Learning Microsoft Power Automate

Chapter 4. Working with Triggers and Actions

In Chapter 3, you learned how to create new flows four different ways. Because you first need to understand how to create a flow before diving into the details, I didn’t spend a lot of time explaining how the triggers and actions were being used or discussing how to fill them in. In this chapter, I will focus on helping you understand how to work with triggers and actions to create flows. I’ll explain how to find a trigger or action that will do what you want and how to use dynamic content to configure them at runtime. You’ll also learn how to use functions to transform the dynamic content into the specific values that you need and how to reference the dynamic content directly using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Finally, I’ll review how to modify the settings of some of the triggers and actions to change the way they operate in specific circumstances. By the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to create flows that you can begin to use to automate business processes in your organization.

Triggers, Actions, and Connectors

Triggers and actions are the primary building blocks in Power Automate. Each trigger or action represents an API that can be used to interact with a specific data source. Triggers and actions are both defined and contained in connectors.

Finding the Right Connector

At the time of writing, there are more than 645 connectors, with more being added every quarter. Many of the connectors are created by Microsoft. Others ...