]), type nullable datetime}})
in
    #"Grouped Rows"

Still working in Power Query, I created a new query to show what SharePoint files had not been accessed. My Purview license is limited to 6 months‘ worth of data, so this is one hindrance to painting a full picture of what has/has not been accessed.

let
    Source = Table.NestedJoin(SharePoint_Audit, {"UniqueId"}, Purview_Audit, {"ListItemUniqueId"}, "Purview_Audit", JoinKind.LeftAnti),
    #"Expanded Purview_Audit" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(Source, "Purview_Audit", {"File Name"}, {"Purview_Audit.File Name"}),
    #"Sorted Rows1" = Table.Sort(#"Expanded Purview_Audit",{{"Purview_Audit.P File Name", Order.Descending}}),
    #"Filtered Rows1" = Table.SelectRows(#"Sorted Rows1", each true)
in
    #"Filtered Rows1"

With this data, I can now report to the user what files have not been accessed in the past 6 months.

Effortlessly Trigger a Flow from a Power App: A Simple Step-by-Step Example

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Ian Hayse

In this post, I want to show how easy it is to call a Flow from a Power App. The goal of the Power App is to pass values to the Flow, have it add them together, and return a result.

Starting from the Power Apps portal
click Create –> Blank app, Black canvas app, name the app, for the format option, select tablet, then click Create button.

Power App overview:

Field Type	Field Name	Option
Text Input	TextInputOne	Format: Number
Text Input	TextInputTwo	Format: Number
Label	LabelNumberOne
Label	LabelNumberTwo
Label	LabelTotal
Label	LabelMathResult
Button	ButtonCalc

Flow overview:
The Flow can be created directly in the Power App designer or the Power Platform portal. For this example, I’m going to use the portal.

From https://make.powerapps.com,
Click on New flow and select Automated cloud flow

Click the Skip button at the bottom of the window (this will make sense in a min.)

With the Flow designer open, click PowerApps or search for it, then click on PowerApps (V2)

In this step, add two number inputs to the action

I named my number inputs as follow: inputNumberOne and inputNumberTwo

The Flow will respond to the app using the Repost to a PowerApp or flow action. For the output, again select number, and I named mine outputNumber .

the formula should be: add(triggerBody()[‘number’],triggerBody()[‘number_1’])

Name the Flow as Flow do Math, and save it. You can test the Flow simply by clicking the Test button and supplying two input values. The Flow can be named something different, but this name aligns with the below example.

Back in the PowerApp, click the Power Automate icon.

With the Power Automate window open, click on Add flow and select the newly created Flow, or search for it and select it.

On the app design surface, select the button and update its OnSelect property to:
Set(varNumber, FlowDoMath.Run(TextInputOne.Text,TextInputTwo.Text).outputnumber)

Select the LabelMathResult field and set its Text value to varNumber

Run the app, input values in the text fields, then click the button.

What just happened?

The values of the two text input fields were passed to the Flow, it added them together and returned the value in the outputnumber field; that value was then set to the varNumber variable.

In future posts, I will dive deeper into more complex examples.

How do you find ALL the Flows that reference a SharePoint site or list?

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Ian Hayse

I asked this question when I first started down the path of learning about Flow:
How do you find all the Flows running on or referencing a SharePoint list?

UPDATE / EDIT – READ THIS Part
Before you start on this, please ensure that your account or the account you are using to run the script has sufficient permissions to the target environment(s).

$oneFlow = Get-AdminFlow -FlowName "00000-ae95-4cab-96d8-0000000" -EnvironmentName "222222-4943-4068-8a2d-11111111"

$refResources = $oneFlow.Internal.properties.referencedResources
Write-Host $refResources

If you run that command and look at the returned properties and see an error, that means you do not have the correct permissions to move forward. You can check your permissions in the Power Platform admin center: https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/

/end of update

Think about it: someone in your company creates a Flow that runs when a SharePoint item is updated. Fast forward a year or so, and that coworker has moved on, and the Flow needs to be updated. If you work for a small company or one that hasn’t fallen in love with Power Platform and Flow, you’re likely in luck, and finding the Flow will take a few minutes. In my case, there are currently 2,712 Flows in my tenant that span several environments.

The PowerShell script I’ve created will query a tenant using the Get-AdminFlow command, return all Flows, and then loop through them. The script can be adjusted to target a single environment using the EnvironmentName parameter. Note: running the script using the Get-Flow action will return all the Flows your AD account can access.

