Automating the toil - Part 1

I'm not a developer, but I've always been a fan of automation - and so no/low code products have piqued my interest for a long time. Zapier is my absolute favourite since forever: it blends usability with utility and is absolutely the gold standard in this space.

We can't always use the tools we want, though, so I've found I can create similar outcomes with 微软 Power Automate, part of the Office 365 suite.?

Whilst it's not even close to Zapier in terms of usability or power (sorry Microsoft!), it's a decent second place -and has the advantage of natively supporting the most widely used office productivity suite in the world.

I've enjoyed finding this automation niche - and I'm that nerdy about it that I have setup workshops and presentations to colleagues to demo how they can reduce toil, too. I've found answering colleagues' questions and troubleshooting their flows really rewarding, so I thought I'd write a few posts on common Power Automate flows that might help you, too.

I'll be posting an article for each useful piece of automation I've setup that brings a specific benefit and outcome, and explaining how it works.

Today's automation: putting SharePoint List data into Excel

Why?

Because sometimes colleagues don't have access to certain areas of SharePoint - so when the SharePoint list is updated, this flow puts the data into a shared Excel sheet and updates a chart graphic. It's accessible and digestible.

How?

• The flow is triggered when there are updates in a SharePoint list.
• It retrieves the updated items from the SharePoint list.
• It gets the rows in a table in an Excel file.
• It filters the rows based on a certain column value matching a value from the SharePoint list.
• If no matching rows are found, it adds a new row to the table with the values from the SharePoint list.
• If matching rows are found, it updates the existing row in the table with the values from the SharePoint list.