In this blog post, we will discuss best practices to develop process automation using Power Automate with SharePoint Online.
Power Automate is a process automation (workflow) tool for the Microsoft 365 (O365) platform. It interacts with almost all O365 apps and many more online services through connectors. One widely used tool for collaboration is SharePoint Online, and Power Automate has many connectors to SharePoint Online to perform various Actions and Triggers.
In developing Power Automate, it is best practice to keep re-usability, extensibility and maintainability in mind just like writing any piece of software. One way of achieving re-usability and maintainability across various environments is through parameterizing the Inputs instead of hard-coding. For example, a url of a SharePoint site can be parameterized so that the rest of the code is intact when moving the Power Automate from development to QA to production environments.
Below is a simple use case to illustrate the development of Power Automate targeting Dev/QA and production environments of a SharePoint Online site. The use case creates a list item on a SharePoint Online list.
The first step is to initialize variables for the Site Url and List Name as shown below. Depending on the target SharePoint environment, the value of the SiteUrl variable is set to Dev, QA, or Production. This makes the deployment of the workflow consistent across multiple environments.
The second step is to create the item in a SharePoint site.
In conclusion, parameterizing power automate inputs makes deployment across multiple environments consistent.