#Install-Module AzureAD
#Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell  
#Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerApps.PowerShell -AllowClobber 

#connect-AzureAD

function Get-UserFromId($id) {
    try {
        $usr = Get-AzureADUser -ObjectId $id
        return $usr.displayName
    }
    catch {
        return $null
    }
}

#get all flows in the tenant
$adminFlows = Get-AdminFlow 

#set path for output
$Path = "$([Environment]::GetFolderPath('Desktop'))\Flow_Search_for_SharePoint_$(Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd_HHmmss").csv"

#set target site
$targetSPSite = "https://yourTenant.sharepoint.com/sites/yourSITE"
$targetSPList = "4f4604d2-fa8f-4bae-850f-4908b4708b07"
$targetSites = @()

foreach ($gFlow in $adminFlows) {

    #check if the flow references the target site
    $refResources = $gFlow.Internal.properties.referencedResources | Where-Object { $_.resource.site -eq $targetSPSite }

    #check if the flow references the target list
    #$refResources = $gFlow.Internal.properties.referencedResources | Where-Object { $_.resource.list -eq $targetSPList }

    if ($refResources -ne $null) {

        #optional - get the user who created the Flow
        $createdBy = Get-UserFromId($gFlow.internal.properties.creator.userId)

        $row = @{}
        $row.Add("EnvironmentName", $gFlow.EnvironmentName)
        $row.Add("Name", $gFlow.DisplayName)
        $row.Add("FlowEnabled", $gFlow.Enabled)
        $row.Add("FlowGUID", $gFlow.FlowName)
        $row.Add("CreatedByUser", $createdBy)
        $row.Add("CreatedDate", $gFlow.CreatedTime)
        $row.Add("LastModifiedDate", $gFlow.lastModifiedTime)
        
        $targetSites += $(new-object psobject -Property $row)
    }
}

#output to csv
$targetSites | Export-Csv -Path $Path -NoTypeInformation

If you don’t want to get the display name of the user who created the Flow, comment out the part of the script that calls the Get-UserFromId function, and you won’t need to connect to Azure.

And to answer my original question: How do you find all the Flows running on or referencing a SharePoint list?
In the script, comment out the part of the script that references $targetSPSite and un-comment $targetSPList. You can get the GUID of the list by navigating to list settings and looking at the URL. Another option is to open the list, view the Page Source, then look for the “listId” property.

In a future post(s), I will outline how to search for all Flows that use different connectors, Dynamics 365 tables (dataverse), triggered from Power Apps, or other objects. All of the info is in the properties of the Flow; getting to it can be a little fun.

Power App and SharePoint List Form Hide Field on New Item Form

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Ian Hayse

How do you hide a field on a PowerApp when opening a new form? The approach below uses a single screen form instead of multiple screens for the various forms.

I started by creating a new SharePoint list and added two text fields:
Not on New Form
On New Form
Using the customize form option, I entered the Power App designer.

When the PowerApp designer opens, it will look like this:

To help see what’s going on with the form mode, add a text label to the form and set its Text property to: "Form Mode: " & Text(SharePointForm1.Mode)

Select the field (Data Card) that should not appear on the new item form, then select the Visible property. For the Visible property, enter the following: If(SharePointForm1.Mode = 1, false, true) . If your SharePointForm1 is named something else, use it instead of the value I presented.

Breaking down the formula a little: If the SharePoint form mode is equal to 1, visible should be false, else true.

Save and publish the app, then check if it’s functional as planned.

New item form with Form Mode: 1

Display item form with Form Mode: 2

Edit item form with Form Mode: 0

How Do You Get a Power Page Attachment That’s Stored in Blob Storage

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Ian Hayse

My Power App Portal (Power Pages) environments are configured to use Azure blob storage for form attachments. One of the primary reasons for doing this is to avoid filling up expensive dataverse storage with endless attachments submitted by enduers.

This article outlines how to set up Azure storage: link

What I’m going to demo is how to get ONE attachment that’s uploaded to a form. If your form allows multiple attachments, you’d simply loop through them.

In the example, I’m using the soon-to-be-obsolete dataverse connector, but the same basic flow design applies to the normal connector.

When a row is added to my table, the flow is triggered.
The flow then queries the Note (annotation) table using the ID from the source table.
filter query: (_objetid_value eq souce_table_id)

The list rows notes query will result in an array being returned, but I’m only dealing with one attachment, so there’s no need to loop through it. To avoid an unnecessary loop, a function can be used to target a single object from the array: first(body(‘List_rows_Notes’)?[‘value’])?[‘annotationid’]

From the Get row note action, annotationid and filename will be needed to help form the path to the blob. Using the concat function I’m combing the container name, annotationid, and filename. Also, note the transformation on annotationid, the hyphens need to be removed, and the string needs to be lowercase. The last part of the transformation is to remove .azure.txt from the filename.

concat('/blobcontainer/',toLower(replace(outputs('Get_row_Note')?['body/annotationid'], '-', '')),'/', split(outputs('Get_row_Note')?['body/filename'], '.azure.txt')[0])

The end result of the transformation will be:
/blobcontainer/annotationid/filename /blobcontainer/cf03e4cf7f72ad118561002248881923/example.pdf

With the path to the blob formed, the get blob content action can retrieve the file.

