Last week I was working on automation that include SharePoint online list, workflow using SharePoint designer and PowerShell back-end to finish the automation flow.

Fortunately my Sharepoint designer was broken so I was not able to create a workflow. I started reconsidering my options without the designer and thought to try Microsoft flow as an alternative.

Soon I discovered that We could achieve same things using Microsoft flow and that too with ease.

Here is what we are doing:

• User to fill a self service form for creation of Sharepoint online Site collection.
• Data gets stored in the List.
• Ones submitted workflow is invoked to send a email to the user.
• Workflow also set the list item (status column) to Inprogress.

open the Sharepoint online List & click on Microsoft flow on the ribbon –> Create a flow.

Flow will start – when new item is created , send a email, you can select dynamic fields, HTML tags to create a dynamic well formatted email.

See below example screen shot:(Tip: use <BR> to separate the lines)

last step is to update the status column of the list to in-progress.

Finally flow will be like below:

Now just create a new item & your flow will invoke, good thing is that it will show success as well as fail and with details why it failed.

if you will click on failed than you will know the reason & can easily fix it.

you have seen that how easily you can build automation using Microsoft flow & it can act as an alternative solution to SharePoint designer for creating simple to complex workflows.

Microsoft flow is more advanced than any other individual workflow tool as it can add workflows beyond SharePoint.(yammer,twitter, outlook etc.)

Enjoy designing your flows..

Thanks for reading

Sukhija Vikas

http://SysCloudPro.com