videocam_off
This livestream is currently offline
Check back later when the stream goes live
Up next in 10
Case Study: How I used SharePoint, Power Automate, PowerApps, and Forms to build a Speaker Database
Nov 6, 2023
In this case study, I detail how I went about designing and implementing a Speaker Database for the Project Management Institute using SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Microsoft Forms. We will do a brief intro of what each technology is and it's pros and cons, and then dive into what I learned about each, each strengths and weaknesses, and how I was able to build a functional Speaker Database.
About Speaker:
Sarah has presented at several TechGirlz workshops for the Boys and Girls Club of Harford County, as an advocate for women in tech. Sarah graduated from the Science and Mathematics Academy in Aberdeen, MD in 2018, where she presented her senior capstone project "Engineering peer credibility via mastery of roles," where she designed roles for an ad hoc team. She worked with an army professional from CERDEC. She is currently attending the University of Maryland - College Park to major in Information Science and represents her major as a Student Ambassador. Sarah completed an internship with the Project Management Institute, helping them with their Professional Development Event, and worked as at the SharePoint Intern at Smithsonian Institution’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. She is currently a part of the Junior Fellows Program at the Library of Congress this summer
Conference Website: https://www.2020twenty.net/power-platform-virtual-conference/
C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers
https://www.c-sharpcorner.com
#powerplatform #virtualconference #csharpcorner #powerapps
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
All right. Hi, everyone. Thank you for sticking through us throughout the day. I know last session
0:07
exciting. So to make sure that you're in the right place. My talk today is the case study
0:13
how I use SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Forms to build a speaker database. So
0:18
I know there was that fun intro already about me, but I have a little bit more for you
0:23
So I am currently a junior at the University of Maryland College Park, and I am majoring in information science and operations management business ytics
0:34
Some of the fun things that I've been up to over the past few years was that I was an intern at the Northeastern Maryland Technical Council
0:41
Then I was a SharePoint intern at Smithsonian Institution at their office of the CIO
0:47
Last summer, I worked at the Library of Congress as a junior fellow intern
0:51
And then this upcoming summer, I recently accepted an offer from Amazon Web Services as a solutions architect intern
0:59
So I'm very excited for that. A quick plug for my social medias, because I like to be very active on them, to follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn
1:08
It's Sarah E. Patrick. And you see all the other talks I'm up to and all the other sessions and things I like to be engaged with
1:15
Here are just a couple of examples of fun things I would post about throwback when we were back in person
1:21
We would win raffles. That's the picture on the right. And on the left was my high school capstone project
1:27
Quick plug for the organization that I volunteer for. It's called Tech Girls
1:31
They're a really great nonprofit dedicated to creating a spark of interest for middle school girls to pursue tech
1:38
They run these free hands-on workshops and they're virtual now, but they're honestly better than ever because now anyone from all around the world can join these virtual workshops
1:50
So if you're interested in volunteering, helping out, joining me and my team, I work with my dad and his company, DSA
1:58
Please let me know or just check out their website at techgirlswithaz.org slash volunteer
2:04
Or if you just know any young girls who might be interested in attending these events, definitely check them out
2:10
All right, jumping right into today's talk, I'm talking about my internship with the Project Management Institute
2:17
And who are they? They're the world's leading not-for-profit professional membership association, obviously dedicated to project management
2:27
So I would need to give you a little introduction to the project that I worked on with PMI
2:32
They had events somewhat to today's event annually where they would bring in speakers and professionals to talk about their project management expertise
2:44
So if you are a fellow speaker, you would probably know that to submit your session
2:48
you need to submit your personal information and then your talk information, a bio, all that stuff
2:56
So same thing with PMI. They had a form to fill all that out. However, there was a couple issues
3:02
The first one being that speakers had to resubmit information for every event
3:06
So they would fill out their name, as I said, any other details with that
3:11
And once they submit one, good to go. However, what if they want to submit another session
3:16
They have to resubmit all the same information, like their name, their contact bio, things that they already submitted
3:22
They have to submit that again. And then similarly, if they want to submit the same talk, but maybe for another event in the following year or something like that
3:32
they still have to complete all that information again. It's not stored anywhere unless they have it stored on their end, which is not very efficient
3:39
On top of that, speakers were not receiving updates on the upcoming events
3:44
So they tasked me with finding a solution to this database issue to have their events run more smoothly when planning it for their speakers
3:53
So a quick little screenshot here of the old version. You just see a little snippet here of the information that they were looking for, such as name, email
4:02
If they were a PMI member, the ID for that, phone number, speaker bio
4:06
