This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
I recently learned how to work with APIs and the different methods to call them. I started with a straight forward example that’s not too complex. I used an open API (that means I don’t need authentication for my request) to get the number of the day from a website called MathTOOLS. I want this number of the day to be posted as a chat message in Microsoft Teams.
Let’s start with some theory first
Whats an API?
API is an acronym for Application Programming Interface and they allow applications to communicate with each other and exchange data. An API lists operations that it can perform and which you can use, if you know how to trigger them. Usually the operations are…
– GET(read)
– POST(write)
– PUT (update)
– PATCH(update, but only partially)
– DELETE(remove)
How to address APIs?
An API is an interface that you can call and communicate with. You can perform different operations, like getting data, writing things, and so on. But you need to know the correct language, that the API will understand, you need to know the correct direct dial and You need to know what to tell the API to make it do what you want it to do. The language you need is HTTP, which is an acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
If the browser on your computer wants to communicate with a server somewhere on the world, it sends an HTTP request (it asks politely) and when we did everything in the right way, we will get a polite answer, an HTTP response.
An HTTP request gives us the ability to communicate with an API. So much for the theory, now let’s get our hands dirty :clapping_hands: and let’s see how it looks in Power Automate.
HTTP request
As I mentioned earlier an HTTP request consists of a view things. We will need a…
– Method
– URL
– Headers
– and a body
Method
Luckily we know the methods already.
Method
Action
GET
read
PUT
update
POST
write
PATCH
update partially
DELETE
remove
In this use case we want to get the number of the day, so we choose the GET method.
URL
Now for the URL we need to know the URL (kind of obvious, isn’t it :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:) of the service we want to address. But not only that, we will also need the endpoint. This is something like the direct call, putting you to that exact point that you want. Usually an API will tell you how the endpoint looks:
The endpoint of the website MathTOOLS is `https://api.math.tools`, but if we read carefully (I usually struggle with that :smiling_face_with_halo:), we get more details for the API of the number of the day:
The endpoint for the number of the day is `https://api.math.tools/numbers/nod`. The API documentation even provides us with the information of how the HTTP response will look like:
It’s a very long JSON object (if you want to get started with JSON, I recommend the amazing blog from Bob German Introduction to JSON.
But let’s stay at our HTTP request in Power Automate. We know the Method, we know the URL and we know that we don’t need any authentication. That means we can fill out all mandatory fields in that flow action and it looks like this:
Let’s run this flow on a daily basis and see what the result looks like:
(Since you can hardly see the result, I paste the body here once again)
And that’s it, we used an HTTP request to GET information from a API. Now for the last part of this blog, we want to use some information from this result to be posted in a chat in Teams.
Use a certain information from a JSON object in a chat message
Now it would make a lot of sense, if we cover the question, how to use a certain information from that JSON object in, let’s say a chat message, right?
Let’s say, we want to post the number of the day in a daily Microsoft Teams chat. We need just two steps for that:
1. put the information of that JSON file in a variable, so it’s always up to date
2. use that variable in message in a Microsoft Teams chat
To use a certain information in a variable, you first need to initialize a variable and fill out all the information:
Name: I called mine NrOfDay
Type: We want to use a string here (a string is a sequence of characters, that can include letters or numbers, but it will be recognized as a “text”)
Value: Here we want to define the value of this variable. In our case that means that particular information from this long JSON object.
We want the value of the property “number”
Notice, that this JSON element consists of three different objects. We have the objects “success”, “copyright” and “content”. The object “content” contains an object called “nod”, which contains two more objects called “category” and “numbers”.
As stated earlier, we want the value of the property “number”, which is located in the object “numbers” (which is part of the object “nod”, which is part of the object “content”).
Now we can tell our variable in Power Automate the exact location of the value we want to use in this variable. The expression to “navigate” to the value of this property looks like this:
The first part (`body(‘HTTP_-_GETnon’)`) tells where we want to look, the later parts are navigating through the JSON object until we reach the exact object and the exact property. With this method you can get any value of any JSON object you like.
Now you can build in the variable in a “Post message in a chat or channel” action as dynamic content in Flow and it will always show the value of the property of that JSON object.
That’s it. That is how you call an API, get a JSON object back and use certain values from that object in Power Automate. I hope you liked it and it helps you. If anything is unclear, or you have questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Easiest way would be twitter :*
As I mentioned in the beginning, I will further work with APIs. If you want to learn more, here’s what I’m going to work on next. If you have specific questions, please ask me or make suggestions. I’m always eager to learn new things.
