Following a recent post, where I shared a Power BI dashboard that helped me and my organization empower, govern, support and manage our PowerApps developers, I would like to deep dive into what I have created and how I am using the admin connectors.
I started off with reading the following blog New: Admin Connectors for Flow and PowerApps and realized those connectors made it possible to create a very tailored admin experience, suitable to the specific requirements of my organization.
The admin connectors are only available to Admins of an environment with a Plan 2 license, the below can help your support and governance teams who might not have the appropriate access to gain insights about the PowerApps in your tenant.
My plan was to
- store the list of PowerApps in a SharePoint list
- build a Power BI dashboard on top of that list
- post about new apps to a Teams channel
- send an email when a new app is created to inform the user about best practices, tips and tricks, as well as governance and support models
I first created two SharePoint lists to store the information in. A SharePoint list was the best and quickest option for me, however this information could also be stored in an Azure SQL database or other data source.
PowerApps Information List columns
I choose to start building this tailored experience based on the "Get list of new PowerApps, Flows and Connectors" template flow.
As I wanted to focus my admin experience on PowerApps, I removed the Flow and Connector references from the template flow. After tidying up the template flow, I was left with the below steps:
Now, my Flow was in a state where I could sta
rt modifying it and putting in my requirements.
Because I'm storing the information in a list, and I always want that list to be up to date - the first thing I do at the beginning of the Flow (right after Recurrence) is delete all items currently in the list. I have chosen to do this, rather than Update the list item, as I'm not storing any other information in the list.
I then added the "Create item" action to the "Apply to each PowerApp" loop as a first step, and created the item with the dynamic content.
The "Apply to each PowerApp" loop from the template already has an If-Statement, that checks if the PowerApp has been created in the past 7 days. I'm utilizing this If Statement to eMail the PowerApps maker as well as update our PowerApps Management Teams Channel.
I have added the "Send an email from a shared mailbox" action to this If statement, to email PowerApps makers that have created an app in the past seven days.
The email contains a link to Learning Resources, to our internal PowerApps community as well as some best practices.
At the bottom of the Flow, after the "Create PowerApps HTML table" action (that is part of the original template), I post the Output of this HTML table to our Teams channel - this is where the PowerApps admin team can then have conversations about the apps and keep track of how many apps are created per week. With that, my Flow was done and I could focus on the Power BI dashboard!
The Admin dashboard provides an overview of how many apps we have, who the top creators (department and individual users) are and who many users these apps are shared with.
Further planned enhancements now are:
- sending an email to users six months after creating the app, to ensure they are happy with the progress they are making and check if they are still happy supporting the app. If not, there will be a path to hand an application over to IT support in our organization
- keeping a list of PowerApps makers and keeping track of the training they have received, to provide more tailored learning content to them.
This is my first deep dive into PowerApps / Flow, so please do let me know if you have any questions and if you would like me to do a deep dive into the PowerBI dashboard as well. Thank you!
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