SharePoint and Power Platform related Stuff

  Regex in Power Automate Desktop: A Practical Guide to Capturing Text Regular Expressions, commonly known as Regex , are extremely useful when working with text in Power Automate Desktop (PAD) . They allow you to find, identify, and extract specific information from unstructured text such as PDF documents, invoices, bank statements, emails, reports, and forms. In this guide, we will cover the most commonly used Regex patterns for Power Automate Desktop, with practical examples that can be directly applied to automation projects. http://regexstorm.net/tester What is Regex? A Regular Expression is a pattern used to search for specific text or values within a larger block of text. For example, suppose a PDF contains: Customer ID: XXXXX1234 Account No: 99991XXXXX10099 PAN: 12XXXXXXXK Instead of manually searching for these values, Regex can automatically identify and extract them. For example: Customer\s+ID\s*:\s*(\S+) returns: XXXXX1234 Similarly: Account\s+No\.?\s*:\s*([A-Za-z0-9]+)...

  One of the most frustrating experiences in Power Automate is when a flow that has been running perfectly suddenly starts failing after a seemingly harmless change to a SharePoint List . Recently, I encountered exactly this scenario, and the solution turned out to be much simpler than I expected. The Scenario Imagine you have a flow triggered by the "When an item is created or modified" SharePoint trigger. Everything works perfectly until someone updates the SharePoint list schema. For example: A Person or Group column is changed from Single User to Allow Multiple Users . A column type is modified. Certain field settings are updated. Although the trigger itself doesn't change, the flow may still begin to fail because it continues referencing the old SharePoint schema . Why Does This Happen? Power Automate stores metadata about the SharePoint list when the trigger is configured. If the list schema changes later, the flow doesn't always refresh that metadata automa...

  Automate Excel Data Refresh with Office Scripts If you work with Excel files that contain Power Query , external databases , or connected data sources , manually refreshing the data every time can be repetitive. Office Scripts provide a simple way to automate this process. In this article, we'll explain the following Office Script: function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) { // Refresh all data connections workbook.refreshAllDataConnections(); } What is Office Scripts? Office Scripts is a feature in Excel for Microsoft 365 that allows you to automate repetitive tasks using TypeScript , a language based on JavaScript. Office Scripts can: Refresh data connections Format worksheets Create tables Generate reports Automate daily Excel tasks Work with Power Automate Understanding the Script Let's break the code into smaller parts. Function Declaration function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) { Every Office Script starts with a main() function. What does it do? main...

In Power Automate Desktop (PAD) there’s no built-in “auto-kill after X minutes” setting, so you have to enforce the 10-minute limit yourself. Here are the three reliable ways , from best practice to more advanced. Best practice: Control it from a Cloud Flow (recommended) This is the cleanest and safest approach. How it works A Cloud flow starts the Desktop flow You set a timeout of 10 minutes If the desktop flow runs longer → it gets terminated automatically Steps Create a Cloud flow Add action: Run a flow built with Power Automate for desktop Click … (three dots) on the action → Settings Set Timeout to: PT10M Enable Run in unattended mode if needed Save If the desktop flow exceeds 10 minutes, Power Automate will force stop it Pros Official, supported No hacks Best for production Option 2: Build a timeout watchdog inside the Desktop Flow Use this if you must run PAD standalone. Basic logic At the start of the flow , store the cur...

At times, you may have to check the search crawl logs if search results don’t return results from specific content. Search crawl logs can be obtained from the search service application in the SharePoint on-premises environment. However, to inspect the search crawl log in SharePoint Online, you must use  Get-PnPSearchCrawlLog  cmdlet. Make sure you have access to the Crawl Log before you execute any of these PowerShell scripts! Login to SharePoint Online Admin Center  https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com Click on “More Features” from the left navigation >> Click on the “Open” button under the Search. On the Search Service Application page, click on the “Crawl Log Permissions” link at the bottom >> Enter the user names whom you want to grant search crawl log permissions and click on “OK” to save your changes. Register an App in Entra ID (Azure AD) Step 1: Register an App in Entra ID (Azure AD) Go to: https://entra.microsoft.com Navigate to:  Home ...

Microsoft Power Automate is a powerful tool for automating business processes, but like any platform, it comes with a set of limitations. Understanding these constraints is essential to designing efficient, scalable, and compliant workflows—especially as your automation strategy grows in complexity.  Here are the most important limits you need to know:  1. Switch Cases Each Switch action supports a maximum of 25 cases. If you need more, consider using nested Switches or alternate logic like parallel branches or conditionals.  2. Actions per Workflow A single flow can contain up to 500 actions. For complex workflows, you may need to split logic into separate flows or use child flows to stay within this limit.  3. Nesting Depth You can nest actions (e.g., conditionals or loops) up to 8 levels deep. Going beyond this will result in a design error.  4. Variables per Flow Each flow can define up to 250 variables. This includes all variable types (string, inte...