SharePoint Online sources in Power BI do not require a gateway to schedule a refresh, making them a very convenient storage solution for file sources – in addition to things like SharePoint lists. You can use a gateway for SharePoint Online sources, but you would need to create a connection in the gateway for every… Continue reading: How to schedule refresh of a cloud file source in Power BI
If you’re using SharePoint lists for any kind of ticket or request management, you are likely to want to track how long it took to complete the request. We can do this automatically using Power Automate to set a “close date” date-type field. First, make sure you have a “close date” or “completion date” field… Continue reading: Tracking “days to complete” a SharePoint list item request
A good Power Automate approval flow has the following: This article is part of a series on doing request management with Microsoft Lists, so you might check that out as well! Power Automate makes it really easy to make a basic approval flow, but unfortunately it comes with none of the above out-of-the-box. I would… Continue reading: How to design a GOOD Power Automate approval flow
Reminders are an important part of any approval process. Microsoft published an article in their Power Automate blog about using parallel branches for reminders. The technique shared there is my preferred method as well – but if you read through the comments (note: you need to be logged in to see comments on the site),… Continue reading: How to create approval reminders in Power Automate (including timeout error handling)
Comments in SharePoint are a bit of a can of worms. There’s two types of comments: Modern comments My issue with the new modern comments is that they do not exist as real list data to be referenced by Power Automate or any kind of automated notifications. People interacting with the items only get notified… Continue reading: Techniques for managing comments in SharePoint lists
Request management (a.k.a. ticketing) can be extremely useful as a tool to manage and track work on a team. At the end of the day, this is essentially a form with a status field to track progress and automated alert rules. This is a replacement for email-based intake of work: the act of putting requests… Continue reading: How to create a request management system in Microsoft 365 with SharePoint
When you’re setting up conditional formatting for columns in SharePoint lists (a.k.a. Microsoft Lists), you are only given the option of configuring rules based on the current column settings that you’re looking at. But what if you want to create a formatting rule that looks at multiple fields? For example, if you want to highlight… Continue reading: Conditionally format a list based on multiple column conditions (no coding required!)
If you work with SharePoint lists, you’ve probably bumped into the list view threshold at one point or another. The gist is: SharePoint can only display 5000 items at a time in a list view. What’s the easiest way to deal with the list view threshold? In my opinion, the easiest way to handle this… Continue reading: Working with the SharePoint 5,000 item list view threshold
Power Automate emails will send email from the mailbox of the account that owns the Exchange connection in the flow by default (meaning if you own the connection, it’ll come from your user account). If you want your flow to look more professional and keep all of the messages “together” in one centrally accessible place,… Continue reading: Send Power Automate emails from a shared mailbox!
SharePoint lists will always come with a “Title” field for its items. This field can’t be deleted, but it can be renamed or hidden. I tend to err on the side of keeping it and renaming it to something more meaningful to the end-user over hiding it, because it’s the field that’s used to open… Continue reading: How to hide the “Title” field in a SharePoint list in SharePoint Online