And then furthermore was the talk information. And simply you would click submit and as I said, you'd be done
4:13
However, if you want to submit more, you have to submit all the information again
4:17
Not efficient. We wanted something that would store the speaker's information. So when they wanted to refer back to that information, it was stored in a database and they grew a treatment there without having to be redundant, inefficient, typing it back in themselves
4:32
So the goal with creating a speaker database was that first it would organize the information efficiently
4:38
so people on the back end organizing the event would have the information sorted well so that
4:44
it made it smoother for planning. Secondly, we wanted anyone to sign up anonymously, so PMI really
4:51
wanted to reach out to new potential speakers, and the easiest way to do that is not having them to
4:57
create an account and sign in just to show their initial interests anonymously without having to
5:03
create that username and things like that. We wanted to store the speaker's information
5:08
talk details. That's the big one. We want them to be able to refer back to that information without
5:12
having to refill out a form again and again. And lastly, be able to sign up for multiple events at
5:18
once. Again, with being able to refer back to that information, just catching that and signing up for
5:24
those multiple events without doing it over and over. So first I had to do some research and decide
5:30
if I wanted to buy some kind of platform to set this all up for me or build it myself. So I did
5:37
some research looking at sessionize.com and at the time how SharePoint Saturday events
5:42
I'll set up their speaker database and just their system to give me some ideas and decide if I wanted
5:49
to use something like that, specifically sessionize. That's a huge one that people use to submit their
5:54
talks. But keep in mind, PMI is a nonprofit and they're a little bit on a budget, at least for me
6:00
So my theme is SpongeBob in case you didn't notice. So with that, we didn't really want to buy a model
6:09
So that's how I ended up choosing to build it myself. And that's where we get into these four technologies that I will be talking about today that made the PMI database work out
6:20
So we have SharePoint, Power Apps, Power Automate and Forms. And I'm going to be talking about what each one is, a little overview and brief introduction for my beginners, because at the time I was a beginner
6:33
I didn't know anything about any of these. And then how to get started with each of them, telling you the pros I found of each platform
6:39
and then maybe some cons that I ran into as a beginner that you should keep an eye out for if you're getting started with these as well
6:46
So to give you an idea of what the end result was, I'm going to give you a little sneak peek of how the database worked
6:58
So first, we're starting with the initial form that one would fill out to show their initial interest
7:05
Pretty similar to the original form, we get all of their basic information
7:11
And then later after this video is recorded, we also get their talk information as well
7:14
You can see that the indication with the asterisks those are required to fill out
7:19
versus the other ones we can leave blank for now we can fill those in later I hit submit and then on that front end I submitted that I an interested speaker for the PMI event Now as a back end admin I go to my SharePoint site the PMI speaker database I going to go
7:37
to the site contents and I'm going to see a whole bunch of lists and that's how I organize all the
7:43
information effectively. So we have different chapter sites, the locations of the events
7:49
the sign-up list, which is the interested speakers, the speakers list, which is
7:55
approved speakers, submissions, all the talks that were submitted, talks are the
8:00
approved ones for the events, and then a calendar for the actual event dates. You
8:05
can see here I have a whole bunch of columns for all that information I was
8:10
looking for. I just blocked out the current ones for privacy. And then we can
8:15
see if we go all the way to the bottom that an interested speaker that just
8:19
filled it out, it's already in my SharePoint list from the form. You can see all that corresponding
8:25
information there. When I go back to my site contents to take a look at my other list, so now
8:35
I want to approve that speaker. I think the talk would be very appropriate for the event
8:41
I'm going to go to my speakers list. Again, these are the approved speakers. and through quick edit I can scroll to the bottom to add my new proof speaker and I have this drop
8:52
down that looks at all the names from the sign up list because to be a proof speaker of course you
8:57
have to sign up and I'll click the name there hit enter and the corresponding information will fill
9:03
in. So hopefully that was a really good overview of how this worked. Obviously I did very
9:10
surface level of how this worked and how it all came to be, but we're going to get into the
9:16
nitty-gritty of how an interested speaker becomes an approved speaker. All right. Also, I realize I should have comments open in case questions come in. I'll be keeping
9:28
an eye out for that. All right. So first, we're going to start with SharePoint. SharePoint is the
9:35
browser-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. Also, its content management system and allows
9:41
scripts to set up a centralized password-protected space for document sharing. I found companies and organizations will
9:47
use SharePoint as a central place to upload important documents and then also just use it
9:52
as its general Internet. I'm going to go into first creating your first SharePoint site and then creating some lists
10:02
all the different ways to create a list and the different data types that can be stored in your columns
10:09
So first I'm going to start in office.com. I signed into my account and I see SharePoint
10:16
So this is how I easily access my SharePoint online. From here at the top left
