Building App Chatbots Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents Chatbots Overview (6 of 6)

In this video, we discuss the use cases to build chatbots. We show how to build topics, entities to build a chatbot flow that can enable users to search information from the SharePoint data list. We use Power Automate to integrate an OData API call from the Chatbot to SharePoints, so we can filter on items based on a selected filter.

Welcome to the building apps with Microsoft 365 series. This is a series of six videos. In each video, we discuss a technology area on the Microsoft 365 platform. If you follow this series, you will be able to build an application which can run from your mobile device by downloading the PowerApps mobile app from the app store.

Platform Review

• AI-powered chatbots to resolve common dialogs with users
• Natural language understanding
• Integration with other services via Power automate
• Deploy to websites, mobile apps, MS Teams channels and other collaboration tools

Use Cases

• Enable business processes
• Customer support
• Automate dialog driven tasks
• Integrate with other skills for voice automation , Text-To-Speech scenarios and integrations

Originally published by ozkary.com

Power Virtual Agents Chatbots Overview (6 of 6) In this video, we discuss the use cases to build chatbots. We show how to build topics, ent...

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Building Apps Power Apps Overview

PowerApps on Microsoft 365 Overview (5 of 6)

In this video, we build a mobile application with PowerApps. We integrate the app with a SharePoint data list and PowerBI online dashboard all in real-time. We start by creating an app from the SharePoint data list. After looking at the boiler-plate app features, screens and navigation, we make changes to support application level variables, toast notifications, flyout menus. We also add a new screen to embed a PowerBI dashboard.

Welcome to the building apps with Microsoft 365 series. This is a series of six videos. In each video, we discuss a technology area on the Microsoft 365 platform. If you follow this series, you will be able to build an application which can run from your mobile device by downloading the PowerApps mobile app from the app store.

Platform Review

• Look at data connectors and services
• Building mobile apps

Build an App with SharePoint

• Create a new App – SharePoint connector
• Look at gallery, view and edit screens
• Review Navigation

Advanced Concepts

• Input Validation, notification and error handling
• Visibility, Filtering, sharing data between screens
• Demo real use case

Publish and Share App

• Review how to publish and recover previous versions
• Export App to deploy on other tenants

Using PowerApps Mobile App

• Install on your device
• Connect with your credentials and run the published app

Originally published by ozkary.com

PowerApps on Microsoft 365 Overview (5 of 6) In this video, we build a mobile application with PowerApps. We integrate the app with a Share...

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Building Apps Power Platform Overview

Power Platform on Microsoft 365 Overview (3 of 6)

In this video, we provide an overview of the Microsoft 365 Power Platform. We introduce the major services that are available, and we talk about how to leverage them when building an application.  As an example, we take a SharePoint Web form and enhance it with a PowerApps Web form. We also integrate the SharePoint app with Power Automate by pushing new records to Microsoft Team to show team collaboration capabilities.

Welcome to the building apps with Microsoft 365 series. This is a series of six videos. In each video, we discuss a technology area on the Microsoft 365 platform. If you follow this series, you will be able to build an application which can run from your mobile device by downloading the PowerApps mobile app from the app store.

Platform Review

• Build low-code apps quickly
• Integration with data connectors
• Integration with Azure apps and security (Azure AD)

PowerApps

• Create mobile enabled apps for Web, Android and iOS devices
• Data model first development

Power Automate

• Workflow Automation
• Process improvements
• Connect to multiple services

PowerBI

• Unify Data from different sources
• Visualize your data and integrate with other apps
• Online dashboards with PowerBI online

Power Virtual Agents

• Create conversational chatbots  to engage with users
• Enable the search of information

Originally published by ozkary.com

Power Platform on Microsoft 365 Overview (3 of 6) In this video, we provide an overview of the Microsoft 365 Power Platform. We introduce t...

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Building Apps SharePoint Overview

SharePoint Microsoft 365 Overview (2 of 6)

In this video, we provide an overview of SharePoint Web Portal features, content and document management systems. Since we are building an application, we focus on building a data list which functions as a database table to store our app data. We take a model-first approach to define the model meta-data and constraints. We then build the application front-end.

Welcome to the building apps with Microsoft 365 series. This is a series of six videos. In each video, we discuss a technology area on the Microsoft 365 platform. If you follow this series, you will be able to build an application which can run from your mobile device by downloading the PowerApps mobile app from the app store.

What is SharePoint?

