Following on from part 1 where we introduced edison365 ideas as the project / task intake for Project for the web, Planner and Azure DevOps, in part 2 we continue where we left off. If you missed part 1 it can be found here: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/using-projectfortheweb-microsoftplanner-or-azuredevops-for-managing-projects-tasks-and-need-a-way-for-users-to-submit-project-requests-or-project-ideas-workmanagement-microsoftproject-edis/
Continuing with looking the Power Automate flow used for the Project for the web integration, the trigger and first 2 actions are the same as the Planner Power Automate flow we looked at in part 1 but with different IDs used on the trigger conditions:
These are IDs related to the challenge and idea stage used by the Project Requests challenge. We then use a Common Data Service Create a new record action to create the project record in Dataverse (Project for the web data is stored in Dataverse):
In this action we select the Projects entity / table name, set the calendar ID (any value can be used as the service will set the correct calendar ID). The Name is passed in from the edison365 idea SharePoint item title, the Contracting Unit is the Organizational Unit ID found in the Organizational Unit entity, the Work hour template is set to the correct Work Template ID found in the Work template entity. In this example the Project Manager has been hard coded to my user ID but in a real world example, this could be the edison365 idea owner provided they existed as a user in the Dataverse environment. For an example flow that will help you set up the Project Manager – see this example: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/office365-projectfortheweb-project-request-process-using-microsoftforms-cds-and-powerautomate-projectmanagement-ppm-msproject-powerplatform/ The next action is to update the edison365 idea with the Project for the web project link:
This action updates the edison365 ideas item IdeaUrl01 column for the project request idea item with the Project URL using a SharePoint HTTP action. The final action is to email the edison365 ideas owner/s to inform them that the project request has been completed:
That’s it – a simple no code solution for a Project for the web project request / intake using edison365 ideas and Power Automate.
The final example in this blog post is creating a work item in an Azure DevOps project from an approved edison365 idea. The users complete a similar form like they did for the Planner task request and the Project for the web project requests. This example doesn’t use the term challenge and idea as the instance of ideas used for this example is an IT change request instance so challenges are known as Business Systems and ideas are known as IT Requests. We have several business systems set up on this demo instance, a few are displayed below:
Users then create a new IT request for that particular business system, once approved it creates a work item in Azure DevOps, here is one example:
The DevOps Work Item link opens the Azure DevOps work item:
This Power Automate flow is very similar to the previous two:
The trigger condition is slightly different as it uses just one condition as it runs for all business systems (challenges) in edison365 ideas:
An Azure DevOps Create a work item action is used to create the work item:
The work item Title is passed in from the edison365 ideas SharePoint list item title, also the edison365 ideas short link is added to the work item description. The edison365 idea is then updated with the Azure DevOps work item link using the SharePoint HTTP action:
Then finally the idea owner/s are emailed to inform them that the work time has been added to Azure DevOps:
That’s it, the 3 simple scenarios for using edison365 ideas as the project / task / work time intake request interface with Power Automate handling the integration between edison365 ideas and Planner, Project for the web and Azure DevOps.
Modern Work Management - Project and the Power Platform blog 