Next API topic: What’s a custom connector, where is the difference between a http request and a custom connector and when to use what.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In response to the enthusiastic adoption of the eleven Synapse Database Templates for which we announced availability, in public preview, in November and December 2021, we’re pleased to announce today that we are making available, in public preview, additional Synapse Database Templates for four more industries:
Automotive Industries
Genomics
Manufacturing
Pharmaceuticals
The Synapse Database Template for Automotive Industries is a comprehensive data model that addresses the typical data requirements of organizations engaged in manufacturing automobiles, heavy vehicles, tires, and other automotive components.
The Synapse Database Template for Genomics is a comprehensive data model that addresses the typical data requirements of organizations engaged in acquiring and analyzing genomic data about human beings or other species.
The Synapse Database Template for Manufacturing is a comprehensive data model that addresses the typical data requirements of organizations engaged in either discrete or continuous manufacturing of a wide range of products. Portions of this database template are also included as part of the previously announced Consumer Goods database template and in the Automotive Industries and Pharmaceuticals database templates being announced today so companies in those industries will likely prefer to use those database templates rather than the general purpose Manufacturing industry database template as they contain additional content specific to those industries in addition to the content contained in the general Manufacturing database template.
The Synapse Database Template for Pharmaceuticals is a comprehensive data model that addresses the typical data requirements of organizations engaged in creating, manufacturing, and marketing pharmaceutical and bio-pharmaceutical products and medical devices.
Most of the Synapse database templates contain many different business areas that together comprise each of these very large industry-specific data models. For example, in addition to business areas such as Product, Inventory, and Human Resources, there is also an Emissions business area which provides support for data used to report greenhouse gas emissions (including scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions), an area of significant focus for many of our large customers.
These 4 additional database templates can be accessed now in Azure Synapse either in the gallery or by creating a new lake database from the Data tab and selecting + Table and then From template.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Organizations across industries and around the world are seeking new ways to unlock their customer data to provide high-quality, connected customer experiences. Microsoft’s work to help enterprises, especially those in the retail, consumer brands, healthcare, manufacturing, and media and advertising industries to meet their customers’ expectations by delivering privacy-aware, consent enabled personalization has gained some recognition.
Microsoft is thrilled to be named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on Front-Office Users 2021-2022 Vendor Assessment (doc # US47524621, December 2021). The IDC MarketScape is the first research by a major analyst firm evaluating customer data platform (CDP) vendors.
Source: “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on Front-Office Users 20212022 Vendor Assessment”, By: Gerry Murray, David Wallace & Michelle Morgan, December 2021, IDC # US47524621
The report highlights customer data management, including 360-degree customer view, improving customer experience, and globalization as top capabilities within Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights helps customers unify all their B2C and B2B customer data to generate AI-powered insights in real-time, creating a single view of the customer. Interactive reports help marketers optimize their customers’ journeys, and AI-powered insights speed the prediction of customer needs.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights elegantly supports both technical and non-technical usersbe it through a visual UI/drag and drop interface for marketers or through advanced analytics for data scientists. The IDC MarketScape said to, “Consider Microsoft if you have significant investments in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 applications such as marketing or sales or if you are looking for user-friendly AI/ML modeling capabilities that do not require marketers (and other LOB users) to be data scientists.” The report also noted, “Microsoft’s CDP segments are created through automated discovery powered by AI, API configuration, and visual UI/drag and drop interface for markets and through analytic/SQL queries for data scientists. Segments are updated based on a variety of factors such as streaming web session data, geolocation, and dynamic modeling and based on batch data updates.”
The IDC MarketScape noted, “Microsoft is strong in this important area for enterprise CDP buyers as the speed, scale, and response time for processing high volumes of customer data are an important enabler of personalization and customer experience.”
The IDC MarketScape also stated, “Microsoft has strengths in all aspects of globalization: number of languages supported in its CDP; number of countries with customers, sales, service, and support; and regional implementation partners.”
IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the circles. Vendor year-over-year growth rate relative to the given market is indicated by a plus, neutral or minus next to the vendor name.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This is the next segment of our blog series highlighting Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who achieved the Gold milestone and have recently graduated from university. Each blog in the series features a different student and highlights their accomplishments, their experience with the Student Ambassadors community, and what they’re up to now.
Today we meet Rogerio Rodrigues who is from Brazil and recently graduated from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo with a master’s degree in computer science.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
When you joined the Student Ambassador community in 2012 as an undergraduate student at Universidade Federal de São Paulo, did you have specific goals you wanted to reach?
