Getting started with the Power Automate New Designer

guys it's Matt joh Jones here mcj back with another video and today we are looking at a brand new flow designer experience par automate has had the same sort of designer on the same canvas for quite a number of years now ever since it came out and they have made minor tweaks and minor adjustments over the time but now we have a brand new experience which will be the default experience going forward so you won't see this in all your environments at the moment you'll only see this in in certain circum ances and I'll kind of talk through those uh those little bits this is going to be the the default experience so when people come um to build a flow this will be what they see by default going forward uh but at the moment it's in preview it's only a couple of certain little ARS so firstly if you want to just jump into um using it if you're in a region that has co-pilots you can go to powermate.com so make. powermate.com and you can um go to flows and there's a new default experience which is you can type in um what you want a flow to do and it'll automatically generate the flow and it'll take you through those steps and it'll open in the new designer if you're not in one of those regions and you go to create a new flow you won't see the flow uh the new flow designer but if you edit an existing flow you do have an option to uh to toggle to the new designer so let's do that so we're in power automate here I'm in a solution and I have a flow here called new designer flow so if I click that it'll open up in a new tab and then we will see there's an edit button at the top so edit used to just be a single button and now it is a fly out so we've got edit with new designer and edit so edit takes you to the old experience edit in new designer takes you to the new experience so celect edit in new designer and this will bring up a new canvas so this is this is the new experience this is the new designer so this is just a flow with just a couple of couple of things so we've got a trigger and we've got a compos step but we can add in this so let's take a look around so firstly we've still got the similar sort of experience at the top we still got new flow designer we've got test and flow Checker as a little drop down here that allows you to switch back to the classic designer so if you hit any bugs if you hit any issues with this you can just switch back to the classic designer make sure you save your flow first the first thing you kind of notice is that everything is a smaller so there's a lot of like dots on this canvas but everything's a lot smaller I can actually collect and drag around the canvas like this I have a couple of extra buttons where I can zoom in and zoom out so especially when you get to those larger flows those ones with like dozens or or potentially 100 actions or or multiple strokes and multiple branches this actually allows you to visualize things in a nice easy way uh we also have this uh this search button here which pops this this new experience out on the right and we can search go straight to an operation so if I type compose in I can click that I take us straight to where that compose action is so again if you have a really large flow you need to search around for something or something's hidden in a scope somewhere this can be really useful uh the last button at the bottom is the toggle mini map so again um if you're uh if you're used to sort of the old style um designer that we had for um uh business process flows there was a mini map so you can try and navigate around it and you can kind of see down on the bottom left it's showing us where our actions are and things like on a mini map so we can just turn that off so zoom in a little bit and the first thing you'll probably notice as you come into this designer is that everything's smaller and you're like okay so if I click this does does it give me all the options slightly so there's a different experience now so if I click on the trigger I now have this pain that pops out from the left hand side meaning that I don't constantly have to scroll up and scroll down the page I can just click this and it pops out and it's always going to be the same size and I'm always going to get the same experience so instead of editing things kind of in line in the action itself you can kind of Click around choose the action choose the trigger Etc and you will get this experience that pops out on the left so things have moved around a little bit so that's one thing that we need to need to be aware of so previously you would have uh the action you'd have uh I think three dots elipsis up on the right and then that will give you all the additional options like settings and code View and things like that we no longer have those things what we actually have over here is all the settings uh over here so we have parameters so this is a manual trigger flow meaning that I can add a parameter so if I click on add an input I still get that same experience that I would do with the old designer I still have the option to add in things like text um and I have you know I can add in a yes no for instance and I can still add these things in um if I click on the little menu button I do have the option to delete um there is no option at the moment I can see um to make these required or not required uh which is is you know something that's maybe missing there so I should make sure we feed that back to Microsoft um there's a settings tab settings tab will control the the settings so again same settings you're used to things like currency control security um secur off offer on and tracking ID we also have the code view which again we could previously uh we could previously see uh and previous to get into so again we've got a request button and we've got all the all the different things in here so this is the code of the things that we're trying to build um so that and then the about talks a