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Power Automate Licence Update

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You may or may not have seen a message centre post or other Microsoft learn articles recently regarding updates to Power Automate licences. Essentially, Microsoft seem to be cracking down on flows which are not associated with a properly licenced user with premium connectors, or is not directly linked to a Power App. MS will be turning off flows which are not licenced properly on the 24th October. Background Power Apps Premium (aka Per User) licences provide the usage rights for flows that associated with the built app. This means you do not need to buy a Power Automate Premium licence for every user too. If you have flows which are triggered independently of an app (and use premium connectors), the users will need a Power Automate Premium licence, or you need to buy a Power Automate Per Flow/Per Process licence. Problem There never was a way to directly associate a flow with an app and if you use ALM, flows in non dev environments are likely owned by service principals. Resolution You
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Say Goodbye to Expensive Roaming Charges: How to use a cheap eSIM for mobile data while traveling abroad

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Introduction In preparation for going away on holiday, I was thinking about the cheapest way to access mobile data whilst abroad. Before you read on about eSIM's, no doubt you'll want to know whether this is worth your time. So, consider a holiday to Spain. With O2, you will typically be charged £6 a day for roaming charges – for a 1 or 2 week holiday, this will cost you between £42 to £82. Factor in several family members with their phones and it can be quite costly. Comparatively, you can buy an eSIM with various data allowance and duration, such as: £3.60 providing 1GB for 7 days £5.20 providing 2GB for 15 days £9.10 providing 5GB for 30 days £20 providing 20GB for 30 days Background Previously I've used a few different options: Enable roaming on your physical SIM and take the daily charge or fixed rate - whilst this is convenient, it can be expensive, especially for a long trip - for example, the charge from mobile operator O2 can be around £6 to £8 a day. Okay for a w
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Escape Room in Power Apps

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I like escape rooms and recently I have been listening to Escape this podcast , a podcast that mixes escape room puzzles and table top role play.  This inspired me to mix this with technology in some way and I thought, "why not create an escape room in Power Apps?". So I did! This is "Escape this server room".  An escape room in which you need to exit a server room you have been locked into.  You get 30 minutes to get out before needing to hit that emergency exit button which turns off all of the servers, switches and routers. Can you escape? Game view To play, download the package, go to make.powerapps.com and click import canvas app.  Select the package, click Import and once imported, click Play! Download App Enjoy!
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Power Automate: Get first item in output

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One of the most annoying things about Power Automate for me is when I am trying to use the output of a previous action and as soon as I click that dynamic content button, it pops my new action into a For Each loop. It does this because the previous action could have more than 1 item returned and this would clearly fail unless it was in a loop. But if you have used the Row Count or Top option in the proceeding action, or you know full well that only 1 item will return, it is nice to avoid bloating the flow with an unnecessary loop. There are a couple of way to do this: First function You can craft your filter expression so that the output is wrapped in the First function. This will tell Power Automate to only look at the first item. First(variables('Array')) Calling Index You can edit your filter expression to tell it which item from the source you want. Zero being the first item e.g. variables('Array')[0] Which one to use? I use the index and the main reason is due to
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SharePoint drop box using Power Automate

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Introduction I was asked how we can create a SharePoint library which allows somebody to upload files to it, but not read any other files in the library. It felt like a simple and pretty reasonable request.  My colleague Grant made me aware of the Enable File Requests feature in SharePoint or OneDrive which might achieve this requirement, but unfortunately as it is designed for more external usage, the pre-reqs require things like Anyone links to be enabled. I looked into other out of the box options. Permissions on SharePoint Lists and SharePoint Document Libraries are similar, but not exactly the same.  I say permissions, I guess it is more advanced settings for Lists have Item-Level Permissions which give the ability for the user to only read items that were created by them. Lists Item-Level Permissions Nothing exists like this in SharePoint document libraries unless you break permission propagation on every file which isn't scalable from a management or performance perspective
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De-selectable radio buttons - Power Apps

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Introduction When creating a Canvas Power App you can choose from a large number of controls and specifically input controls designed to get information from the user. One of these controls is the humble radio button. This is a good control which provides possible options without requiring a user action. In comparison a dropdown would require the user to click to expand all of the possible options. Example radio button input One of problems with this control is the fact you cannot de-select it. Once an option has been chosen, you can change it but you cannot undo it. The post shows a way to make de-selecting possible in a Canvas Power App. One simple way to achieve this is to have a button or icon next to the radio button and its OnSelect property to be Reset(rdoButton). This is easy, but if there are many radio button controls, it could result in lots more controls on a screen or in an app. Power Apps recommends keeping under 500 for an app and 300 maximum per page. The followi
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Assigning Windows 10/11 Enterprise Subscription Activation Licences to Hybrid Azure AD Joined Devices

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Introduction Starting with Windows 10, version 1703, Windows 10 Pro supports the Subscription Activation feature, enabling users to “step-up” from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 Enterprise automatically if they are subscribed to Windows 10 Enterprise E3 or E5. The Subscription Activation feature eliminates the need to manually deploy Windows 10 Enterprise or Education images on each target device, then later standing up on-prem key management services such as KMS or MAK based activation, entering GVLKs, and subsequently rebooting client devices. It’s important to note that the Windows 10 Enterprise subscription activation is designed to “step-up” a device from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 Enterprise. Therefore, your device is required to have a Windows 10 Pro license activated as a baseline. For Windows 10 Enterprise Subscription Activation to function, there a several prerequisites which need to be in place. This blog is aimed for organisations which have Active Directory on premises an
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