10:23
I'm going to click on create site and it's going to present me with two different options
10:28
a team site or a communication site. I found that communication site is great for sending general announcements and things like that
10:36
But in this case, I want it to be a collaborative site because I want my approved speakers
10:41
to be able to edit their information. So that's why I chose a team site for this example
10:46
Pretty straightforward with these steps of giving it a name, a description
10:50
it gave me a group email. I can add additional owners and members at that point
10:55
but I can also add them later as well. The first small little issue that I ran to as a beginner
11:01
was that I knew I wanted to add a list, but I couldn't see clearly where add a list was
11:06
I'm just gonna back up for a second. But I realized that we're just under add an app as well
11:12
It has the apps and the lists there. So just keep that in mind when I go up to this gear here
11:18
So now that I know that it's under add an app, I can look at all of my different options
11:23
SharePoint presents me with a whole bunch of templates that are very helpful if you know exactly what you want
11:28
Some that I've definitely used is the picture library, links, contacts, calendar
11:33
You saw that I used that for the calendar events, other things like that
11:38
In this case, again, I was very much in the experimental phase of creating this database
11:43
So I'm going to use a custom list where I can create all the columns I think I need for the list
11:49
So this will be my sign-up one. Again, all my interested speakers that are just signing up for the event before they get approved
11:56
Now that that's created, I'm going to go under my site contents and then the actual list to start adding some columns to hold the information
12:04
So the first way to do it is really straightforward. It says add a column right there
12:10
And then the dropdown gives me all the basic data types that could be stored in that column
12:15
In this case, I'm going to show you a single line of text to set up the first name
12:21
Similar to setting up the site, I give it a name, a description
12:25
I double check that data type that I want it to be. And then I can also give it a default value
12:31
I'm going to save that. So my first column is added. Second way to add it is again
12:39
hitting add column there. But when you click on more, it navigates you to a new page
12:43
to give you some more advanced options. So we can see some more data type options here
12:49
as well as other settings to change below it. So this one I'm going to keep as
12:54
a single line of text because I'm doing last name. And then we're going to look at some of those additional settings
13:01
The first one being if the column requires information, I'm going to make this yes because last name is important
13:07
I'm going to make sure I hit okay. So when you have the option to hit okay or save or apply in SharePoint
13:13
do it because it probably won't actually save on its own. Another way to add a column is that if I drop down on an existing column
13:21
and then do add a column and then the same steps here, it will put it that column next to the one that you created. So you can see here that I added an
13:31
email column and it inserted it between first name and last name. So I found that helpful if you're
13:37
trying to reorder your columns as you're creating them. On the flip side, maybe you want to rearrange
13:43
them after you created them and you can drop down on it and then do move left or right. So email
13:50
didn't make sense to go in between first and last name so I dropped down on it and moved it to the
13:55
right. I found with custom lists that it gives you a default title column and that sometimes it gives
14:03
you some errors if you try to just delete it or even if you try to rename it. Someone told me that
14:08
once and I thought it was a good idea which I think in some cases can be but overall I found
14:12
it safer just to hide it and not worry about it. So you saw I did the drop down and then I'm editing
14:18
the view. So I'm going to unselect title there for it to be hidden and I can also rearrange my
14:24
columns here as well. You can see with the up and down arrow. Make sure I hit apply as I mentioned
14:32
If it's there, make sure you click it so it actually saves. So now we can see that the title
14:38
column is gone and it's arranged in an order that I like. Under quick edit with the plus sign
14:45
I can also add a column here. I find this helpful when you're already in quick edit and adding those information
14:51
So I just want to touch on that really quickly. I showing all of these different ways to show how to make a column because as a beginner I found this a bit overwhelming with all the different options But really it just SharePoint trying to be helpful with whatever mode you in
15:06
you can create a column. So that's why I'm going over all of these today
15:10
So under the quick edit, we still have all of the same options here
15:15
which is under quick edit. So that's good if you're inputting a lot of information at once
15:21
So another little thing here that I noticed that I wish I was told before I got to SharePoint
15:27
was that when I clicked on a new data type, you see that little refresh there
15:31
part of me wondered what was happening and really, it was just refreshing new column settings depending on the data type you selected
15:40
So you see here now that I clicked on multiple lines to edit
15:43
I now have the options to change the number of lines for editing
15:47
Obviously, that's not an option for single line. So that's what it's doing when it does that little refresh
15:52
but doesn't tell you what it's doing. I'm going to exit quick edit and show you creating a column in classic SharePoint
16:01
So SharePoint has the modern version and the classic to show you two different views of it
16:07
And classic was the original one, and they kept it for some reasons that people were used to
