Creating Activities using Power Automate Flows now possible!

Introduction

Power Automate is the next big thing for Microsoft as it helps to perform automated actions and operations without requiring pro-dev capabilities. The power of the flow however, depends on how comprehensive the connectors are.

Microsoft has been working to enhance its connectors for Dynamics 365 CRM. This journey started with the release of Dynamics 365 CRM Connector which is now deprecated and can no longer be used.

Then came the Common Data Service Connector. This connector was way advanced than the Dynamics 365 CRM connector and we were allowed to perform CRUD Operations on CDS entities.

But the CDS connector only supports setting of the following properties for activity entities:

One of the limitations of the CDS connector while creating activities was the inability to provide activity parties which made it impossible to use the connector for creating activities without any pro-dev expertise.

The most recent version of CDS connector is the Common Data Service (Current) connector. It is this connector that you should be using moving forward on all of your projects. Also, it would be a good idea to update your old flows that references either of the older connectors to this one.

Note: Common Data Service (Current) connector will ALWAYS connect to the environment within which the flow is being executed.

This connector is available only when a flow is created from within the context of a solution.

And it supports the following additional actions:

When you try to create an email record using this connector, you will be presented with the following screen:

Apart from the fields on the email entity, you now have the ability to provide the activity parties associated with the activity.

Activity Parties refer to To, From, CC, BCC, Required Resources, Optional Resources and similar attributes that are available only on the activity type of entities.

To set the value, you need to provide the reference to the related lookup object.

For User, it would be:

/systemusers(<guid>)

For contacts, it would be:

/contacts(<guid>)

In general, it would be:

/entityname(<guid>)

Here is a complete screenshot of the entire flow for better context to the screenshot shared above:

Conclusion

With flow now supporting activities, it opens up opportunities to create activities through Canvas Apps with the help of flows.