Was it was weird i don't know it felt good but it also is just different well joe i was seeing i saw a article that said where you live is the greatest place in california to live oh really alamina yeah and so by default just because we're both californians it's the greatest place on earth to live so i got lucky i got lucky i live it really is it's a cozy little island it's uh it's pretty amazing yeah um just give you guys some quick updates.
Real quick on the channel um like i said last time we are going to be releasing shorts soon um those will be coming you'll see a bunch of one minute clips they'll be pretty much daily you'll see one of those each day coming on and then the other thing is that the most requested class the absolute most requested class from our clients joe built it it's office essentials uh he he built out the outline and got everything set and ready the curriculum and everything like that we have that.
Class being recorded uh tomorrow it was being recorded yesterday and it should be finished on thursday but this this class is going to be tentatively titled office essentials but this is going to be all the skills that our clients are telling us their their new employees are missing so if you guys want to get a leg up on getting your you know getting a new job or anything like that or getting having that skill set that employers are looking for this is going to be the class you definitely don't want to miss out on because it's it's going to cover i've talked to.
Numerous numerous clients and they all said the same thing these are the skills that we're looking for and so like i said we got that made right away so um look forward to that one and then also another huge announcement and then i wish i had one today though is that we do have our own official excel today coffee mugs uh the link to purchase them is in the description so uh you know check them out it's pretty much just i i'm getting one it's getting sent to me but you know i kind of jumped the gun on.
Putting it on here but if they're all set ready to roll you can purchase them if you want to support us and stuff like that it's a great way to do it um and might as well just jump into our coffee mugs today joe you showed me a great one i this is one of the best ones i've seen in a while actually it is so good it says um i know it's backwards mirrored but it says oh this calls for a spreadsheet i love it shout out to excel or anything anything yeah you can use a spreadsheet for anything um we were talking to trish conor cato last week and bro she has spreadsheets and she uses.
Um let's see we have i also have uh my mug which is again the 85 degree mug i've had this mug on quite often recently but is seriously my favorite favorite look and then also it's my favorite bakery to go to as well and they just opened one here in town so if you yeah if you want to find me that's where i'm at 85 degrees i have to go check now yeah definitely but yeah that's that's all the updates everything like that and today we're going to be doing power automate joe's.
Going to be building it from the ground up here so if you guys want to just get power automates uh started there uh joe what else are you going to be using for power automator are you just going to be using power automate or yeah great question so what i'm going to do is i'll kind of talk into the three essentials for billing and automation and then we'll get into using let's do let's do forms i want people have access to forms we'll do microsoft forms and then we'll either put it in an email so outlook or teams we'll we'll decide once.
We get there but yeah make sure that you have forms ready if you want to follow along and uh some teams or email and i know some of you will probably have email so we might just go with email that'll be easier but yeah it's going to be it's going to be fun what essentially we'll do is power automation is great because it automates a process right so instead of having to do it manually all the time power automate you can start to pick and choose what you want it's actually accomplished and then you run those and it just stays automatic all the time and.
It you don't even have to think about it that's the best part so i'm thinking of doing when somebody fills out a form it captures their responses and then it automatically sends you an email so it could be like a new request service or something something like that we'll make it up but it's gonna be a lot of fun and you go video for an i.t department that wants to do like a quick ticket system if you guys you know don't have zendesky do you can do this yeah i go vending as well um all right well you want to get started man i'll let you take over dude let's do this i'm.
Excited all right sure i understand let's proceed i share my entire screen and i think i'm sharing all right all right so uh the first thing that we're going to want to do is we are going to want to log into office.com if you've never done it before see when i go to office.com i'm automatically logged in but i'll show you real quick because i know.
You're like joe well mine doesn't look like that right away well if you go to office.com
All you're going to do is come up to this page here where it says welcome to office you're then going to sign in using your outlook credentials right so your email and your password once you do that it's going to bring you to this page right here all right i'll say good morning it's already making you feel great i'm like good morning microsoft let's do this and then you'll see some of like recommended uh videos that you have.Access to that things you've been doing together with your co-workers you'll see recently access files and then you'll see the online versions of all of your applications like the online version for powerpoint and excel and word and teams and well outlook now this is amazing because you can access this from wherever you are so whether you're in a hotel room you know trying to get some work done quietly or maybe you're out on vacation and you want to answer me email don't do that.
Right if you're on vacation stay on vacation but the point is you have access to all these apps as long as you have internet access now if i want to access power automation it's actually going to live in this little grid waffle app launcher whatever you want to call it and when i give it a click you'll see all the applications that i have access to and you can even go to all apps and see even more now my power automate is right here it looks like a little like blue arrow pointing this way and when i give it a.
Click that's what's going to bring me to my power automate interface here now the first thing that we're going to want to do is we're going to want to create a workflow but in order to understand what a workflow is i want to kind of draw it out for you real quick so this is what it looks like now the first thing we want to look at is this how do we actually get that automation started right how do we pull the trigger.