16:12
but also I found that it was helpful for looking over things like this
16:16
So I'm going to back up for a hot sec and see under the list tab and click on list settings and I can get a great overview of all the settings for my column
16:27
So you can see here the different columns. I have the titles, the types, and then if they're required or not
16:35
And this I thought was a really easy way to go into them and edit them if needed
16:39
So I went back to that title column that was default. I made that not required
16:44
On the flip side, first name, I'm going to go and make that required since I didn't the first time around
16:52
Make sure I hit OK. And I can clearly see here, as I mentioned, all of them nicely placed out with what their names are, the data type, and the required or not
17:03
And I really like this view as like an overall check of how things are going
17:09
Down at the bottom here is where I can create another column
17:13
shocker. So I'm going to go in here and add a speaker bio, a shortened version
17:19
You're going to see me click multiple lines of text again. It's going to do that
17:24
same refresh that I mentioned. See that refresh? There it is. And then make sure I
17:32
hit OK. So now, as you saw in modern version of SharePoint, I could create
17:41
those views. You can also do that in classic at the very bottom here. I'm going to create the new
17:46
view, make it a standard view in this case. I honestly like making the views better in classic
17:52
SharePoint because it gives me all these options here where I can name the view, I can check and
17:59
uncheck which ones I want to be displayed, and then also change the positioning with the numbers
18:05
on the right hand side. So I'm going to make email first because this will be my email view
18:09
for an email list for keeping my speakers updated. And then SharePoint also provides all of these other options to add for columns
18:19
I really like adding the created column because that gives me the date and time
18:23
a new item was created in my list. We have a whole other bunch of options here that I don't get into in this talk
18:30
but definitely recommend checking those out too. So now when I go back to my modern SharePoint
18:38
I can look at all the different views I just created. So right now it's on email
18:43
view. We can go to all items, which is everything that you might have selected
18:47
including that title column. And if I go back to email view, the email one is
18:53
listed first. So I find that really helpful if you're trying to rearrange
18:59
your columns really quickly without having to do like separate spreadsheets or anything. You just have different views. So in this case I have
19:07
an email view and that's what I can use to send out emails to my speakers or I
19:11
can have name first if I'm looking through it alphabetically. So now we're
19:17
going to talk about filling in information in these columns. So the first
19:21
way is clicking new and that's how you add one item at a time. You can see here
19:26
that pesky little title one is still there and that's because we
19:31
have to use Power Apps to customize this form which will be the next demo. But in
19:36
In the meantime, since it's not required, let's not worry about it. I'm going to fill in the rest of the information
19:44
Fill it in my email. I'll even show you the speaker bio
19:48
Since I allowed 10 lines, it opens up this rich text formatting
19:55
Make sure I go and hit save. And then save at the bottom as well
20:00
And then my new information of the new item is put in
20:06
As I mentioned earlier, if I'm inputting a lot of existing information on the back end
20:11
quick edit is the best way to do that. And I'm going to show you here that if I leave one of the required items blank
20:19
in this case, I left last name blank, SharePoint's going to tell me that it's not completed
20:23
So it's nice that it actually catches that for me, make sure it has all the information necessary
20:29
So now we have that all together and we're going to show you the list interaction and
20:38
also interactions within a list and that's what I found to be most important about using
20:44
SharePoint versus maybe just an Excel sheet. So the first one is the calculated data type and this looks at other columns already in
20:54
the list. So in this case, I'm creating full name. I need someone's full name for who knows what reason
21:01
but I don't want my front end user to have to fill out first name, last name, and then full name. That would be redundant
21:07
So I can do that on my own on the backend and using the columns already existing
21:12
of first name and last name. I'm just concatenating those together under formula
21:19
And then when I hit okay, I can see when I scroll over that those are filled in for me
21:28
So that's really helpful. The last one that I want to touch on is the lists interacting with each other
21:36
not within it, but with another one. So as I mentioned in the very first demo
21:40
the speakers list in this case looks at the sign up ones
21:45
because obviously an interested speaker has to sign up in order to be approved
21:49
So I'm just creating a column name of the name of the approved speaker
21:55
And I'm using lookup, information already on the site, not just within the list, on the site
22:01
And then it tells me where I should get the information from. In this case, it's my signup list
22:06
I can indicate some other columns I want to pass along with it
22:11
In this case, I'm doing full name, first name, last name, and email. And then I'm going to hit OK to save that
22:18
So now when I go to Quick Edit again as the back end admin approving my speakers I can go into that click on the empty box do a drop of all the interested speakers and then when I hit Enter
22:35
their corresponding information fills in. That's how I would go about being a back-end admin
22:42
approving my speakers into the new list, instead of having to copy and paste back and forth between spreadsheets
22:49