little bit about um the connector itself so tags there are no tags operation Noe manual trigger flow connector not available it's not a connector so we got all these options here and we can still do those same things if I go into the the top right in the more commands there's an option for add a know and I can also delete this action so again we're going to be doing everything from the left hand side of the screen now no longer no longer in the actions themselves so that's kind of interesting I can also press this button here and it collaps or expands my my view and I can still come in here and edit edit my triggers and things and edit my names and my actions so uh manual uh flow trigger so we still do that we can see updates in real time on the canvas that's pretty cool if I click into my compose action we have the same sort of thing so again I have my inputs I have everything here again I have my settings and the settings are different from the manual trigger settings the code view is again different from that and the about is again slightly different construction arbitary object from actions inputs that's an interesting note uh thank you um but what if you add in some other actions what we add in something that's a little bit um has a little bit more detail to it so maybe like add a row data ver for instance so we can click on the insert new steps so again same as we used to have previously and oh we we still have a little menu here drag show that a second I click on here click on add an action this is a brand new experience for us so this is designed to help users find what they're looking for a bit easier so not only do we have the the search box at the top we also have a runtime so do we want to um look at all actions do we want to look at just the built-in ones the standard ones the premium ones and the custom ones again this is a familiar experience it's just that same bar that was along the top uh and again we do have actions or triggers that we can we can look for here so um it's is slightly different it is um is kinding of showing you things in in more alphabetical CLA and things like that so it's something to be aware of if I want to look at let's look for a premium connector and let's just I mean I don't need to do that I can just type in data verse for instance um and ah this is this is the this is the interesting bit so there's a group by connector so um this little this little toggle here this little check boox what he going to do is it's going to group all the actions that it thinks you are looking for by the connector so it's found Auto Des exchange first because it's in alphabetical order um so it's popping that one there first and it's goinging me details about three of their connectors and then it's found the Microsoft data verse one which is the one I was looking for it's going to give me a couple of different um a couple of different actions and and things here and I can click on see more to it so it's grouping by connector if I uncheck that it's going to show me all of the actions not grouped by connector so it thinks I'm looking for this download a file one or this you know get details about data it's going to show me those ones that's not exactly too useful because I'm going to have to search through here but if I know for instance that I want to add a row I can actually find um all of the all of the rows about all the connectors and actions about it that's great go out to group by connector um I can again see these things in order um and here I've got um some details about it so I've got a little tag says in app uh meaning that it's I think means it's it's in an application so this is something that's going to be running in a model driven app running a canas app or running in in Microsoft data ver and that's why it says in app I don't know what the other tags say but we'll find out as we go through this video um we do have some information things here so um this this talks about the the connector itself and then if I hover over the same thing for the actions it tells me about those actions so if I click on add a new row click that one right so again new experience um it's the same it's still the same so we need to choose a table name so we'll click on accounts for instance and once we do that we can see after that brief pause it loads in all of the fields that we need to populate and and all the optional Fields as well so again it's going to filter up the ones that are required to the top so account name is anyone required so we'll call the account um Power automate gang gang because we're a power automate gang and we can see again all of the different uh all different things down here and there's an advanced parameters down here so I can choose show all so I can I can go just find all the parameters but I do have this option down here to actually say hey do you know what I I want to populate in account number and I want to populate in um let's choose something a bit further down um primary Twitter ID should sure why not uh because Elon needs some more money so as I click those and click off it it's actually added these things in down here and I can I can choose do you know what I don't need the primary reg ID I'll remove that but I can keep the account there so that's actually really handy because there are sometimes I don't want to have to scroll constantly and constantly every time I add a new action to find the right field that I want to add I just want to um put that up here and then again if I put content into here so if I put some some you know I put 1 two 3 for is here for instance um that way whenever I come back to this action it's going to be populated with information and I'm going to be able to see it here I'm not going to have to add it each time which is great I do have the option for show all if I want to and then it's just going to take a second and I can remove these ones individually so I can remove this one I can remove