Recently, I was developing a Flow to create a new folder in a certain SharePoint library when a SharePoint list item was created. Then, the Flow would send an email to the creator of the list item saying that the folder has been created.

I found that the easiest way to do this is by using a REST API. 

If you’re like me, you may go through a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error. By following these steps, your Flow will be very easy to accomplish and up and running in no time. 

Creating the Flow

1. Navigate to the left side of the Microsoft Flow home page and click “create” 

• Create a blank, Automated Flow

2. Name your flow and pick your trigger

• In this case, we will connect to SharePoint and our trigger will be “when an item is created.”

3. Enter your SharePoint site address and your list name

• For the purposes of this example, the site is called “YourSite” and the list name is called “Testing” 

4. Add a step to your Flow by clicking “new step”

5. Choose an action. Search “SharePoint” within the search box

• Our first action is going to be “Send an HTTP request to SharePoint.”

• This is where our REST API comes into play.

6. Below is how we set up our HTTP request:

• The JSON headers can be copied and pasted: 

{
  "Accept": "application/json; odata=verbose",
  "Content-Type": "application/json; odata=verbose"
}

{
  "Accept": "application/json; odata=verbose",
  "Content-Type": "application/json; odata=verbose"
}

7. Add your next step by again inserting a new step, and searching SharePoint again

8. This step is called “Create sharing link for a file or folder”

• This will create the link to your new folder that will be used in the email notifying the user that created the SharePoint list item

9. Add your next step: “Send an email”

• This step is connected to Outlook, rather than SharePoint. 
  • If you use another email service, such as Google, you can still complete this step but you will need to use a different action.
• This step will send the person who created the list item in the original SharePoint list an email with a link to the newly created folder in the SharePoint library

And that’s it! It’s rather simple, right? This is a great way to automate some of your daily SharePoint business processes.

Learn more about DMC’s expertise with Microsoft’s Power Platform and contact us with any project inquiries. 

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However, before we begin, it is important to discuss what the uses cases for this are. Why use Microsoft Flow when Salesforce already has a suite of process automation tools (Process Builder, Salesforce Flow, Approvals) in its arsenal?

If you want the entire process to live within Salesforce, then the Salesforce native capabilities will work great. However, if you want your process to update any external systems, Microsoft Flow is a great option because it allows integration with multiple platforms without the need for a developer.

To begin, we will create a new blank Flow. For our trigger, we will search for “Salesforce” and choose the “When a record is modified” trigger action.

Next, we will select our Salesforce environment (production or sandbox) and the API version. After selecting the “Sign in” button, sign in using your Salesforce credentials.

After this, you’ll select the Salesforce object that you want to trigger the Flow. In this example, we’ll select opportunities.

If we select “Advanced Options,” we will be given additional filtering options. In this example, we only want the Flow to run when a large opportunity (greater than $250,000) reaches the “Proposal/Price Quote” stage of the sales process. To do this, we use Open Data Protocol (OData).

In this example, I entered “Stage eq ‘Proposal/Price Quote’ and Amount gt 250000.”

To view a full list of OData filter capabilities, see this link here. 

It is also essential to make sure you are using the correct field names within the filter query. In Salesforce, fields have both a Field Label, the name you see on a record, and a Field Name, the name you use when calling the field via an API. For OData filters, make sure you use the Field Name.

To see a full list of all field labels and names in Salesforce go to Setup > Object Manager > Opportunity > Fields & Relationships.

Now that we have correctly configured the trigger action, we have access to all of the opportunity’s dynamic data such as the Account ID, Amount, Opportunity Name, etc…

Next, we could:

• Post a message in a Slack channel or Microsoft Teams letting the team know about the opportunity.
• Start a multi-step approval process to review the price and scope of the opportunity.
• Create a new project site in SharePoint.
• Create a pre-populated proposal in a SharePoint document library using the Microsoft Word connector outlined in my previous blog post.
• The Salesforce connector also gives the ability to modify salesforce records which allows us to move an opportunity to the next stage, create new leads, create a new task, etc…

For this example, we will keep it simple by posting a message in a Slack channel.