I had some goals like learning to speak in public because I was very shy but wanted to contribute to public events in the Student Ambassador program. I also wanted to go deeper into Microsoft technologies like Azure, DevOps, and Mobile Development with Xamarin. I had a dream to work at Microsoft as an employee. The community helped me a lot with these goals. I learned public speaking and became an MBA technical training teacher. I learned a lot about Microsoft technologies, received recognition in the technical community, and became a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). I am pleased to have been part of the community, which undoubtedly contributed the most to my professional career.
As a Student Ambassador, what were the accomplishments that you’re the proudest of and why?
In 2018 and 2019, together with other Student Ambassadors and Microsoft MVPs , we created an initiative called Natal Nerd where we collected gifts, toys, and cash as donations to help orphans and at-risk children for Christmas. Several Student Ambassador events and lectures about Microsoft technologies were held at universities with companies in São Paulo, and the entry fee was a toy to donate to Natal Nerd. We presented at 23 universities in the country and reached more than 2,500 students and professors, disseminating and sharing knowledge about Microsoft technologies and the Imagine Cup. We were able to collect gifts to improve Christmas for more than 800 children.
In 2019, another Student Ambassador and I delivered 4 talks at 11 technical events at the Microsoft Student Partners Tech Days at eight universities in Brazil with the help of MVPs [Editor’s note: Microsoft Student Partners is the former name of the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program]. We delivered another four talks in countries such as Peru, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Mexico with the help of other Student Ambassadors.
In 2019 and 2020, I was chosen to go to the Microsoft Student Partner Summit and the Imagine Cup Final because of my contributions. The events in 2019 were amazing – opportunities that I will never forget because they was very valuable to me. Even though the events in 2020 were virtual, I was very happy to have received the recognition.
My dream was to become a Microsoft employee. I had already tried twice and didn’t pass the interviews, but last year I became a Customer Engineer at Microsoft and was assigned to serve large public sector banking clients. I’ve also started my part-time doctorate program in computer science with a focus on environmental science and weather satellites. After completing my doctorate, I plan to do a post-doc in my line of research, continue to teach at universities, and contribute to science.
If you could redo your time as a Student Ambassador, is there anything you would have done differently?
The only thing I would have done differently would be to study more English right away when I joined in order to communicate more easily with other Student Ambassadors around the world. Learning to speak English better made a big difference for me in 2019 when I was at the Student Partner Summit for the first time because in addition to learning new technical content, I met many other Student Ambassadors from other cultures and the amazing Student Ambassador Program Team.
If you were to describe the community to a student who is interested in joining, what would you say about it to convince him or her to join?
If you desire to be a unique professional, you should apply to the Student Ambassadors program. In addition to receiving special treatment in the community, you will have access to a lot of technical information, you will have the opportunity to network with people from all over the planet, and you will have contact with Microsoft professionals where you can find excellent opportunities.
Furthermore, the community helps you have a much broader view of technology than just Microsoft technologies, as you will have contact with different areas and the opportunity to work on fantastic projects.
What advice would you give to new Student Ambassadors?
Actively participate in the community. Join other Student Ambassadors in Leagues or groups to create initiatives. It’s fantastic, and you learn a lot. Make contact with other Student Ambassadors as you will experience different cultures, practice languages, learn more technology, and perhaps share your knowledge with other Student Ambassadors. Actively contribute to your local community and promote content at your university. These actions will help you to secure further knowledge and develop new skills. The community provides a sea of opportunities.
What is your motto in life, your guiding principle?
My motto in life is “Be different. Help lift but not drop”. Helping those we can help will bring us great experiences, and we will be doing our part in making the world better.
What is one random fact about you that few people are aware of?
I’m a big fan of Star Wars. I have a big tattoo on my back that’s the design of an X-Wing spaceship with the 3 characters I like–Luke, Leia, and Rey Skywalker.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As digital transformation drives innovation and transforms the way we work, we see business operations and traditional internal processes being disrupted daily. To adapt and scale changes across their business, many organizations are overwhelmed and faced with digitizing thousands of manual checklists, paper forms, documents, and more. The good news is today’s Microsoft solutions make this transition easier than ever before. With Microsoft’s suite of low-code development solutions (e.g., Microsoft Power Platform, Power Automate, and AI Builder), employees of all skill levels can create and customize business applications and processes. By combining these solutions with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides, a mixed reality application that offers step-by-step, hands-free work instructions and collaboration, you can convert your existing 2D manuals into 3D holograms, rather than transferring manually. Once converted, organizations can use Dynamics 365 Guides to provide immersive, on-the-job guidance that will increase efficiency, increase knowledge retention, and enable your organization to adapt at the speed of change.