this one um and then I can hit clear all it's not clear all the ones uh but it's cleared all the ones including account number which is what I wanted so we'll add that back in was it account number uh where was it count I thought it was account number I wonder if it's clear that data that be an interesting side effect of this cool so add that back in so this is a slightly different experience and this is you know going to take a little bit getting used to but as you can see all the same things that you that you are expecting are here so we'll look over at settings and again here's here's some things are slightly different so we have the the run after so configure run after is a common scenario that we use for try catch so if you if your action hits an error uh we always want another action to run after it to try and catch the eror and try and handle it we still have the option for for try try catch here so I can select an action so it gives me a list of my actions I can do this after um it says run after and then we've got a little Green Dot here so for is successful we've got an orange clock for has timed out a gray um circle with a line through for has skipped and a red exclamation a red with an exclamation mark Circle here with a um has failed so if I choose has failed you can see these dots update so we can see okay this is only going to run if this has failed or it has has been successful so if we cck all these we get nice nice pretty colors here um so it's good and I can just bend this off all together and say no um but each each action must have one or more configuration so um I wonder that what that's for uh okay maybe it's for if you do advanced stuff so cool um we can again look at the test the code View and we can see details about that it's fine um the testing we can disable or enable static results about ah we have a few more bits of information here so we now know this is the power of Microsoft data verse connector so um the previous ones didn't have connectors and it gives us a bit detail about that connector as well so that's all that's all cool that's all groy um so I can kind of move around here and go do you know what I want like look at this and move this and maybe I actually want to move this up here so I can drag and drop and I can drag that in there and you can see it's nice and easy and there's a nice little outline now of like where this goes and and where this can be so that's actually really cool previously you try and be dragging it and you kind of see a change of the cursor and you think it was right and release it and then it wouldn't work and stuff like that so that's really um a really nice um nice sort of quality of life update to this so now I can do some other stuff so what if we want to add in uh what if we want to add in a condition take a look at this so we still have the built-in actions um so we'll have add a condition click that and again um we we've now got a condition which looks different it's again smaller but it still don't work in the same way so the conditioner opens on the left hand side instead of in the middle and we can choose something like um is one equal to one for instance and we can add new items we can add new rows again it's going to work in the same way as it did before we can delete we've got make a group we got add group we got all the same things we now have a little scroll bar here so delete this um delete the group as well ungroup um so again we can do do the same sort of things and we'll just add this back in is one equal to one so same sort of stuff same things we used to um again in the condition itself we can still add action so if we click inside of action like this um we can add an action and we'll just Chuck in a compose on this side and we'll take a look at the expression answer so we composing there and we'll call this um testing uh expression editor we'll click on the inputs now you may have noticed this in video as we kind of went along there is a new little pill um that is your expression editor and your um uh and your um sort of dynamic content picker as well um as I hover over them they actually say enter data from a previous step you can also add data by um by pressing forward slash so hit forward slash and we get insert D content orer Expressions it's a nice keyboard shortcut there um to to try and add something so if I choose insert Dynamic content we going at the pop out here so the pop out um shows me everything that we've got here so we've got the parameters so things like uh environment variables and stuff and we've got to add new rows and we can click see more for instance see less and you expand and contract those those those things and we can we can take data from here so we got outputs name account name Etc so I can put in the account name in there and then it pops it in there so that's cool and again we can we can see it we can see if we hover over it the expression that's written to get the direct content in there and we can we can remove it as well if I go back to it again um there are there's another button up here which I like which is the full screen button click this one and it gives you a bit more of a full screen experience I say full screen and there's a lot of white space down here um of the editor so we can again choose something like uh account name or we can search through for like outputs the search is going to do the same thing uh we can click this and again um it's going to going to pop it in there it says it's an invalid PR ah I clipped away so again we can do the same thing so what we'll do is we'll go in and we'll look at the expression editor so the expression editor this is again sort of variation on the experimental expression Ed and the old one um we have functions and direct content so again we can switch between uh we can actually drag this box up and down a little bit um and we can go full stren look at all that real estate so we have full stren experience