Flow of the Week: Use a button to track your work hours and work location

Today, in our Flow of the Week series, I would like to highlight a capability we recently added to our Flow Mobile buttons.

Before highlighting this new functionality, just a reminder of the basics: If you aren't familiar with button flows, they are an easy way to kick off a workflow from your  iOS or Android device with a single tap.

To use a button, download the app for Android or iOS and sign in.

Now, heading on to our newest capability: when triggering a button now, the button collects valuable information such as your location, your user details, and the current time. This info can now be leveraged within your flow. Read more on the topic here. 

This data can be useful in various cases. One usecase which is often raised by our Flow users, is their need to keep track of their work hours, and work locations, so that they can review the info or sum it up at the end of the month. For example, consultants who advise several companies, or project contractors.

For this usecase, we’ve created these templates to log your business activities:

• Track your work hours and work location in a Google sheet
• Track your work hours and work locationin an Excel table

Getting Started

The first step is to select your template: Track your work hours and work location in a Google sheet

On the template page, if this is the first time that you are using a Google Sheet, you will be asked to Sign in.

As you connect, you should see a green checkmark next to the connection. This indicates that the connection has been successfully tested. Then, once you have connected, select Continue.

Filling out the flow settings

In order to use this flow, you will need to create a Google sheet with the following columns: Date, Timestamp, Full address.

Now that you have connected to your services, and created your Google sheet, you only need to configure one action in the flow:

In the Insert row card, select your Google Sheet file using the highlighted file picker.

Then, in the Worksheet field just select your respective sheet name, i.e. “Sheet1” In the below example.

Once choosing your sheet names, the sheet columns will be mapped to your button trigger inputs, as pre-defined in this template.

If you choose, you can also customize other aspects of the flow, such as the text of the push notification which you  receive upon run completion.

Please note that this flow can also be created directly from your Microsoft Flow Mobile application for Android or iOS.

Running your flow

Finally, running the flow is easy. In your Flow mobile app, select the Buttons tab at the bottom of the screen, and then tap the flow you just created.

Using your button trigger info, tapping the button will log your current location and time to your table.  Finally, you will get a push notification at the end of the run, indicating that your Sheet was updated successfully.

Please note that when Flow accesses your location info for the first time, it will ask for your consent.

That’s it, you’re all set to use this button now. You can now simply tap the button once when starting your workday, and once again at the end of your workday.

Let us know what you think about this flow and suggest other ideas on the forum.