Better together: Dynamics 365 Guides, AI Builder, and Power Automate
With Dynamics 365 Guides, authoring instructions is as simple as creating a presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. Using the Guides PC and HoloLens apps, you create and edit instructions by dragging and dropping 2D and 3D content into your real-world environment to show users how and where to complete tasks. However, converting an existing multi-page manual by copying the information from scratch makes the authoring process feel time-consuming and daunting. This is where Microsoft Power Platform AI Builder comes in. AI Builder empowers anyone to build, train, and publish AI models, enabling you to infuse AI into your regular processes. You can create and train a custom AI model to extract text information from a variety of paper manuals in minutes, or use one of the pre-built models.
Using Power Automate, you save the extracted information to Microsoft Dataverse (an enterprise-grade intelligent scalable data platform that powers business applications like Dynamics 365 Guides). By storing the data in a format readable by Dynamics 365 Guides, users can simply open the Dynamics 365 Guides PC and HoloLens apps and add 3D content on top of the text instructions extracted from existing manuals.
In this blog, we’ll focus on how to use the AI Builder form processing model to extract and convert information and create a guide. Every organization has work instructions that come in different formats, such as checklists for inspections, training documentation, and standard operating procedures. By using the form processing model, you can read and save information from existing documents such as images or PDF files.
When you automate this process, you save valuable time by reviewing, extracting, organizing, and saving the data automatically by using Power Automate and Power Apps.
Overall process
Creating a guide using a custom AI model and Power Automate requires three simple steps:
Train an AI model with AI Builder to extract text from a .PDF file or image.
Take extracted information from the AI model and create a guide using Power Automate.
Enhance the guide further and author in the Dynamics 365 Guides PC and HoloLens apps.
For a closer look at each step below, follow along with a team at Toyota Motors North America in this video, at the 2:40 min mark.
Step one: Train an AI model with AI Builder to extract text from a .PDF file or image
Create your AI model: Choose “form processing” (under the “Documents” area of the AI Builder homepage) and go through the step-by-step wizard.
Define the data you want to extract: Define the fields, tables, and checkboxes you want to teach your model to extract. See the create a form processing custom model documentation for more details.
Upload your documents: Upload at least five different versions of the same basic document. AI Builder also supports collections of documents that have different layouts. See the AI Builder form processing models blog for more details.
Select important areas, and then train your AI model: Teach your model areas it should learn aboutand then train it. Training is an automatic process where AI Builder “teaches” your AI model to understand a specific instruction type, such as a PDF checklist.
Publish and use your new AI model: Now you can automate document processing in apps and flows.
Step two: Take extracted information from the AI model and create a guide using Power Automate
Extract the data: Create a Power Automate flow to take the extracted information from AI Builder and create a guide with step-by-step instructions. You can do this in minutes and no coding skills are required.
Create a Power Automate flow and convert data into steps: Build each piece of data as a “step” for your instructions with easy-to-follow drag-and-drop functionalities. This is where you reference the Dynamics 365 Guides data in Microsoft Dataverse. By harnessing Dataverse, we can connect data so that your instructions are now editable from the Dynamics 365 Guides PC app.
Step three: Author in the Dynamics 365 Guides PC and HoloLens apps
Make edits in the PC and HoloLens apps: Once content for your guide is in the right spot, you can author in the Dynamics 365 Guides PC and HoloLens apps to make edits and changes.
Optimize for 3D experience: Customize the steps to better suit hands-free needs based on a 3D, mixed-reality experience. Add links, photos, reports, 3D models, and other resources.
Whether creating a single manual or hundreds, AI Builder and Dynamics 365 Guides can transform instructions and training, making your processes easier, smarter, and faster. Seamlessly capture, translate, and extract information to unlock a new way of working and save your teams hours of time.
“Customers have been able to save months of deployment time by using AI Builder and Guides, allowing them to quickly integrate mixed-reality work instructions into their daily workflows without any development expertise. They’re able to update content they already have into 3D holographic instructions for a variety of scenarios, including assembly, changeovers, training, and service and maintenance, resulting in improvements to safety, efficiency, and reduced onboarding time.”Shirley Ho, Senior Designer, Dynamics 365 Guides.
Getting started
Ready to design a guide using AI Builder, Power Automate, and Dynamics 365 Guides today? Here’s how to get started.
Power Apps: A Power Apps or Power Automate license is required to start using AI Builder. For more details about Power Apps and Power Automate licensing, see the licensing guide.
AI Builder: Models in preview do not require an AI Builder trial or license nor consume credits. Anybody can test AI Builder and start a free trial today.
Other resources
AI Builder in Power Automate
Learn more about AI Builder and get your questions answered using AI Builder documentation. Make sure to see these topics:
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