• Enterprise web portal and Sites
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Web apps, business process, document management
• Communication, collaboration 
• Low-code portal for external users via federated security

Data List

The video covers the following implementation details in real-time.

• Like a database table stored in the content database
• Use it to build apps with CRUD operations
• Views, Filters, Alerts and Workflows
• Integration with PowerApps and Power Automate to build business processes

Originally published by ozkary.com

SharePoint Microsoft 365 Overview (2 of 6) In this video, we provide an overview of SharePoint Web Portal features, content and document ma...

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Building Apps Microsoft 365 Overview

Microsoft 365 Overview (1 of 6)

In this video, we provide an overview of the Microsoft 365 platform. We explain some platform services, so developers may find a use case applicable for their needs. In order to make this practical, we build an actual application in real-time. We do this to show the capabilities of the platform. 

Welcome to the building apps with Microsoft 365 series. This is a series of six videos. In each video, we discuss a technology area on the Microsoft 365 platform. If you follow this series, you will be able to build an application which can run from your mobile device by downloading the PowerApps mobile app from the app store.

Product Management App

  We build this app by looking at the following areas:

• Data and Web application with SharePoint and PowerApps
• Process Automation and collaboration with Power Automate and MS Teams
• Mobile app with PowerApps
• Data visualization with PowerBI
• Chatbot Search Automation with Virtual Power Agents

Originally published by ozkary.com

Microsoft 365 Overview (1 of 6) In this video, we provide an overview of the Microsoft 365 platform. We explain some platform services, so ...

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PowerShell SharePoint API with Invoke-RestMethod Return String

With PowerShell, we can use the invoke-RestMethod cmdlet to make Restful API calls to get JSON data. When using the SharePoint Restful APIs, the cmdlet returns the JSON data in string format which is not the intended result. To handle this problem, we can convert the string to a JSON object, so we can work with the structured data instead of a string by using the following script:

Invoke-RestMethod Docs

We should note that when we try to convert a SharePoint JSON string using the ConvertFrom-Json cmdlet, we get an error that the string is not a valid JSON because there are duplicate attributes (Id, ID) which are returned by default on the payload.  To address this, we can replace one of the attributes while the JSON is still in a string type.  We can then convert the string again and all should work.

Please keep in mind that this is a behavior that is applicable to PowerShell. If you use the JavaScript parser, this error is not raised.

I hope this is able to help you consume SharePoint JSON data using PowerShell.

Originally published by ozkary.com

With PowerShell, we can use the invoke-RestMethod cmdlet to make Restful API calls to get JSON data. When using the SharePoint Restful APIs,...

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Enable a SharePoint REST API Post with RequestDigest Token

 SharePoint provides a very detailed set of RESTful API which allows us to interact with SharePoint data lists. When sending GET API calls, there is no need for additional security validation. When sending a PATCH (update) or POST (create), SharePoint requires that the request headers have an additional header with an authorization token. In this article, we take a look at getting this authorization token, and sending a request using an Angular application.

How to Get the Token

Before sending a POST requests via the APIs, we need to first get a fresh (valid) token.  Lucky for us, the SharePoint APIs also provide an end-point which can be used to get it.  Let’s take a look at the code below to see how this is done:

Note: This snippet runs under the SharePoint site context. The API URL is relative to the site location. For example if your site URL is https://mysp.com/sites/mysite, the API URL should be https://mysp.com/sites/mysite/_api/

function token() {                           var url = "../_api/contextinfo";     $http({         method: 'POST',         url: url,         headers: {             'Content-Type': 'application/json;odata=verbose',             'Accept': 'application/json;odata=verbose'         }     }).then(function success(resp) {         var data = resp.data.d.GetContextWebInformation;                        authToken = {};         authToken.name = 'X-RequestDigest';         authToken.value = data['FormDigestValue'];                     }, function error(resp) {         console.log(resp);     });                        }

In this function, we use the API _api/contextinfo which returns a base64 encoded string.  The token also has an expiration of usually about ten minutes which depends on the SharePoint configuration.  Once the promise is resolved, we capture the X-RequestDigest JSON value, and we set it to a variable which can enable us to use it when making other API calls.

