Solution: How to use the MS Teams: 'Post a Feed Notification' Action & How to get members of a Private Teams Channel

[landonjochim]

The Power Automate - Microsoft Teams: Post a Feed Notification seems like a relatively straight forward action that can provide a high level of value. Though it can provide a high level of value, it is not all that straight forward…

The Action requires the following properties:

• Post As
• Notification Type
• Recipient
• Team
• Channel

The part which is most confusing is the Recipient field. Almost every time I have tried to use this action I receive the error message of "The response is not in a JSON format." umm ok?

The Recipient property says to specify a User ID, but even when using the Get User Profile 365 Action to retrieve the User ID, it still errors with that same error message. Same is the case when providing an Email of the recipient.

So how to solve this?

1. Within the Team which you are wanting to Post the Feed Notification, go to Details
2. Then click See all Members

1. Click on the Apps tab
2. Then click the More apps button

1. Click the Power Automate app

1. Click on the dropdown arrow to the right of Add, click Add to a Team

1. Then click on the dropdown arrow to the right of Set up, click Set up a bot

That’s it! Test your flow and everything should run without a hitch. Such an unspecific error message, and there seems to be no documentation anywhere that Microsoft has published showing that adding the Power Automate bot as a prerequisite for this Action to work.. Hope this helped

Top Line: Name of the Workflow (Workflow Owner DisplayName)

Middle Line: Notification Text property for the Action

Bottom Line: Team > Channel

Bonus: How to send a notification to an entire Team?

Use an action like the "List Group Members" one that will list everyone within the Office 365 Group that is created for the Team.

Then cycle through each value in an Apply to Each to send each group member the feed notification

Double Bonus: How to send a notification to all members of a private channel?

Private channels actually create their own SharePoint Team Site in the backend separate from the Team Site that is created for the Team. However, it does not create another Office 365 Group.

So we need to get all the users from the Members SharePoint Group of that private channels Team Site.

1. Within the Private Channel in MS Teams, click on the three dot ellipsis
2. Then click Open in SharePoint

1. Navigate to the Home page of the Team Site
2. Add this to the end of the Home page URL: /_layouts/15/user.aspx

Example:

1. Click on the default Members SharePoint Group

1. In the URL, find the MembershipGroupID

1. Now back in your Workflow, add the Send HTTP request to SharePoint action
• Site Address: <URL to Private Channel SharePoint Team Site>
• Method: GET
• Uri: _api/web/sitegroups/GetById(<MembershipGroupID>)/users

1. Add a Parse JSON action
• Content: body('Send_an_HTTP_request_to_SharePoint')
• Schema: Copy the outputs from a previous run of the Send an HTTP request into the "Generate from Sample"
2. Add an Apply to Each action
• Output from previous steps: body('Parse_JSON')?['d']?['results']
3. Then add your Post a feed notification action with the recipient being: items('Apply_to_each:_Private_Channel_Group_Members')?['UserPrincipalName']

All done!

[OzOscroft]

Thanks @LanD, really useful.  Unfortunately I'm experiencing this issue with users who are using the "Follow up later" flow from chats / group chats.  Would the solution here be for them to add the Power Apps app to Teams?

[DanielFrank1]

Hi @landonjochim I did everything you wrote in the first part, but I still get the error message with JSON, but the Notification is going out. But it wont to the steps after, because the feed notification fails.

[prdjuliana]

Where can i find the set up a bot option? Some adjusts where made after the recent Microsoft Teams updtate and i can't find it. 

[KBraman]

I followed your instructions but I do not have Power Automate as an option to add. Do I need to get IT to change something so that it is an option to use it?