In the choose an action search box type in “Slack” and select “Post message.”

Then create your message using the dynamic Salesforce data.

Now if we trigger the flow by moving an opportunity worth over $250,000 to the “Proposal/Price Quote” stage in Salesforce, we can see that it correctly posts in our Slack channel.

Contact us today for Salesforce development or Microsoft Flow solutions. Learn more about our Digital Workplace Solutions team and service offerings.

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        1. Populate a Microsoft Word template

        2. Convert a Word document to PDF 

To demonstrate this new functionality, I am going to create a Flow that triggers when an item is created in SharePoint, populates a Word Document template using the item metadata, and saves the document to a document library in SharePoint as both a Word Document and a PDF.

My list item, document library, and word template file will have the following fields:

• Title
• Customer
• Contact
• Amount
• State
• Signed Date

Create a Word Document Template

I have already created the list and document library so we will begin by creating the Word Document template.

Open Word and create all the fields we want to be filled out in the document.

Next, go to the “Developer” tab. If you don’t have the developer tab available, right click on the Home tab and select “Customize the Ribbon”.

From the popup that appears make sure that “Developer” is selected from the list of available tabs and select OK.

We will now add the content controls to the Word document.

For each data field highlight the text you want to use as the content control and select Plain Text as Content Control which is the “Aa” button in the controls section.

The text selected as the content control should now have a box around it when you hover over it.

Do this for all the fields in the template and save the file as a .docx (NOT a .dotx template file) in SharePoint or OneDrive.

Create a Flow

Next, we will begin creating our Flow.

Begin by setting the trigger for the flow as “When an item is created”.

Set the site address and the name of the list that items are being created to.

Populate the Template

Now we will populate the template we created.

Select “Next step” and enter “word” in the Choose an action search box.

Select “Populate a Microsoft Word template” from the list of actions.

Choose the location and document library that the template is saved in. I saved my template in OneDrive so for the location I selected “One Drive For Business”, for Document Library I selected “One Drive” and then select the template created earlier by selecting the folder icon on the right-hand side of the file input and choosing the template file.

You will now see all the content controls you entered in your template file listed.

Next, we will use the dynamic content controls to populate data from our list item into the word template content controls we set up earlier.

Go through and use the dynamic content selector to add list item data into the template for all fields.

Create the File

Now that our template is populated, we are ready to create our file.

Create the next step, enter “create file” in the Chose an action search box, and select the “Create file” SharePoint action.

Enter the site address of the document library you want to save the document in.

For folder path, enter the document library you are saving the file in. You can also select a specific folder within the library.

I prefer to create the file name with dynamic content, so I set it as “Customer Name” Contract.docx.

It is important that you add the file extension within the file name, otherwise you will not be able to open the file.

For File Content select “Microsoft Word Document” from the dynamic content options. This will bring in the content from the populated template in the previous step.

Save the Document as PDF

Now if we want to save the document as a PDF instead, we can use the Convert Word Document to PDF action.

To do this add another step, enter “word” in the choose an action search box, and select “Convert Word Document to PDF”.

Enter the site the library is located on, select the document library, and select “FileLocator” from the Create File step within dynamic content.

Next, we will add another “Create File” step.

The only difference this time is to make sure we put the .pdf extension on the file name and select the “PDF Document” dynamic content for the file content.

Test the Flow

Now we’ll test the Flow. Create an item in the list that triggers the flow.

We can now see that we have both a Word Document and a PDF in our document library.

If we open one of the documents, we can see that the fields we entered on the list item are correctly feeding through to the document.

Enter the Document Metadata

Before we finish, we need to enter the document metadata.

Navigate back to the Flow, create a new step, enter “Update File Properties” in the choose an action search box and select the SharePoint “Update File Properties” action.

Enter the site address, document library name, and select “ItemId” from the dynamic content selector to select the Id of the document created earlier in the Flow.

Now enter all the file properties using the dynamic content selector. For this example, we will only add metadata for the PDF document.

If we run the flow again, we can see that the metadata of the pdf document has correctly populated.

Contact us today to get started on your next Microsoft Flow project.

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