Creating Button Flows

Up to this point, we’ve worked primarily with automated flows – that is, flows that happen based on Power Automate detecting, or being notified of, a change and then acting upon it. In this chapter, we’re going to shift gears to create a different type of flow – one that happens when you manually start it.

Since the original launch of Power Automate as Microsoft Flow, button flow has been known by a few other names, including manual flow, instant flow, and now instant cloud flow. While this terminology is largely interchangeable, the term button flow is typically used to indicate a flow that has been published to a mobile device that can be initiated by tapping a button in the Power Automate mobile app experience, while the terms instant flow or instant cloud flow are typically seen in the Power Automate web portal.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics:

• Learning about button flows
...

Learning about button flows

Button flows (or instant cloud flows), as previously mentioned, are manually triggered flows. They don’t monitor anything, nor do they have any sort of REST-based trigger that instantiates them. Button flows can be used for a variety of low-impact tasks, such as executing reminders or notifying individuals.

A button or instant flow can be created in three different ways:

• From a button flow template
• From a blank template
• Imported from a package

One of the best ways to get started, especially when working with common tasks, is to look at the examples of others and templates. If you think you might be doing something that someone else has done before, a template is a great place to start. You can also import previously saved and exported flows (you’ll learn more about this in Chapter 18, Exporting, Importing, and Distributing Flows).

Button flows can be created from either the Power Automate mobile app...

Creating a button flow to email a manager

There are times when you just need a quick form or letter to respond or send someone a notification, such as when you’re out of the office due to a holiday or illness. In this section, we’re going to configure this simple button flow to email your manager that you’re going to be out of the office. Like the flows you’ve created in the last few chapters, we’re going to take advantage of dynamic content to make sure we retrieve the value stored in the manager property for an account in Office 365.

In order to do this, we’re going to introduce a new connector and some interesting actions:

• The Office 365 Users connector: This connector allows you to connect to Azure Active Directory to retrieve information pertaining to the user object data. You can learn more about the Office 365 Users connector here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/office365users/
• The Get my profile (V2...

Executing a button flow

Once you have created a button flow, the best way to see its usefulness is by launching the Power Automate mobile app. Once you have signed in, follow these steps to execute the newly created flow:

1. Verify that the new button flow appears. After launching the Power Automate app, select Buttons. You should see your flow listed, as shown in Figure 5.11:

Figure 5.11: Button flows

2. Tap the button to execute the flow.
3. After it has completed, tap Flows in the tray and then tap the button flow to open the Flow details page, as shown in Figure 5.12:

Figure 5.12: Examining the flow details

4. Tap Run history to display the recent runs.
5. Select the run, and then examine the details to ensure that it was completed successfully. You can expand any of the steps to view the results of any step, including the expansion of dynamic content or the evaluation of expressions:

Figure 5.13: Viewing...

Summary

In this chapter, we covered new connectors and actions, as well as an example of how to nest an expression inside another expression by formatting the value from utcNow() with the formatDateTime() expression. By combining multiple expressions, you can display variable data in a format that makes sense for the flow.

As you’ve seen, button flows can be useful for quick tasks that can be executed from either the web portal or a mobile device. While button flows can be created from mobile devices, you may want to consider creating complex flows from the web interface so that you can see more components on the screen at the same time.

In the next chapter, we’re going to look at using push notifications to increase visibility and draw attention to noteworthy items.

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