It’s that simple.

A couple of notes:
It would be wise to leverage a virus-scanning tool like Cloudmersive.
If you haven’t already noticed, when a user uploads a file that contains special characters in the name…it’s saved to the Note table without the special characters, but when it’s moved to blob storage, the characters will be in the name. Yes, that’s a bug Microsoft has yet to fix. You can avoid this by adding Javascript to the upload page to block files that fall into this category. OR. Write another flow to clean file names before the form is processed.
Example:
Uploaded filename: my report 1:2:3.pdf
Note table: my report 123.pdf
Blob: my report 1:2:3.pdf

Azure Runbook Job Name error: Token request failed..Exception

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Ian Hayse

When you move from a SharePoint on-prem environment to SharePoint Online, you lose the server-side environment you’d normally use to run PowerShell scripts or tasks to interact with SharePoint. In my opinion, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the closest thing to a server-side environment in a cloud environment is Azure Runbooks or Azure Function Apps. I went with Azure Runbooks due to its ability to handle long-running tasks.

The error I recently encountered in my runbook was: runbook name error: Token request failed..Exception . At first, I thought there might be something wrong with the way I was connecting to Keyvault, but that wasn’t it. Next was my connection to SharePoint, this is handled using a SharePoint-generated client ID and secret. Oddly enough, I had just updated this a few months back, so it wasn’t an obvious candidate for a failure point.

I went to my target SharePoint site, created a new set of credentials using siteName/_layouts/15/AppRegNew.aspx and siteName/_layouts/15/appinv.aspx. After creating the credentials, I went back to the runbook and plugged them in, and it worked!

Long story short, if you get this error: Token request failed..Exception try creating a new client ID and secret and see if it helps clear things up.

You can also use this script to test your client id and secret. Connect-PnPOnline | PnP PowerShell

$siteUrl = "https://taco.sharepointonline/sites/burrito"
$testConn = Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -AppId "1111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555" -AppSecret "X3tssvCebdl/c/gvXsTACOajvBurrito=" -ReturnConnection
$list = Get-PnPList "Tacos"
Write-Output $list

Create Approvals That NEVER Expire

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Ian Hayse

If you are reading this, you likely ran into an issue where you created an approval flow, but it expired before the recipient had time to approve or reject it. The timeout for an approval or any flow is thirty days; then, it stops running. Yes, there are some clever workaround to alert if the flow times out, but who wants to mess with that?

The approach I took to solve this was to leverage some of the existing tooling, then add to them. When you create an approval, a row is created in the dataverse Approval table. As we all know, a flow is trigger-based, so why not create one that simply monitors the Approval table, then handles things from there?

At a high level, here is the basic approach.

Start by creating a simple flow that initiates an approval, then run it. In my example, note the value in the Item Link field; this will come into play later.

Next, navigate to make.powerapps.com, expand the Dataverse section, and click on Tables. After the page loads, click the All link under Tables, then search for approval. If you search for approval and do not get a result, make sure you click the All link.

Open the Approval table; in it, you will see your approval, possibly more depending on how old your environment is or if many people in your company are using approvals. When looking at the data, the takeaway is what is stored in the table and what can be used in the flow that handles the outcome of the approval. In my case, using the Item Link field is key to handling the approval response. With it, I can filter the value and know if I need to take action on the item or not.

When creating the flow that responds to the approval, you can filter it at the design level or in the trigger settings. I went with the trigger setting due to the number of approvals that could be firing across my organization in our default tenant. Why do you need to filter it? Just assume other approvals might be writing to the same dataverse table.

Trigger Conditions

@contains(triggerBody()?['msdyn_flow_approval_itemlink'],'https://www.sharepointed.com/stuff/')

@not(equals(triggerBody()?['msdyn_flow_approval_result'], null))

The above conditions filter the value I passed in the create approval flow (Item Link) and if the item has been approved or rejected.

Here is an overview of the flow that handles the outcome of the approval. I mixed dataverse connector types due to an issue with the trigger condition not working with the green dataverse connector. In the Expand Query field, I used the Fetch XML builder to query over to the Approval Response table to get the comment field; not used in the example, but nonetheless, it’s there. From the Get a row by ID action, the response of the approval is available to use to handle the outcome (Result) of the approval.

To my knowledge, there is no reason why you can’t create an approval that is active for months, if not years.

Notes:
1) You can access and review the approval records using PowerBI, Flow, Access, ___
2) You can bulks update the records using PowerShell, Flow, Access (be real careful), __
3) You can pass items in the Details field, then parse them out when handling the approval. Here is one simple example where I’m passing a SharePoint item ID from the approval and parsing it in the response flow:

Response flow compose statement that parses the Details field.

Expression: last(split(triggerBody()?['msdyn_flow_approval_details'],'**SPItemID:** '))

YES, this is a lot, but the general idea is simple; create an approval and handle the response.