You know so to say so it's actually called the trigger how do we pull the trigger so that it actually starts the action and starts the process so we have to come up with some sort of trigger now some of these triggers could be many things it could be a manual trigger where we actually got to do something we got to press a button right it could be an automated trigger where once something happens or meets the credit you hit a criteria it automates it so it could be an auto made automatic one we'll say automatic or another one another type that it.
Could be is around a certain time every single time like do this process every single time at this time so it's a specific date and so those are the different triggers now after you create a trigger what we need to do next is we need to be able to set whether there's a condition or criteria so for instance like maybe every time someone fills out that form i get an email with the request.
Except when they s you know pick a certain service area maybe they choose something that has nothing to do with it then that gets somewhere else so you have to think is there going to be a condition and the best part about it is a condition is optional so you don't need to put a conditioner criteria but it's always nice to have the option and i'll just put optional and then right afterwards we have the trigger if there's a condition i'll run through.
The condition but if not it will run directly into the action so now we have to figure out what action do we want to take what is this thing going to do so as long as we have the two main points a trigger and then an action we're good to go once again the condition is optional if you want to add some sort of criteria on there so with that said what i'm thinking is the trigger is going to be somebody fills out a form and once that happens it automatically captures those.
Responses and it sends it to us in an email so that's the action right so the trigger they fill out the form the action is they capture the responses and send it to us in an email and like ben said before we can use this for a ticketing system so with that said you will notice that the best part about power automate is there are thousands of pre-built templates in power automate so if you're not sure how to get started or if you didn't want to start from scratch you can just simply.
Go to the templates and you can search for thousands of them
I mean if i wanted to search for filling out or maybe adding something to sharepoint adding to sharepoint it's going to bring up all the stuff add an item to sharepoint and send an email right how awesome is that that that's just some great notifications right there or email notification notification after approval from sharepoint list.Send a custom email when a new sharepoint list item is added i mean right there that automation alone super helpful but today we're going to keep it short and simple we're going to build one from scratch which i think is going to be a lot more fun so to do that we're going to go to create and the first thing it's going to ask us is well for the trigger what type of trigger is this automated cloud flow which means the trigger is designated by an event which that sounds right up our alley but i want to show.
You some other ones instant cloudflow where we manually press something right just like i said before and schedule flow right you choose when and how often it flows maybe a specific date or a specific time now there's other ones as well that they keep adding like desktop flows business process flows and process advisor flows i don't really use too many of these but you're more than welcome to take a look at these and it gives you a nice description of how they trigger but for today we're going to use the automated cloud flow.
Now the first thing it's going to ask you to do is build the flow name like what do you want to name this and i'm going to use ben's example because i think it's a great one a ticket request something like that right so take a request now it's going to say choose your flow's trigger now there's many different triggers you can go through you'll see there's tons of them and what i love about power automate is it tells you right underneath.
What application it's dealing with because all the applications are available you can do a trigger for excel you could do a trigger for planner you can do a trigger for gmail if you wanted to it's not even microsoft but you can do it so i want to make sure that whenever somebody fills out the form which i know it's the first one right here when a new response is submitted in microsoft forms what i can do is i can actually search all the triggers so it makes this list smaller right so i'm going to do forms.
And then it's going to show me all the different forms maybe you don't use microsoft forms maybe you use this one or maybe you use this one captisa right that's the best part is that it's integrated with so many outside microsoft tools it's just amazing and i'm thinking well yeah i have this first one here that's what i want when a new response is submitted in microsoft forms that's going to trigger this event.
So i'll click the little trigger and i'll click create now before i do this though it is important to know that you're going to want to get everything prepared first see if i click create right now it's going to say well joe what form do you want to use but if i didn't create the form yet i won't see it in the list so what i need to do is go create the form first then work on my power automate right it's kind of like getting all the ingredients before you bake a cake you don't just say i'm baking the.
Cake and then it magically appears no we need to go get the eggs or the flour or the sugar and then once we have those ingredients in front of us then we can start the process so same thing here i'm going to go over to my microsoft office i'm going to go to the grid waffle launch app launcher whatever you like to call it and i'm going to click on forms i'm going to create a new form and now you can name this whatever i'm going to call it ticket request.
And i'm going to just put a date there because i don't know if i've already done an example like this and you're going to want to make sure you name it so that you can find it in the list when you work on your parapotamy and i'm just going to say this is a ticketing service request something short and simple the first thing i'm going to add i'm going to add a new choice or you know what let's add the name so i'm going to do a text and the first question is going to be what is your name.
I don't think it's going to be a long answer unless you have a really long name so you could turn on long answer but i don't think i need that i will make sure that it's required that they fill it out though because of course i'm going to want to know who i'm dealing with next up i'm going to add and let's do a date right i want to know what date they're submitting this or what day they need the request by so i'll say what dates do you accelerate to you need request by.
And then that's required perfect i'm going to add another one let's add in here let's do a phone number maybe i want to put a phone number so i'll say what is your phone number and then they'll put in their phone number now it is good to point out that if you click the three dots right here you can do some restrictions or branching so if i put restrictions i could restrict it to a number only right you're more than welcome to do things.
Like that i don't think we need it in this case because of course they're going to want to add the dashes or everyone just does their phone numbers differently so you could turn that off but it's nice to know you do have options the last thing i'm going to ask is a multiple choice and it's going to simply be what service is needed and we'll make some stuff up let's do um new hardware do software.
