[Music]
Hello everyone, it's Matt and welcome to Collaboration Coach.
This time we're looking at a new feature in Microsoft Teams
called Workflow.
Workflow makes it nice and easy to automate tasks inside of the Teams app.
In this video we're going to look at three examples of Teams workflow.
I'm going to use templates to create the workflows so it should be nice and easy to follow
and if you want to get behind the scenes, at the end,
I'll show you how you can tweak the flows using the Power Automate app in Teams.
To get set up to use Workflow in Teams
the first thing you need to do is add the workflows app.
The way to do that is just to come to the ellipsis here on the left hand rail in Teams
and then in the search bar, type 'workflow'.
You should see Microsoft's workflows app right at the top so you can just choose that.
Now, if you've installed this previously you'll see 'open'
but if you haven't, you should see an 'add' button.
All you need to do is press on that and it will add the workflows app and make that available
and you may also see the Power Automate app be installed.
Once Workflows is installed you can go to the apps button on the left hand rail
and beneath the app section you'll now see a workflow section which you can expand.
Now you'll see a list of workflows on the right hand side
and also some categories you can pick through on the left.
The first workflow I'm going to show you allows you to schedule a meeting from a message
and that's in the 'calendar' category.
So if I choose 'calendar' you'll see I've got the workflow 'Schedule a meeting from a message'
which I can press.
That will open it up.
You can change the name here if you want to
and it also will connect you to Teams and Office 365 users.
All you need to do is press the 'sign in' button
and it will automatically use the credentials that you've used to log into Teams
to make those connections.
So you can see here matt@collab.coach is the connection.
Press 'next', and then I'm asked to choose which calendar and which time zone I want to use.
If I drop this down, these are my personal calendars
and I've got three I can choose from but 'calendar' is the one that I'm interested in
and then we can choose a time zone
and then I'm going to finish the workflow by pressing the 'add workflow' button.
The last screen just tells you that it's been added successfully
and also shows you how to use it
so it's accessible through the 'more options' tab on any message.
When you're finished you can hit 'done' and now the workflow is ready to use.
You can use this workflow from a chat,
so for example, here my colleague has asked me whether we could schedule a call
to talk about something.
What I need to do on this chat item is choose the ellipsis,
go to 'more actions',
and now I can see I've got the 'Schedule a meeting from a message' workflow ready for me to use
so I can just press that.
It's going to run the flow, and I just hit 'continue'
and then I fill in the details of the meeting.
Once I submit, that will then add that meeting to our calendars.
Now you can see it's there and Amrit my colleague will have exactly the same.
So that's a quick way of automating the creation of a calendar item based on a chat.
This next workflow allows you to notify a channel when you're going to be out of office
and also puts Teams and Outlook into out of office.
Another thing to call out here is that you can search for workflows from the search bar
so if you know the name,
for example, if I search for 'out of office',
it will show me the workflows and the apps with that particular keyword in it.
I can see here I've got 'Notify channel when you'll be out of office'.
I can choose that.
The same thing applies here as the previous one so I can change the name
and I also need to connect so I can sign in,
and it will sign in with the username that I've already logged in as.
Then I can hit 'next',
and again here it wants me to choose my calendar.
It's the same here - it's my personal calendar.
And then it wants me to choose which team and which channel I want to post the information to.
I'm going to choose 'Coaching', and then 'General',
then I add workflow.
Now, to use that workflow you just go to any team any channel and choose 'new conversation',
and then go to the ellipsis here and choose 'workflows'.
Now you'll see your workflow available so you just choose it
and then it asks you to tell the system when you're going to be out of office.
So you just choose 'continue',
and then I'm going to tell it when I'll be out of office.
So I can add a message and I can @- mention people in the post
and also I can choose how many days notification
before I actually go out of office are required here too.
So when I've filled all that information out, I just hit 'submit'.
Now the workflow has posted my out of office message to the Coaching team
and the General channel
and I can see it here - it's got the dates I'm going to be out of office,
the message that I added,
and also the people I @-mentioned as well.
The other thing it's done is change my status in Teams as well.
If I go up to the indicator at the top right here and drop this down,
you can see I'm out of office and there's my message that I wrote.
The other thing it's done is added a meeting or a calendar item to my Teams calendar.
So if I switch to calendar,
you can see it's got 'Matt out of office' across the three days that I chose there.
Now, as well as Teams it's changed Outlook for me.
Obviously because the two calendars are linked.
If I switch to Outlook I can see that I've got a 'Matt out of office' there too
so anyone trying to book a meeting with me will be notified when they look at the scheduling assistant.
The next workflow I wanted to show you was 'Follow up on a message'.
And this allows you to start the workflow
when you see a message that you would like to be reminded to follow up on.
So to create the workflow, just choose it from the workflow home page.
This one is called 'Follow up on a message'.
Again, we can name it and we can connect to it with the sign in button
and you add the workflow.
Once you've created the workflow,
if you go to a chat you can choose the ellipsis on any chat,
'more actions',
and then 'follow up on a message', you should see your workflow listed there.
When you open it up, it asks you when you'd like to follow up
so you just hit the 'continue' button and then you add in the details.
When the time you set comes around,
you'll see a new entry in the activity list sent from Power Automate
and when you click on it, it directs you to that message that you set the workflow on.
Now, the last thing I wanted to show you
is how you manage your workflows once they've been created.
As part of the workflow app installation you'll also get access to Power Automate
which is the flow designer and editor.
To get to Power Automate, just go to the ellipses here on the left hand rail
and you should see Power Automate there.
If you don't, just type "power automate' into the search box and it will come up
and when I click on that it'll open up the Power Automate home page
and I'll see all the flows I've created.
And here are those three workflows that I've shown you already today.
You'll notice here you can switch them on and off
and you can also see where they're applied.
For example, this one's applied to 'Coaching' and the 'General channel',
and then you can also edit and delete them from here too.
Now, if I want more detail on any of these I can just click on the link under the name,
and that will take me to that home page, if you like, for the flow
and I can see a description.
I can see how it's connected over here
and I can see who the owners are.
I can change all of these properties here too
and I can see the run history.
So, this will show me when it's run and if the run was successful or not.
I can also choose the 'edit' button at the top here to take me into the flow designer
and I'll see all the blocks that make up the flow
and if I wanted to make a change,
for example,
say I wanted to change the team and the channel that this particular flow is applied to,
I'm going to scroll down here to the bottom.
I've got this Teams block here called 'post message in the channel'
and I'm going to change the team to 'Human Resources'
and I'm going to change the channel to 'general',
and now it's going to post that to the General channel in the Human Resources team.
I just need to save the change,
and now you can see that the Notify Channel workflow has been updated
to point to Human Resources in General.
Okay, so in this video I've shown you how to install your workflow app in Teams.
I've shown you three different examples of workflows
and also how to manage and change your workflows once they've been created.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.