Do you leverage data from multiple applications or services? If you haven’t already found a way to integrate the data between them, you should check out Microsoft Cloud Flows, which are part of Power Automate and part of the overall Power Platform.

What are Cloud Flows?

Cloud Flows allow power users to build workflows that integrate a diverse set of apps and services, including Dynamics 365, SharePoint, SQL Server, Act!, Twitter and many more! Each workflow can have one trigger, such as a timer or an incoming email or tweet, and one or many actions, such as creating a Lead in your application of choice and sending a text message to a user. Most of it requires little to no code, but a Developer can help extend the functionality.

Using Environment Variables with Cloud Flows

Within the Power Platform, there are many pre-built connectors that you can leverage to consume data and/or create data, such as the Excel, SharePoint, Azure Cosmos DB connectors. These connectors typically have you input specific values that are unique to the environment that you are pointed to. For example, within the SharePoint connector, you must specify the path of the site that you are communicating with.  If you are only working with one environment, you can certainly hard code those values within the connector’s actions. However, this can become a challenge when you must import your cloud flows to multiple environments because the incorrect value within the connector’s actions could get deployed to the wrong environment. You can work around this by using Environment Variables

What are Environment Variables?

Environment Variables are records that can hold unique connector values for each of your unique Power Platform environments. These can be stored in your Development solution and then imported to each of your QA and Production environments. (read full post on www.beringer.net)

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