That was really helpful and that was the biggest reason why we wanted to use SharePoint
22:55
So the pros, it has a rich set of features. You saw all the different ways that I could create a column
23:02
and it just leaves a lot of room for flexibility of what you want it to be
23:06
You can create your unique SharePoint internet similar to the first one
23:09
because I am basically starting from scratch. I can add the features and whatever I feel
23:15
necessary to create my own internet. In this case, it's a database I know it will be set up to my liking
23:22
It enables cross-department collaboration, so more of a broader scale. Companies and organizations will use that to come together to work on the documents all in one place
23:33
And lastly, users decide on the best pricing model, which in my case was for free
23:38
So that was awesome. Just some cons. The multitude of features can cause a mess
23:45
Like I said before, with all of the different options to create a column was overwhelming as a beginner at the time
23:53
So I just like to touch on that because I don't want others to be confused like I was getting into it
23:59
I feel like SharePoint can definitely be a bit intimidating when you're first starting out
24:04
Integration can require extra development effort. As I was talking about with my research, buying or building
24:11
Obviously, with buying, even though it costs money, I could have just bought it and then been done
24:17
And I wouldn't have really had an internship. So instead, I spent my summer working on this, which was, of course, extra effort to do that
24:26
If one chooses to do customizations, there are costs and investments that go into that, which leads into the last one that may cause the final build to be heavy
24:36
And Mr. Krabs would not have been happy with that. But that's obviously up to you as you are the developer in this case
24:44
All right. Now let's jump into our next one, which is Power Apps
24:48
That is what you use to build and share robust apps across organization and can integrate data from
24:54
multiple sources and include workflows that automate tasks. In this example, I'm showing you how to customize
25:00
the form within SharePoint. Not necessarily making an app in this case
25:05
although I definitely could. So I'm already back in SharePoint, just where I left off
25:12
and I have the drop-down right above, and that's where I see the option to either create
25:16
an app or customize a form. Again, I mentioned that I want that form to be customized
25:20
so that's what I'm doing in this case. It's just loading it up for me
25:25
We can see here on the right-hand side, I have a box for the data source
25:31
how I want my layout, and then the fields to include. In the center, I have what I would actually see
25:36
as the form. You can see I have all these options here. It presents me with much more options just
25:42
like in SharePoint. And here I'm going to start editing. So I don't want that title in there so
25:49
I'm going to click on that and then click delete on my keyboard. I can also remove them by just
25:55
unselecting the check mark under the fields area there. Next I'm going to show you a little bit of
26:03
of not an error, but a user thing that I ran into
26:07
You can see here I'm demoing, trying to rearrange those little data cards within the form
26:13
and it wasn't letting me move them on it. But under the fields area
26:17
I was able to drag and drop them. I thought that was interesting that I could do it under the fields
26:22
but not on the actual form there. The next thing that I really like to emphasize is the steps to deploy your power app
26:32
you have to first save it. Then once it says save, you publish it to SharePoint
26:37
Make sure I hit that there. Then once I've done those two steps
26:41
once I go back to my SharePoint, I need to refresh the page
26:47
Since here I'm going back into my list there, it's refreshing the page
26:51
There's many times I would forget one of these steps, and I thought my PowerApp did not deploy
26:57
I just really like to make sure you know that. So now it looks like how we designed it, much more clean and professional for my users
27:07
And that's how my users can then add more information as they go along
27:13
This next part that I'm demoing was, again, very experimental. So I was constantly adding and deleting columns
27:21
So quickly, as we're zooming through here, I just deleted one of the columns. and when I go back to my form that column I deleted is still there it's not updated and
27:32
when I save it doesn't let me save those changes I even try to save it one more time and I get in
27:40
more obscure error you gotta see here I hit save and yeah what does that mean so we're gonna go
27:49
back in and change that so we can figure out what the error is coming from
27:57
I'm just going back into my PowerApp here and we're going to see that gives me a
28:03
little X over the one that I had deleted on my SharePoint and it tells me another
28:09
error that doesn't really make sense. Some invalid arguments. What does that mean
28:14
The moral of me demoing this part is that even though I deleted the column in SharePoint
28:21
it doesn't automatically delete in PowerApps. You have to delete them on both or add them on both or whatever
28:28
So just keep that in mind for those weird errors. Now that I've deleted them on both ends
28:34
and now it's updated and the error will be gone. The last thing that I'm going to touch on here
28:43
Oh, there's two more things. I almost forgot. Another one was that that data box and the fields area on the right hand side seemed really important, right
28:52
But there was an option to exit out. So I did, but I wasn't sure how to get them back because they already appeared automatically when I hit Customize through SharePoint
29:02
So for the longest time, I would just keep hitting Customize in SharePoint because I wasn't sure how to bring it back
29:09
And that was really not efficient. I found out the way to get those back for you all so you don't make the same mistake as me
