Manually trigger a flow

[Scott_M]

I find Power Automate frustrating, all of the templates seem centered on 'send an email'. 

The flows are very vague and I can't seem to make anything work.  I want to create a manual flow for an excel spreadsheet to create a contact list based off of first name and last name and have the automation populate the details for title, email, phone numbers.  I attempted this last year and couldn't make it work.  I searched through many examples to build an automation and it would never work.

Started fresh today...  Started flow by selecting 'manual trigger for selected file'.  I created a teams site and an excel document inside the document folder with first name and last name.  When I try to define what file to use, it will only accept site address and folder, not the file.  Next action?  no idea.

Scott.

[alrez]

Hi Scott,

In this case the way the manual connection works is you are basically adding the "run flow for file" to a site. Once you do that then in that site when you select the file in the bar at the top it should give you an option to run the flow for that file. I would start there and see if you can work on developing that part.

Regards,

Alex

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Community Support Team _ Alex Rezac
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[Scott_M]

Ok, sorry, don't understand.

[Scott_M]

Ok, so I went to the spreadsheet I created, clicked the automate button.  Kind of ran into a dead end right away.  

This is really simple.  The spreadsheet will have first name, last name.  Would like to query Outlook address book to pull in company, department, phone numbers email address...  

[Rhiassuring]

The two actions you have are not the ones you want to use. You are not using a PowerApp (per your description), and you have no script (per your description).

From what it sounds like - please correct me if I'm wrong - you have created a single Excel spreadsheet. You have column 1 and column 2 as First Name and Last Name, right? Now you want to - for each of those rows - get it, and then query Active Directory to fill in the rest of the details (such as Email address.) 

So, Step 1 - ensure the content in your Excel spreadsheet is formatted as a Table. Also add the columns where the other info (email, department, etc) will be entered.  I'd recommend also making "FullName" that combines First Name, space, Last Name. Save and close the file.

Step 2 - create a manual trigger, if you're only firing this when you want to, not based on a schedule or automatic happening.  New Flow > Instant Cloud Flow > Manually Trigger a Flow. It's a blue button with a white hand pressing a button.

Step 3 - List Rows Present in a Table. Point it at your Excel sheet, and your Table.

Step 4 - Search for Users - use dynamic content (click on the field, you'll se Dynamic Content and Expressions appear in a little tabbed box) and then select FullName from the Excel section. It'll turn into an Apply to Each, and that's okay. 

Step 4 - Now that you have the UPN from that search, you can use Get User Profile. Use the output from the Search for Users. That will also turn into an Apply to Each since it doesn't know if you have 1 or several users. That's fine. You can use the names of the properties held in active directory (such as department, workemail or email, whatever your organization uses, delimited b y commas.) 

Step 5 - Now you have that info, you can cram it back into Excel by using the Excel "Update a Row" action.  You will need a unique key for this, which luckily, FullName SHOULD be. (If it isn't, you need to make one - it can be FullName+the Row ID or something).  You're going to point back to your same spreadsheet, but the "Key" will be the name of the column (FullName) and the "Value" will be the actual FullName.   Then, once you've done that, all of the fields in your Table will appear and you can drop the Dynamic Content output (from Get User Profile (V2)) into each, as it applies. (Ie, Department into the Department.) 

WHen you run this, it will run for each row entry.

This is not a beginner level task in Power Automate. It's like, somewhere between Beginner and Advanced, closer to Advanced. 

[Scott_M]

I tried the steps suggested above.  There were issues with headers in the table, I identified and corrected. 

Now, I keep getting in the Update a row operation:
"The 'inputs.parameters' of workflow operation 'Update_a_row' of type 'OpenApiConnection' is not valid. Error details: The resolved string values for the following parameters are invalid, they may not be null or empty: 'id' 

{

  "@odata.context": "https://excelonline-wus.azconn-wus-001.p.azurewebsites.net/$metadata#drives (deleted, not sure if this is sensitive info)

  "@odata.etag": "",

  "ItemInternalId": "Scott M***", added wild cards

  "FullName": "Scott M***", added wild cards

  "Company": "",

  "Dept": "",

  "Title": "",

  "Email": "",

  "Cell": "",

  "Work": "",

  "Address": ""

}

[Scott_M]

Apparently I don't have access to my own information within outlook?