Track downloads of Entity Lists from the portal

[Anonymous]

I want to track when and by which portal user (CRM contact) the entity list of active contacts was downloaded. I.e. I'd like to track when a portal user pushes the download button shown below and then downloads the file.

A colleague of mine shared a possibility of triggering a creating a custom download button, once clicked it triggers a flow with as input the contactID, and then starts the standard download. 

However, I have very little experience with the Portal, liquid and Javascript, so a detailed explanation would be very welcome, as well as other more suiting solutions. 

I've found multiple articles on how to trigger Flow using custom buttons, but is it also possible to do this on the standard download button?
https://www.alphabold.com/how-to-trigger-power-automate-flow-from-power-apps-portals/

I see @Audreyma was struggling with a similar/same issue:
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Power-Apps/How-to-track-sign-in-users-who-download-docu...

@OliverRodrigues maybe you know a proper way of doing so, since the problem seems really close to your blogpost, but I can't pinpoint it exactly:
https://oliverrodrigues365.com/2020/05/24/power-apps-portals-generate-and-download-word-document-fro...

[OliverRodrigues]

hi @Anonymous what I would do here is inject JavaScript to the download button. The JS could create a log entry to a dataverse table with the information that it was downloaded by the signed in user and datetime as well. You can do the insert via Portals API.

please let me know if you need help with the code (either JS or API).

Note that we have now a new Forum for Power Pages, for future questions you can post in there: Forums - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)

[Anonymous]

Dear @OliverRodrigues,
Thanks for your repsonse. Am I understanding you correctly, that with what you say I can make a CRM entity (dataverse table) named portalDownloads which logs when the entity list is downloaded. So with this solution, it is not even needed to call a Flow that fills this portalDownloads entity?

I associated Javascript alsways with clientside, where my company wants to make it 'serverside'. So my question would be, is this javascript logging avoidable if you use for example an adblocker or certain webbrowsers while being in the portal? 

And Yes, if you are willing to help me with the code, even the most basic setup, that would be amazing. To make a first start, I think that the place for the javascript for the download button would be placed here right, at the custom javascript? 

Thanks in advance for your help Oliver

[Audreyma]

Hi @Anonymous 

Have you got any update about this issue?

I tried reading Oliver's blog, but still not sure how it can be used to track who download web files.

[Anonymous]

Nope not yet. Curious if Oliver has some code suggestions. Next week I'll start trying to dive into it myself based on his article and whatever I can find elsewhere. If I find a proper solution, I'll share it. Feel free to check in later;)

[OliverRodrigues]

I can't think of any server-side solution really here. The download click wouldn't trigger anything in the back-end/server-side.. so basically I can't see any other way rather than using JavaScript

even if you trigger a flow, you would still need JS to trigger the flow.. so in my opinion I would just go ahead with creating the "Portal Downloads" table and populating via JS

The place for you JS code is absolutely correct.. I will put together a code to inject logic to the download button

[OliverRodrigues · Accepted solution]

This code should work for injecting the code to the Download button:

$(document).ready(function () {
    var list = $(".entitylist.entity-grid").eq(0);
    list.on("loaded", function () {

        var downloadButton = $('a.entitylist-download');
        downloadButton.on("click", CreatePortalDownload);
    });
});

function CreatePortalDownload(){
    console.log("make your web api call here");
};

The API call should be very straight forward, and it would depend on the information you want to log, please refer to the following article: Overview of portals Web API - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

[Anonymous]

Thanks Oliver,

This will give a great start. I'll keep you updated. I indeed thought for triggering the flow it would be JS (or Liquid). And maybe just with the create function and the api call, a flow won't even be nescessairy, but I'll probably find out along the way how to do so. Again, thanks a lot for your help and direction.

[OliverRodrigues]

that's great Tim.. are you happy to mark that as the solution then? just so in case other users are searching for something similar?

thanks 

[Audreyma]

Hi @OliverRodrigues 

I have several questions about the solution.

1. Except for my current table, do I need to create a new table for "portaldownload"?

2. If it's yes for question 1, should I inject the JS code you provided to the entity list of the new table?

3. My case is a little different from Tim's , I have download buttons for each web file, will the solution still work?

4. At the end of the code, a web api should be called.  What is web api used for here?

    Do I need to created a web api as the below article shows?

    Tutorial: How to use the portal Web API - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Could you kindly confirm it?  Thanks in advance!