now and we can um we can put some formulas in here and again we've still got all our same formulas down here that we're kind of used to if we want SLP from something down here so we could say uh concat for instance and then it'll pop it into the expression up here and then as I type things in so I want to maybe concat um uh like 12 1 2 3 and um ah it's SL slight bug here when you when you do chat when you do the full screen it does uh does cut off the The Tool tips a little bit so then we'll add uh 456 there um and we can we can continue going as long as we want um but we'll leave it there so we can add that contract in here we could if we wanted to um we could add in some D content so we could do that and then we could hit um what was it account number account number in there um so again we can we can insert all these formulas so once we're once we're happy with the formul and everything else we can hit add and we see the concat in there and we can see um that's now in there so we can go back we can zoom out a little bit and we now have a um we now have a um a nice little nice little window nice little test canvas here so we're going to hit this we're going to compose the step we're going to add a new row and then we're going to go down here so let's test this out so we hit test we'll hit save first and then we'll hit test the green blow green uh Banner so it's recommended uh you test it we'll hit test we'll manually run it we'll hit test and we'll see if we made an error ah your inputs put that in required input SE click done and we'll see the new text experience so we got a green tick for the first for the trigger we'll zoom in a little bit so you can see that the the trigger ran uh in 0 seconds it's good uh and then we've got um some gray circles no it's just updated gray circles we've got the add new row to data first that um is going green and then we've got green tick here for the condition let's come down to the the test Ed are down here so if we open up these things so we click this again this is this is similar to what we used to um we we've got some we've got the the schema input and the schema output we got the properties down here we do have a couple of additional cool things so we still have the show raw inputs which is Handy and it pops out to the right which again what we know what we love um we do have this um now handy copy function which will copy the text here to your clipboard uh and we've got this function which will select all the text so you can select select all and copy Let's All Copy it's cool um and yeah we can we can basically pull these bits up so again very similar to what we used to compose step we know that's slightly different we see the inputs and the outputs we do have some the details at the start time that's cool data verse again what we used to we can see the the connections here we can see the headers we can see the body we should be able to see the properties down here so um that's s good um it doesn't show the properties as in a separate menu so it doesn't show like account name and stuff like that um you know account number and the other things that we used to sometimes have in those in those little um uh bits when when we when we run a flow but we still have it all in the body uh and maybe we just need to get better you know reading Json and stuff like so still got the all there and then if we go down further we can get to the um testing inputs to this composed step so we can see it's actually concatenated the 1 2 3 4 5 six and then 1 2 3 4 5 from this previous step here so ah there's the parameters again it's in Json format now so accounts uh is the entity name the table name power ultimate gang is the um name of the account and then 1 2 3 4 5 was the account number that we put in so it is a slightly different experience it does feel very um want say technical um very computer is uh you know we've got even just the way this this text is formatted just seems a bit and the boxes and things seems very computer and it soundly say but that's that's kind of what I'm thinking um so yeah so so that is the new Power automate designer experience um there are there are obviously going to be a few bugs there may be a few um parity gaps as Microsoft move this towards being the brand new uh expression and and canvas designer so we saw a couple of bugs with the the cut off of the um the Intellis sense for um certain things and and a couple other bits that are missing but this is this is a good step forward been wanting a faster designer for a while this seems pretty fast we've been wanting um a bigger experience for our expressions for a while we wanted that um this is a very clean experience you know you kind of see everything on the left you no longer have to expand and contract each one of the steps um it it has great scalability because we can just move these things around and we can search through um for reactions which is really good so if I type in your testing expression to step I can jumps straight to that I can see that so on those longer flows and those bigger flows this will come in really handy you can just navigate and straight to those areas so this will be the new experience it is coming soon it is already in a lot of tenants at the moment so you can go out there and you can take a look at it and you can um try try it out and and let me know what you think what do you like what don't you like what's missing let me know in the comments down below if you enjoyed this video if you could like it and share it with a friend that would be great if you haven't already hit the Subscribe button stay up to date with all my l videos and I'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Matt Collins-Jones

Views: 813

Keywords: D365, D365CE, Dynamics 365, MSdyn, MSDyn365, PowerPlatform, PowerApps, D365Geek, Flow, Microsoft Flow, Power Automate, Power Apps

Id: SASVFu1H4yo

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023