29:16
It's not intuitive, right? So to get that data box back, you go under the View tab and then Data Sources
29:24
And then for the Fields one, we have to click on one of the existing data cards on the form and then Edit Field
29:33
And that's how we get those back. Now, the actual last one I want to touch on
29:37
At the time when I recorded this, I thought it was a glitch, but I found out then that it wasn't a glitch
29:41
it was another not intuitive thing. You can see that I added an option at the bottom here to click to upload a speaker photo
29:50
It's a button that I added through my Power App, and it's just sliding along as I scroll up and down
29:57
All the other data cards are staying in place, but my button and I wasn't sure what was going on
30:03
I found out that you have to anchor your buttons for it to stay in place as you scroll
30:09
I just thought this wasn't intuitive because the other ones are staying in place
30:14
I know they're not buttons, but the other boxes they are staying in place
30:17
but the buttons you have to anchor. So pros, you can easily make apps within
30:25
seconds through your SharePoint or whatever you're working on. you can just create an app. It's really easy
30:32
The pages and screens for navigation are easily modified as you're creating your app
30:36
Then these apps can be easily shared among your domain and unshared at anytime
30:41
So deploy out to organization or if you need to make some changes
30:44
just unshare it, make those changes, share it out again. The cons for Power Apps is first that these apps might not be as fast as you might be used to on your smartphone
30:56
so Android and iOS. You can't publish these apps to those app stores
31:01
because it is only for your domain. Similarly, with being not as fast as you might be used to
31:07
it really depends on internet connection. I talked about the anchoring buttons
31:13
and how that was not intuitive personally for me. And lastly, and the most important one for this project
31:20
was that it didn't allow anonymous access. Power Apps was meant for just your domain
31:26
and so you couldn't send it out for everyone to have access to
31:32
And we still needed something to reach out to those new interested speakers
31:36
without having them to create a login right away. So we still use the Power App for those approved speakers
31:43
once they did get that login and they wanted to edit their information, add more talk details, things like that
31:48
They used the Power App for. However, we still need something else to get that initial reach out
31:53
So that's where we turn to Forms. Forms is the online survey creator available from Office 365
31:59
and it allows educators to create surveys and quizzes and then this data can also be
32:05
exported to Microsoft Excel. In this case we're using it to get that initial interest from new
32:12
speakers for the PMI event. So let's go about making up our first signup form
32:18
So through office.com, I clicked on forms and then I click on a new form here
32:26
And I found forms to be very intuitive, really straightforward with creating the title and then a description here
32:34
And on top of being really intuitive, I think it's because it's just made to be very simple
32:39
So we have just a few options of question choices here. We have choice, text, rating, date, ranking, liker, and then net promoting score
32:49
So just a few simple options. And then I'm going to create the questions to correspond with the columns I created in SharePoint
32:58
So I have my first name. I can add a subtitle for my questions, maybe a further description
33:03
And I can also restrict the answer that I receive. So in this case, if I'm expecting a number, I can say what I want that restriction to be
33:11
I can make them required here and then also a long answer
33:17
This next part I like to say how much I like forms about is that it's smart
33:24
It knew that I chose first name and when I added another question, it gave me suggested questions, last name and middle name
33:31
So it's predicting what I want next, which it's correct. I was going to do last name next
33:36
So I select that there and it saves the options that I had for the first one
33:39
so it makes it automatically required for me, which is really nice because that's exactly what I was going to do
33:45
I click on that and add selected. Just going to show you some of the other options here
33:50
For choice, obviously, I will add what type of question it is
33:54
I can add as many options as I like, and I can also add an other option for users to input whatever other answer is
34:02
I can also give them the option to select multiple answers. For rating, I can change the level and also the symbol, stars versus just a number
34:12
I can easily duplicate questions with the little icon there, which is helpful if you have very long questions or a bunch of questions in a row with a similar format
34:24
I can delete them easily with the little trash can and then also rearrange them with the up and down arrows So after I show you all of these I going to quickly go through and actually create
34:40
my form so that matches the columns in my SharePoint. Then show you what it's like to share it
34:47
and start getting some responses. So first, before I want to send it out
34:53
I want to check that previews. I have the option to preview it on
34:57
computer or a laptop, but also preview it for mobile because you know all of us have
35:03
smartphones these days and probably are working on our mobile device. So I can see
35:08
what it looks like on each one and it looks great. So now for sharing, first I
35:14
need to check that I can do anonymous access. So under the settings I'm going
35:19
to change who can fill out this form. Anyone with the link can respond. Woo, we fixed it
35:24
And I have a bunch of other options here that I can change, but it was really important for us again to have that anonymous access
35:33
