Transforming Workshop Interactions: Integrating Power Platform for Real-Time Surveys

Recently, while presenting the capabilities of Power Platform to an internal Microsoft team, I constructed a simple, effective solution to underscore its potential. This solution addressed a pressing need of the team: a method for dispersing post-meeting workshop surveys. Rather than resorting to Microsoft forms, I built a demo using Adaptive Cards, employing Chat GPT in my approach. Intriguingly, it took only five minutes to create this solution. (If this process intrigues you, I'm open to writing a detailed post about it—let me know in the comments).

The team noted that the solution "partly" met their requirements. A real game-changer, they suggested, would be the integration of a verbal or message trigger in a meeting to dispatch the survey at a critical juncture, enabling participants to respond directly during the meeting.

While I initially didn't have a solution at hand, the vibrant Power Automate community, established by Ilya Fainberg on WhatsApp, came to my rescue. A member named Chris suggested exploring the "When a new chat message is added" trigger in Microsoft Teams. This idea led me on an exciting journey of experimentation, which I'd like to share with you, as I believe it can truly revolutionize the way you automate your meetings.

Setting up the Trigger

This trigger is fairly straightforward; it detects when a new chat message is added by the person who has initiated this trigger. In this scenario, it will look for all new chat messages sent to me.

Getting the message detail

Utilizing the trigger, I can implement an action— in this instance, "Get message details." This process will be invoked each time a new chat message is added. Here, I can designate the area where the flow will be active and select a message type and place where this message should be set. As per the requested example, this could be applied to the Group Chat of an upcoming meeting or workshop.

Tidying up the message and creating a condition

Having honed in on the source of the message, I can now extract its content to create a condition. This condition can initiate a particular action based on the content of a group message. For instance, if the speaker inputs "#1" during the meeting, the condition is validated, and the associated action will be triggered.

This works! :-)

Posting the survey / measure in the meeting

Now that the condition has been set, I can devise an action that fulfills the team's request. For the sake of this experiment, I asked ChatGPT to generate the Adaptive Card manifest for a quick survey.

? "type": "AdaptiveCard",
? "version": "1.2",
? "body": [
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "TextBlock",
? ? ? "text": "Survey",
? ? ? "weight": "bolder",
? ? ? "size": "medium"
? ? },
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "TextBlock",
? ? ? "text": "Please take a moment to answer the following questions:",
? ? ? "wrap": true
? ? },
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "Input.Text",
? ? ? "id": "name",
? ? ? "label": "Name"
? ? },
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "Input.ChoiceSet",
? ? ? "id": "gender",
? ? ? "label": "Gender",
? ? ? "choices": [
? ? ? ? {
? ? ? ? ? "title": "Male",
? ? ? ? ? "value": "male"
? ? ? ? },
? ? ? ? {
? ? ? ? ? "title": "Female",
? ? ? ? ? "value": "female"
? ? ? ? },
? ? ? ? {
? ? ? ? ? "title": "Other",
? ? ? ? ? "value": "other"
? ? ? ? }
? ? ? ]
? ? },
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "Input.Number",
? ? ? "id": "age",
? ? ? "label": "Age",
? ? ? "min": 0,
? ? ? "max": 120
? ? },
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "Input.Toggle",
? ? ? "id": "subscribe",
? ? ? "title": "Subscribe to newsletter",
? ? ? "valueOn": "true",
? ? ? "valueOff": "false"
? ? }
? ],
? "actions": [
? ? {
? ? ? "type": "Action.Submit",
? ? ? "title": "Submit"
? ? }
? ]
}

{        

Subsequently, I was able to collect the responses from the quick survey and save them in a database for future reference.

Here's a glimpse of what this process looks like in action, demonstrated via a GIF. (hit #1, Adaptive Card presented, Enter survey, Hit submit)

If you have any comments / feedback / suggestions I'd love to hear your thoughts!