The JSON from the API call should look like this:

{     "d": {         "GetContextWebInformation": {             "__metadata": {                 "type": "SP.ContextWebInformation"             },             "FormDigestTimeoutSeconds": 1800,             "FormDigestValue": "",                       "SiteFullUrl": "",                        "WebFullUrl": ""         }     } }

Once the authorization/digest token is available, we can send a POST API call with the token value in the request header. This is done in the following code snippet:

function addItem(item) {     var data = {         "__metadata": {             "type": "SP.Data.TodoItemsListItem"         },         "Title": item.title,         "OData__Comments": item.comments     }     var request = $http({         method: 'POST',         url: url,         headers: {             'Content-Type': 'application/json;odata=verbose',             'Accept': 'application/json;odata=verbose',             'X-RequestDigest': authToken.value         },         data: JSON.stringify(data)     });     return request; }

When creating or updating information on the data lists, we need to send the item values as well as the metadata information for the list. Without the metadata, the request will fail.   We can identify the metadata information by first sending a GET request. The returning payload provides the data with the corresponding metadata.

In the rest of the code, we set the title and comments properties of the JSON payload. We then use the HTTP service to send a POST request with the header information. We should notice that there is an X-RequestDigest header entry which matches the name that we received when we initially get the token in the previous snippet. In this header, we can then set the security token value and send the request.

By adding the digest token to the header, the PATCH and POST API calls should be successful. We do need to remember that these tokens have an expiration window, so we should check for this and refresh the token when it is about to expire.

I hope this is able to help you resolve the authorization token requirements when creating and updating a SharePoint data list.

You can get a sample project here:  https://github.com/ozkary/sp-addin-todo

Originally published by ozkary.com

  SharePoint provides a very detailed set of RESTful API which allows us to interact with SharePoint data lists. When sending GET API calls...

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Upload a SharePoint Sandbox solution to Office 365

A Windows SharePoint (WSP) solution is a cab file that enables us to deploy data lists and web content like JavaScript, CSS, ASPX assets to a SharePoint site. It is a sandbox solution because it only enables us to deploy assets that can run on the browsers. When deploying to Office 365, we need to deploy the WSP file to a site that has the solutions feature available. In this article, we take a look at creating a developer site, uploading a solution and then enabling the feature that contains the assets that we need to deploy.

Creating a Developer Site

To create a developer site, we need to visit the SharePoint Admin center. This is available from the Admin->Admin Centers option on Office 365.  We want to be able to visit the Site Collection Management area and create a new site collection. We can access that area directly by vising this link:

https://ozkary.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/SiteCollections.aspx

Note: Replace ozkary with the corresponding site  tenant name.

On the site collection page, we can press the New button and create a Developer Site collection. In our example, we name or site collection dev which create URL similar to sites/dev. We can use any meaningful name.

https://ozkary.sharepoint.com/sites/dev

Upload the Solution

Now that we have a developer site collection, we can upload the WSP solution. This is done by visiting the developer site collection that we created on the previous section.  We can now select Site Settings-> Web Designer Galleries > Solutions or just visit this link:

https://ozkary.sharepoint.com/sites/dev/_catalogs/solutions

We are now ready to upload and activate our solution by pressing the Upload button and selecting our solution file. Once uploaded, the Activate button becomes enable. We just need to press it to activate the solution.

Enable the Feature

All SharePoint solutions have components or features that need to be enabled independently.  Once the solution is active, the features become available either at the Site or Site Collection level. This depends on how the scope of the feature is set.

When set teh scope to Web, the feature is installed at the site level. When set the scope to Site, the feature is available for the entire site collection.  For our example, we have a site scope feature, so we need to enable it from Site Settings -> Site Actions -> Manage Site features.  We could also just visit this direct link:

https://ozkary.sharepoint.com/sites/dev/_layouts/15/ManageFeatures.aspx

We should be able to find the feature name and press the Activate button.

Checking the Content

Now that we have activated the feature, all the content in our solution feature should be deployed. To validate, we need to visit Site Contents menu option. This should display the new data lists and other content that was deployed.

I hope this is able to provide an overview on how to upload a solution to Office 365.

Thanks for reading.

Originally published by ozkary.com

A Windows SharePoint (WSP) solution is a cab file that enables us to deploy data lists and web content like JavaScript, CSS, ASPX assets to...

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SharePoint 2013 Move Documents to Another Library Using Content Organizer Web Service

A common task for document management system is to move a document from one library to another based on a particular condition or content type. To enable this feature, SharePoint provides some core actions that can let you copy the document to another site collection and then delete it from the source. 

CodeProject

In our case, we want to be able to move the document using a more complex action called Send Document to Repository which moves a document by using the Content Organizer Web Service.

Note:  Content type enables us to organize documents and associate them to content rules which can enable us to route documents to specific document libraries.

