Paul's Project Server and Project Online Blog

#ProjectOnline custom #email notifications using #MSFlow #MicrosoftFlow #PPM #PMOT #MSProject #Exchange #Office365 #PowerPlatform Part 1

This blogs post has been delayed due to all of my blog posts on Microsoft’s new Roadmap service – summary post here with most of the posts: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/project-roadmap-cds-app-overview-ppm-projectmanagement-msproject-projectonline-office365-powerplatfom-dynamics365/

This post continues the series of posts I started to do in December 2018 following on from a Microsoft Tech Sync session where I presented a session on Project Online and Flow better together. As it’s been a while, here are links to the previous posts:

Post 1: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/projectonline-publish-all-projects-using-msflow-microsoftflow-ppm-pmot-office365-powerplatform-part-1/

Post 2: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/12/12/projectonline-publish-all-projects-using-msflow-microsoftflow-ppm-pmot-office365-powerplatform-part-2/

Post 3: https://pwmather.wordpress.com/2018/12/14/projectonline-snapshot-data-to-sharepoint-list-using-msflow-microsoftflow-ppm-pmot-office365-powerplatform/

In this post we take a look at an option for building custom email notifications with a no code / low code solutions using Microsoft Flow. This example sends an email for projects that are running late. There are two simple versions for this, one with a details table in the email and one with just the project name but includes hyperlinks in the email to the project detail page. These are both very similar, the first one can be seen below:

This is triggered on the Recurrence trigger, set based on your requirement. This then uses the Sent an HTTP request to SharePoint action to query the Project Online OData Reporting API:

This will control the data that is included in the email, so this OData query can be updated based on your requirements. Next the Flow uses the Create an HTML table action:

For this action we pass in the project data array from the previous action using a custom expression:

The final action is to send the email:

In the body of the email here we are just using the output from the previous Create HTML table action:

This results in an email being sent with the data from the OData query used (these are just my test projects and not real projects!):

Very simple! Sticking with the same theme for late projects but this time the email contains hyperlinks into the projects, this Flow is slightly different:

The difference here is we do not use the Create HTML table action but instead use Select and Join from the Data Operations actions. Firstly the select actions looks like this:

The Select action is used to transform the data in the results array from the previous step. Just the same as the Create HTML table in the first example, we pass in the project data array value from the previous action into the From property. Then the Select action was changed to use the text mode using the toggle option outlined in red below:

In Map properties, transform the data as needed in the email such as:

Here we are building up a URL passing in the ProjectId for the PDP URL (update to the correct PDP) and the ProjectName for the URL title. Then we use the Join Data Operations action to put each project on a new row in the email:

The From property is just using the Output from the previous Select action:

Then the final action is the email:

Note the Is HTML property is set to Yes. In the Body we type the email body as required plus the Output from the previous Join action:

Then the email is sent on the defined schedule with clickable links to the Project Detail Pages (again, these are just my test projects and not real live projects!):

These are two simple examples but as you can see, it’s very easy to build Project Online related emails using Microsoft Flow. I have some more examples in my next posts coming soon.