We'll add another option um let's say error help and then we'll add one more option we'll add what's known as the other option which means that if they don't choose one of these three they can write whatever they want and we'll see it so i'll add other options so that they can actually put in there what the problem is i think we're looking good these are the four things that i need very short and simple and yeah we're already saved.
Because it auto saves everything and we can exit out of this so now what i'm going to do is this i'm going to create the automated cloud flow right because it's going to be triggered once they fill out the form i'm going to name this ticket request and i'm going to choose that when a new response is submitted in microsoft forms that is our trigger i'll then click create.
So now we see right away we have our response cement now it says that there's a test connection failed so you know something's happening with my connection to forms so if this ever happens to you you just have to you know re you know put in the connection here you'll see my connections it's saying i'm not connected for some reason and it's probably because we need to do an mfa um authentication right some companies make you do that so my company just.
Got this going so i'm just gonna authenticate on my phone here and there we go it's always fun to see that in real time right if that ever pops up for you just know that it's just a connection you need to make sure you're signed into all your apps forms excel word or else it won't work now that i'm in here it should be that i'm connected oop looking great and now i'm going to pick the form so i'm going to click the drop down and i'm going to pick that form that i.
Just created so it should be somewhere here and ticket request 4 7. see how good it is to do the naming convention you want to make sure you name it so you don't lose it there's a lot of forms to choose from now i'm going to say that there's a new step and it's going to ask me well joe do you want to do a condition or do you want to just go straight into the action and i'm thinking for this one we don't need a condition so we're going to skip it and we're going to go straight to the action so when a response is submitted what do.
I need to do well i actually need to capture it first before i even think about sending it to the email i need to capture whatever they responded so i'm going to search for an action in forms i'm going to type in forms it's going to show me all the forms that i have all the form actions and i see here that the one form action that i want is to get the response details i want to capture those i'm going to click on that now it's going to ask me for the form id again so we're just going to click and.
Choose that same form it's in alphabetical order and it's funny the response id the response type id is actually going to be the response id i know it sounds funny all it's saying is that it's going to take the responses in that order the four questions that we had and it's going to capture them in that order so the response id is you'll see once you click here the response id i know it's a funny funny world we live in so that one's pretty easy now we're going to click on next or new.
Step or next step whatever you like to call it and we're going to say that after we get the response details now i want to put it into an email so i want to send an email now i'm using outlook but you could type in gmail you could type in whatever mail you use since i use outlook i will search for outlook outlook 365. and now i'm going to choose something here like send an email you could delete a contact you could delete an email create an event with this information.
So much stuff now if you notice there is like a v2 v4 things like that that's just the version they're constantly updating these things so for instance send an email this is the second version of that button so something must have been buggy in it or somebody wanted you to add something so they updated it once i click send an email it's going to say that i need to sign in to create that connection so once again it signs me in it goes through that process.
Some of you may need to actually click sign in my you know just automatically did that so whenever there's a new response get those details of the response and then send an email and i'm going to say that i want this email to go to whoever maybe it's a higher up maybe it's me so i'll just put my name here now the subject is going to be whatever i want it to be but the best part is that if you click into subject we now have something known as dynamic content.
Which means it can pool the answers from those questions we created into this email like what is your name it will get the answer to the question it will grab the answer to the date the answer to the phone number or the answer to the service needed so for this i'm actually not going to do this i'm you know what let's use um let's do this well for the subject we'll just say new ticket request.
But in the actual body of the email this is where we'll use our dynamic content we'll say hello please review request below and then we'll put our call in there and then we'll do this we'll say name space and we're going to put in what is your name so the answer to what is your name will go into name this is really cool.
Ready um date needed and i'll choose what date do you need it by right i love this stuff dynamic content contact info now there's two things here we didn't ask for an email but the minute that they submitted it you will get the responders email from when they submitted the form it actually captures that from forms on its own so when we.
Put in contact info we can not only just put in the phone number but we can also put in a responder's email right how awesome is that so we'll have the contact information and the responders email if you didn't want the responders email you don't need to do that you can just click the x or if you wanted it in order right or something like that email you're more than welcome to do that up to you i'm not going to put the email and i don't need it but it's just good that there's a response there to have.
That and then of course the biggest thing that we need here is service needed and that is where the service is needed is going to so now this looks great i love it perfect when we get a new response from the ticketing request form capture the details of those responses and put them into this email now we're going to just make sure to save this.
It's going to save it and once it saves it we're actually going to run this right it's going to first check it's going to say your flow's ready to go we recommend you test it always important that you test your workflows but i want you to see what this looks like if i go back now this is what's known as the details page this is where you could see the name of the workflow who's the owner when it was created if it's on what type of trigger it is right but you'll also see all the times that.
It ran successfully or all the times that it failed you'll see what connections you have access to so i'm signed into forms and outlook because i'm using both of those applications in this auto uh process right so now let's test it out i'm gonna go over and we're gonna open up forms i'll just go to my you could do it okay so it's not working on that front all right let's just go to office now i'm going to open up the form and.