Automate Where You Are: Power Automate Desktop

If you work in even a lightly technical workplace these days, you know there is a big push to use technology to automate many day-to-day tasks. Microsoft has worked hard to provide an array of tools to feed that need. If you look at the list of Power Automate's "connectors" (https://make.powerautomate.com/connectors), you will see that Microsoft has worked with a variety of partners to build an ecosystem of endpoints for working with data that moves to and from Microsoft 365 in a way that is designed to be useful for automation tasks. Connectors reduce the "friction" between various services interacting, reducing development needed to make various data sources communicate with one another. If you need to have something automated, in the Microsoft 365 context, Power Automate has probably come up.

Finding Your Place in an AI World

I don’t know about you, but for me AI is starting to feel a little too intelligent and a little less artificial. I’ve been watching as blog posts, videos, scripts, images, and now workflows and applications generated by AI have gradually gone from “oh that’s so silly,” to “wow that’s pretty good.” I even saw an AI generated hand recently that had the right number of fingers! At the onset of the AI invasion, I thought “I can’t be replaced by machines” but these days I’m not so sure… So, what’s an IT Pro to do to stay on top in an already competitive field?

Mastering Power Automate: Unlocking Trigger Conditions and the Compose Action

In this blog, we're focusing on Trigger Conditions and the Compose action – two essential tools for refining your workflows. Learn how Trigger Conditions let you control when flows activate based on specific criteria, and discover the dynamic capabilities of the Compose action, your utility knife for text manipulation and data transformation!

Microsoft 365 Backup and Archive Services

Before the Microsoft Backup and Archive services announcement at Microsoft Inspire 2023, an AI Chatbot like ChatGPT would have responded to "Tell me about Microsoft 365 backups provided by Microsoft" with something like this:

Using Microsoft Forms for Anonymous Surveys

I recently had a friend ask me, “hey Allie, you Microsoft Guru, I have this need for an anonymous survey process, how should I use SharePoint with Power Platform to achieve this?” I started asking for more requirements and eventually said “well, you shouldn’t use SharePoint with Power Platform. You should use Microsoft Forms.”

Obviously, each scenario, use case, business or personal need is different, so there is rarely a “one form fits all” solution, but I wanted to provide some guidance on using a Microsoft Form for truly anonymous surveys.

Configuring the Layout of SharePoint Forms

I love a good form, but I am not a fan of the default form on SharePoint online. It does the job, sure, but it leaves so much to be desired. Most of the time I customize it via Power Apps, but that requires licensing and some Power Platform experience, and time. Sometimes, I work with clients that just don’t have those things. Luckily for them, there is a pretty simple way to spruce up the default SharePoint form using some copy paste and find and replace magic.

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