So now with the sharing options, the first one is to send and collect responses, which is the main one that I want for my interested speakers
35:43
And I have different ways to send it out to everyone. I can do the direct link. It creates a QR code for me
35:50
I can embed it in some code or I can just send it straight through the email
35:54
The next one is to share as a template. So maybe one of your coworkers wants to use yours as a template for one of their own forms
36:04
You can use that link to send to them. And the last one is to share to collaborate
36:08
So my co-admins that may need editing access to the form. This is the link I'll use for that
36:17
And just to show you how easy it is to collaborate on the link
36:22
I'm going to use this one and sign in into one of my other accounts pretending to be my co-admin
36:28
and show you that you get all the same sharing capabilities with that link
36:34
So I'm going to open up a new tab here in Cognita mode because I am working on my same computer
36:42
but we're pretending it's someone else here and I have that link. I'm going to sign in with my
36:48
school account, go Terps! And we're going to see here that I get the same sharing editing
36:56
capabilities. I can continue adding the questions I need to help my main admin out. And then
37:05
the other wise is that maybe I don't work with them anymore. Oh, I forgot to mention
37:11
when it's shared with you, it's under the shared with me tab. Unless you created it
37:15
then it's under my form. So just keep that in mind. Forms is trying to sort it out for you
37:21
Now I'm going to mention that maybe I don't work with this co-admin anymore
37:25
Really easy to unshare just like with Power Apps. I just use that little trash can button to remove
37:30
that specific link that I shared with them and then that user won't have sharing capabilities
37:36
anymore. Editing, I mean to edit the form. I'll refresh this page here and you're going to see that
37:42
it's gone under shared with me no more so it was really easy to unshare all right
37:51
really quickly because i do think um we're good on time but uh if you do want to try it out
37:58
back when we were doing this in person people were more like whoa this is crazy but we do this all
38:02
the time now but just in case you haven't you can just use your smartphone and hold it up to the qr
38:08
code. And then if you can see my phone here, you can see through my camera, a little drop down pops
38:14
up with you to fill out the form. So it's really easy to use these to get feedbacks if you're a
38:22
speaker for your talks, or maybe if you teach a class or just want to give some information
38:27
really easy to use this QR code that's already generated for them. If for some reason it's not
38:33
working out for you, use this link, tinyurl.com slash csfeedback20 to share some of your feedback
38:40
with me, and that would be really great. All right, hopefully you got it by now. I'm going to move on
38:45
and as you're filling that out, I'll tell you the pros and cons of forms. Really easy to use
38:50
It was fast and responsive. As you saw through that demo, it was just really straightforward
38:55
and I really liked it because it was so simple. And lastly, and most importantly, it gave us that
39:01
anonymous access that we needed So that what we used to get that initial reach out to the interested speakers and then from then they were good to go to use Power Apps from there Just a few cons is that again because it was so simple you have limitations First it was just
39:18
questionnaires or quizzes so there's not much more you can do beyond with forms. It has limited
39:24
features so you just saw those few simple questions. You can't like upload a photo you'd have to do a
39:30
linked to photo and I mentioned this through the free version. I believe you can get some more of these capabilities if you get the pro version of
39:39
forms, but that was not what I was using in this case. And lastly, I forgot to mention that forms auto save
39:46
So you just have to be careful with your editing. If you accidentally delete a whole thing, it will just save it right away
39:52
So just keep that in mind. Lastly is power automate. It's been a while now since they changed the name from just flow to power
40:00
automate but I just keep that there just in case especially since I still say flow sometimes
40:05
But our last one here is the Cloud-based software tool that allows users to create
40:10
and automate workflows across multiple applications and services without the need of the developer help. It just does it automatically
40:18
I'm going to show you how we get the information from forms into SharePoint automatically
40:23
All right, so I'm under Power Automate. I was about to say Flow
40:32
And you can create from Blink, but I highly recommend using the Create From template
40:38
because if you're using one that's pretty common and simple, like I am in this case
40:43
people have probably already created the steps for it. There are so many templates
40:48
In this case, I'm just looking up the trigger, which is a form in this case
40:52
And sure enough, the first option is what I want. I'm recording my form responses in SharePoint
40:58
So, and you saw the number was before like 20,000 times, and this was recorded a while ago
41:05
I think it was over like 3,000 times recently. So again, if you're not doing any complex flows
41:12
definitely look at the templates. It sets up all the steps for you
41:17
So I'm going to hit continue. You can see here, as I mentioned, the steps are there for me
41:21
I just have to connect it with the correct connectors. So in this case, I'm looking at the PMI Speaker Signup form
41:29
I'm getting that link for my SharePoint site. There's a second step here as well to fill out the PMI Speaker Signup one
41:40
I put the site address in. I make sure I'm looking at the correct list
41:44
And then it pops down with the corresponding columns in that list. And remember that I mentioned that I made my form
41:51
to match the columns in SharePoint. This is why I wanted to do that
41:55