Configure the Content Organizer Feature

This core action enables us to move a document to another library within the same site collection using a SharePoint web service named Official File. In order to enable this web service endpoint, we need to enable a site feature and configure some content rules.

We first activate this feature by visiting this page:

• Click on site setting
• Click on site features
• Look for Content Organizer and activate this feature

Content Organizer Rules

Create metadata based rules that move content submitted to this site to the correct library or folder.

This enables the web service that we can use to move the document. The end point is found at a location relative to your site collection for example:

_vti_bin/OfficialFile.asmx  or  sites/demo/_vti_bin/OfficialFile.asmx

Note:  We use this address when we add the workflow action.

This web service address can also be found by visiting the following page: 

• Site Settings
• Under Site Administration select Content Organizer Settings

Create the Content Rule

Now that the service is available to the site collection, we need to configure a rule that indicates what type of content type we want to manage and to what library we need to send this content. This is done by visiting the following page:

• Site Settings
• Under Site Administration select Content Organizer Rules

We want a rule for the Document content type, and we want to send the document to the ArchiveLibray.  As we can see, here we could route documents based on custom content types to other libraries.

Note: When using custom content types, we can have a more granular set of rules to send documents to other libraries that are based on that content type.

Workflow Send to Document Repository Action

We have now setup all the requirements to be able to send or move our document to another location.  We can now add a workflow using SharePoint Designer.  On our first step, we want to add the Send Document to Repository action.

Note: SharePoint 2010 Workflows provide this action.

This workflow action has three parameters

Parameter	Description
This action	This allows us to indicate to copy or move the document.
This destination content organizer	This is needed to indicate where the web service is located. Use the address that was identified on the previous sections.
This explanation	Use this parameter to add some comment about the action.

In our example, we are deciding to move the document using our previously defined Content Organizer Web Service. In this example, there are no specific conditions to validate for this action, but this is the area we can validate a document status and run the action accordingly.

Summary

We have shown how to use the Content Organizer Web Service and a workflow action. With this approach there are more configuration steps that need to be complete in order to support the solution.  The additional configuration does bring added value as it can enable us to route documents based on their content type to other document libraries.

For cases where a simpler approach is desirable, we can refer to the article below which essentially shows us how to use the Copy and Delete core actions to implement a simpler Move action.

SharePoint 2013 Move Document with Copy and Delete Actions

I hope this is able to show you a way to move document across document locations using a workflow action and the Content Organizer Web Service.

Originally published by ozkary.com

A common task for document management system is to move a document from one library to another based on a particular condition or content ty...

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SharePoint 2013 Workflow Move Documents With Copy and Delete Actions

 A common task for document management system is to move a document from one library to another when the document approval status meets some condition.  Unfortunately, there is no Move core action provided from the out of box functionality.  There is however other core actions that we can leverage to implement this solution.

Move Documents

Workflow Core Actions

When building our workflows, we can use a couple of actions that enable us to move a document from one document library to another.

Core Action	Description
Copy	Use this action to copy the document across document libraries Parameter Description This list The item to copy. Set to current item This list The target document library
Delete	Use this action to delete the document from a document library Parameter Description This list The document item to delete. Set to current item

Implementing a Move workflow

After adding a workflow using SharePoint Designer, we can add a couple of actions to the first step.

For the copy item action, we want to select the current item which is a reference to the document that triggers the workflow. We also select the document library where we want to copy the document. This action makes a copy of the document, so this means that the document is located in two different document libraries which may not be the intended behavior.

After the document is copied, we can delete the document from the current location using the Delete action and passing the current item as an argument. This should remove the other copy from the source document library.

In our example, we copy the current item to a Drop Off document library. Since we do not want a copy of the document on the source library, we then delete the current item.

CodeProject

Note:  Current item is the scope object reference to the document that triggers the workflow.

Summary

We have shown that a move action can be implemented using the Copy and Delete core actions. For some use cases, this may not be a correct implementation since this creates a copy of the document and a different document id which uniquely identifies a document in the system.

 When this behavior does not meet our requirements, there is another core action that we can use to actually move the document. This approach however comes at a cost of more configuration complexity as well as the need to enable other site features.  We can read more about this on my next blog entry:

SharePoint 2013 Move Documents to Another Library Using Content Organizer

I hope this is able to provide you with a simple approach to move a document from one document library to another.

Originally published by ozkary.com

 A common task for document management system is to move a document from one library to another when the document approval status meets some...

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