Conditions allow Power Automate to collect data, then make a decision based on that data to provide multiple outcomes. Let’s build out a Client contact form and see how we can use conditions to communicate these forms.
We have used Forms and Power Automate in the past, but today, we are going to create a Form that can be shared with clients, they can provide a review. Once the review is submitted, we will use a condition to identify how the review was. If it was a positive review, we will send it to the person that was named on the form, and if it’s a negative response, it will go to management. We are going to use the example that I have sold something to a client, and Michael is my manager.
Creating Your Form
We have gone through so many different form creations, so we are just very quickly going to touch on this. If you have any questions on how to create a form, check out Using Forms to gather feedback from presentations, or how to create your first Form. The main points that we are going to need to create on the form is: A list of employees, as to not leave any questions about who was helping, a rating system (we are going to use numbers), and just a general comments box. We are only going to make the employees and rating necessary. The Form is going to look something like this:
Creating The Flow
Now it's time for what I consider to be the fun part: building out our Flow. The main functions that we are going to need to use are: We are going to trigger it on completion of the form, we are going to get the form details, and then we are going to use a condition to decide which email we are going to send and to whom, and finally send out the email.
We are going to start by selecting our “Automated cloud flow” and then selecting “When a new response is submitted”, and then remember that you need to name it, to keep your Flows nice and organized. We now select the Form that we want to use, which would be the Form that we just created. We also want to bring in all of the details of that form, so after picking the form we want, select “New step” and find “Get response details”, point it at the client feedback form, and use the dynamic content in the response ID. The Flow should look something like this:
This is where we are going to bring in our condition. This condition will be that if the number is our scale is 3 or less, it will send an email to my manager (which will be Michael for all cases), and if it's greater than 3, it will send me an email saying good job! To enter our condition, select “New step”, then select “Condition”. We will then have to enter the condition. Click into thebox, and from here, we will select our dynamic content. We are going to have to turn it into an integer first. To do this, we will need to enter an expression that will look like:
Int(“How was your service”) - how was your service being your dynamic content
Note: You can use a compose step here as well, to help see the flow of information.
Now that we have the response included, we need to set the parameters of what it will do. As stated, we want anything equal to or less than 3 to go to Michael, so in our drop-down, we will select “Is less than or equal to” and our final box will be 3. Your Flow is now going to look something like this:
Finally, we get to start putting together the emails. Now, remember, we said that if it is less than 3 we want to send an email to Michael. Our condition parameters state that if the answer is 3 or less, it needs to do something. So we are going to want to put the email to Michael in the “If yes” column. We will go to “Add an action”. This is where we are going to build out our email as we have done in the past. Simply put in every piece of information you want, make sure it's titled well, and you have included your comments. It will look something like this:
Now we need to fill in the side of things if the response is greater than 3, which will automatically happen. This will have to identify who the employee was, and send them an email saying they did a good job. The first action we are going to need to take is to get the User Profile. We need to make sure that in our Form, the names are matching what will show up when searched for, or we will not be able to pull it. We will select “Search for users” and then add our dynamic content “Who helped you?”.
Note: If you leave this field blank, it will send an email to every user in your tenant.
Now we can build out our email. For this, we will select “Send an email” and instead of entering a specific email in the To: slot, we are going to use the dynamic content of “Email” this will use the email content of the employees' profile. We then fill out our subject and body with the information we see fit. I am going to tell them a positive review was submitted, and give them the comments. So our last piece is going to look something like this:
There you have it! Make sure you go test it to make sure it all works for you and save it. The final product is going to look like this:
You have now created a flow that will decide for you. Adding Conditions to your flows can help make sure that the things that sometimes get pushed aside, such as telling your employee about a great review, are automated and done for you.
I will note one thing, if you are testing your Power Automate flows, make sure you are not in your developer tenant, as you could be like me, and send 50 emails to your clients. If you have an idea that you want to automate, and we haven’t spoken about it, Contact us and we will make your automation life much easier.
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