Automate workflows with Power Automate connector for Updates in Microsoft Teams

Updates is a Microsoft Teams app which allows you to create, submit, and review employee updates, surveys and work reports in one place, to keep your team on track for success. These updates can be recurring updates which happen on a regular basis or in-the-moment updates which can happen at any time based on the need.

Today, we are announcing the Power Automate connector for Updates which allows Power Automate users to leverage Updates and address use cases like daily update, project progress, shift handoff, checklists, inspection, store visits, etc. as a part of their flows. For example, a common scenario is to collect inventory count during a store walkthrough. With this connector in place, when a frontline/store worker submits a daily or weekly update for store inventory in the Updates app, the Updates connector will automatically trigger the embedded workflow which can automatically aggregate all the inventory into a dashboard. This enables workers to save time by automating the process and help increase operational efficiency. Currently, the connector supports two triggers. The first is when a new Update is received and the second is when a new Update tied to a specific request (like ‘Incident Report’) is received.

The Power Automate connector for Updates in now generally available. To get started with the Updates connector, you can follow the steps mentioned below:

1. Get started with your connector

The Updates connector enables creation of Power Automate flows which trigger when an update is sent to the flow owner. For example: Use case1: Users want to trigger a flow that creates a task in Planner when they receive a new update through Updates app.

• • Create a flow and select ‘When I receive a new update’ as the flow trigger. As this trigger listens to all updates received by the flow owner no further parameters are necessary

• • Add an action within your flow to create a task within the Planner board you want to use to monitor your Updates

Use case2: Users want to trigger a flow that creates a group chat and sends a message when they receive a new update tied to a specific request (ex Incident report) through Updates app.

• • Create a flow and select ‘When I receive a new update tied to a specific request’ as the flow trigger.

• • Select the update request you want to monitor

• • Add an action to create a group chat and send a message. You can use the dynamic content output from the trigger to give more information about the update within the Teams message.

2. Known issues and limitations Currently there are a few limitations to how the connector functions, namely:

• • Triggers cannot be scoped to monitor specific chats or channels yet.

• • Triggers cannot be scoped to fire based on submissions from specific users yet.

• • Triggers cannot be scoped to fire based on specific fields in the update request yet.

3. Common errors and remedies Here are a few common errors are remedies that you may encounter with the connector

• • The specific update request is disabled so that the trigger doesn’t work. The flow maker can enable the update request in Updates app.

• • The Dataverse account of flow maker is disabled so that the trigger doesn’t work. The flow maker can contact the tenant admin to enable.

4. Required permissions and licenses You need the following permissions to deploy Updates:

• • Permissions to create a Microsoft Dataverse database.

• • An account on powerautomate.microsoft.com.

• • Administrator Role in your target environment when using non-default environments

• • License for Power Automate, Office 365, or Dynamics 365.

• • License for Microsoft Forms to set up new templates.

To find out more about the Updates app and how to manage it in teams, visit the Microsoft Teams documentation page.