so that I can just plop them in here, the dynamic content, so that it knows, oh, this answer in my form
42:01
will go into this column in my list. Really quickly, I want to mention that Power Automate
42:08
automatically makes this responder's email one, and that's looking at if the user signs in
42:14
So in this case, because I made mine anonymous, if I use responder's email, it would just have anonymous
42:20
instead of an email. So just keep that in mind if you make an email one instead
42:26
Don't use the responder's email. But, you know, Power Automate is just trying to help us out
42:32
So not that one. I want the email one instead. So I'm going to finish filling those in
42:42
And then I want to make sure I save. So Power Automate, unlike Forms, does not autosave
42:49
So there's a save option at the bottom there and then also at the top right-hand corner
42:54
I'll make sure I save that. The next little intuitive thing that I found was that I wasn't sure how to name my flow
43:03
So under forums, it clearly said untitled, so I knew how to name it. Here, it's where it had that automatic title there
43:10
That's how you name your flow. I just thought that was a little slight miscommunication
43:17
Not quite intuitive. And then just to really emphasize that it does not autosave even when it's just the name
43:25
I tried to exit out of it and it still didn't save my names. Went back to record form responses in SharePoint
43:31
So I going to go back and edit it and make sure I hit save this time No autosave so make sure I save it this time And now I good to go when I go back
43:47
For sharing with the flows, I go under my flows and then invite another owner
43:56
And Power Automate is a little more strict on who you can share it with. With forums, you saw I could share it with my school email
44:02
In this case, I wasn't able to share it with my school email. It's looking for someone in my domain
44:08
So I actually use my dad in this one because he's in my domain. So now he's added as a co-editor for my flow
44:17
And we go back and now this flow has been moved under Team Flows tab
44:22
because now multiple people are able to work on it versus just my flows
44:27
So let's see it all in action. I'm quickly going through and filling out a bunch of responses
44:32
for my form and I want to see if it actually showed up in SharePoint and what I see on the
44:38
Power Automate end. So we can see that when I click on the flow, I have a run history of how
44:43
many times it ran and then if it succeeded or failed. With each one, I could click on it and
44:49
see all the really back-end ytics of it. If there were an error, this is where it would
44:54
pinpoint where the error occurred. In this case, since it ran successfully, I get a lot of green
44:59
check marks it's looking good. So the moment of truth it said it ran successfully and let's check
45:07
in SharePoint and it did three new responses of three new interested speakers. So it was really
45:14
great that now every time someone fills out the form it's automatically put in the SharePoint for
45:19
me versus me going back and forth between form responses and then working in SharePoint
45:24
The pros of Power Automate is that you can do cross-site and cross-application workflows
45:32
In this case, I did cross-application between form and SharePoint. And it just shows you all the different options you can do to automate these tasks
45:40
The reoccurrence is great. Every time my form is filled out, it creates a new item in my SharePoint
45:46
And templates, as I said in the beginning of this demo, really recommend checking those out because those are super helpful
45:52
It already sets up everything for you. just very few cons for this one. There was a conversation back when we were in person about
46:00
starting other flows from a flow, like using one of your existing flows as a trigger
46:07
And you're able to do it, but with the research I found, it's not very intuitive. So that's why I
46:13
put it under the cons area with the question mark, because it's possible. It's just not very intuitive
46:19
especially for the beginners. And lastly, the predetermined fields issue. I mentioned the one
46:24
with the email versus responders email. Another one that I don't mention in the demo was you have
46:29
to be very careful with what data type you indicate under SharePoint. So for example, when I did
46:36
rating, I thought that would be a number because it's a number one to five. But then under Power
46:41
Automate, it actually didn't show up. And I found out that it's because rating actually needed to be
46:46
a choice of one, two, three, four, five. So keep that in mind if the dynamic content doesn't show
46:53
up in Power Automate, it might have to do with the type of data type you indicated for that column in
46:59
SharePoint. Just to end it all, this internship happened, oh goodness, three years ago now
47:07
I'm getting old. But there of course have been changes since then
47:11
The first being that they actually deployed using this database. So once the speakers were approved through the form
47:19
they were given a sign in and they were able to sign into SharePoint and see
47:23
all of their information and change it and all those good things. And then we are able to actually use my email list and then power automate to automate emails
47:31
to send out to them about the event to keep them updated. So all of our main goals were checked off the list
47:38
If you did fill out my form, I did include a little riddle here
47:42
I just want to give you the answer. Why can't cats work on the computer? They get too distracted chasing the mass around
47:49
Ha ha ha. All right. I'm keeping an eye out on the chat, but let me know if you have any questions
47:57
If you do think of them after, feel free to contact me through my social media. Again
48:01
it's at Sarah E. Patrick. And thank you so much for joining me today
#Business & Productivity Software
#Voice & Video Chat
#Training & Certification
#Intelligent Personal Assistants
#Computer Education