You just saved my life. I've been trying to do the same (coincidently into a dropdown!!!) with the free one and spent most of my weekend trying this with Respond to PowerApp or Flow. I did find the the Response is free (my organization) and it took me 15 minutes to make it work. BIG Thank you!!
Ah perfect video.... exactly what I was looking for. In short, if you need to return an object or an array to PowerApps, use 'Response' instead of the PowerApps response action.
Thank you so much for this great content. I spent days looking for the right way to parse a Jason file through PowerAutomate and send the output to PowerApps. Great Content !
Thanks a lot for making such a nice video which explains clearly the use of "Response" action in Power Automate along with its benefit over "Respond to Power Apps".
How to respond twice in same flow ? I have tried both methods without luck :-/ "The execution of template action 'Response_2' is skipped: another response action has already executed."
Awesome. I am making an application to generate images and audio from OpenAI. I have a problem with responding to PowerApps. Please advise how to mange the respond of Images & Audio. Thanks for the amazing video
Thank you for this!!! I want to try to use this to execute a stored procedure in SQL. I have been using the response and the data comes back but I can't get it into powerapps. But your method is different. Great content 👌
to return the calculation in your "Respond to a PowerApp or Flow" scenario, you need to initialize a variable right before the step Respond to a PowerApp or Flow and use this variable as output.
Sir, I have a question, I am using this to list the files in the folder. And if we have new files added it folder, can we dynamically set it so that it doesnt have to be hardcoded output?
Great workaround! But I am getting "The flow input and output schema cannot be represented in WADL. code: FlowWadlConversionNotSupported" When saving the flow. I tested in in power automate and works just fine. The first time the response was seen as a boolean. while in power automate you clearly could see the JSON... removing and adding it to the solution again rendered the WADL errors. even recreating inside the canvas app... bizar
Hi , it was a great explanation . tnk u . it helped me. also i wanted to contribute - the issue with the number not responding back to apps is still true, but when i used text instead of numbers every other functionality is same - it worked . I just tested . hopefully this helps someone.
Hello Alireza, Thanks for the great video and tips. From this I have created a flow using the Response action sending the output to PowerApps. Works perfectly and fills a collection in the canvas app. Then I figured out how to apply two schemas to the Response action so that I can send two sets of array/items generated by the flow that use two different schemas. The body of the response looks like this { "StorePrices": output, "ZonePrices": output} where output is from a previous action in the flow. No flow error. Setting a variable for the response, this works perfectly for the StorePrices property and it fills the collection in the canvas app. However, power apps does not recognize ZonePrices so I can not get that in a collection. Any suggestions for this problem?
Great explanation, I guess MS won’t leave the PA response action as it is since it’s hard to believe that something as simple as working with integer does not work! Anyway, Response works reliable as you say. Wouldn’t it be nice if MS removed it from the Premium category? Really enjoyed the video, keep the good work!
Interesting another case where Microsoft have tried to reinvent the wheel and made it square. Not sure why they would make something that way unless you were trying to sell more licenses. Thanks for your insights and sharing.
Yes. If something takes two minutes to complete, you cannot use Response. In that case just make the call without response. When the job is complete but the result somewhere on the database side (Like a SharePoint list item) and check the value on PowerApps using a timer.
Hi Alireza, great insights, thanks ! The question I have is how long will powerapps wait for the response ? Your demo is of a synchronous request/response to a flow, but what if the flow takes a longer time to complete ? Is there a recommended pattern to implement an asynchronous response to a request that does not lock the user from continuing work in the app ? Something like I send a request and a couple of minutes later I want to show the user a notification that the request has completed ?
This is something that I explained in details in my latest course "Microsoft Power Automate for PowerApps developers". Unlike traditional desktop apps, when you make a synchronous call to a Flow, it doesn't lock the screen.
@@AlirezaAliabadi Thanks for your reply. For the other question, I found it takes 1 minute for Power Apps to timeout, so if the flow responds within 60 seconds there should not be an issue.
@@stephanebouillon2538 True, now if you think it takes longer than that, then make an asynchronous call and use a timer control to check for the results on your data provider.
@@AlirezaAliabadi Thanks, you confirm what I was thinking for this scenario. By the way, I had a (very) long-running flow that combines data from multiple sharepoint lists, and by using another approach than apply for each I was able to avoid the loop, and now it returns the combined result/report in a matter of seconds.
So, my experience is the exact opposite: so far Respond to PowerApps has worked reasonably well (provided that the flow lasts less than 120 seconds) but when using Response to pass back a JSON table it does not show in PowerApps...
As always, EXCELLENT content especially for aspiring PP Pro Developers! I'm still only a bit deeper than scratching the surface, but if I 'read between the lines', would you say (or recommend) that using the above process is typically how one should reliably pull relevant Data (parameterized or not) from a Data Source(i.e. Dataverse) into a Power App and Post back changes/selections?
I always pick reliability over easy of use. If you are dealing with something like Dataverse, there are direct connectors that do the job much easier, but still even with Dataverse, there are scenarios that I throw a Flow in between and that's when I need to implement an atomic transaction like placing an order that should update multiple tables to be successful and if one update fails, everything else needs to rollback. Overall I approach it case by case and I look into reliability, maintainability and ease of use to find the technology balance.
Happy New Year Alireza. Wishing you more energy and fun from producing great courses and content 🙏🏾 I am about 70% through your Power Automate for Power Apps course, by the way & as usual a great course so far, and that was one of the comments I was compiling for feedback i.e. is there no free option for this premium "Response" action? Thank you for this video; it explains your love for that Power Automate action ... reliability. I will do some testing on this, but my thinking would be that, as a boy and not a dude at the moment 😅, can the developer not return the results using the Repond to Power Apps or flow as a string and then convert the string to JSON in Power Apps? As you mentioned this would be a bit more messing around and possible less reliable depending on how well you hand the string creation in Power Automate before sending the response, but I can't see why that would be soo unreliable as to overcome its "freeness" 😂 A lot of smaller organisations cannot/will not pay for these extra licences outside the seeded licenses. Also, I think the issue with the response not working for the "Sum" test could have been that you sent values from Power Apps to flow that were integers, but the response from Power Automate after the run at 14m 05s showed that the response sent from Power Automate back to Power Apps was a string. Maybe Power Apps was not expecting that. Just a guess. I will test this myself. Thank you for the video highlighting this interesting option. Ps: I like what you did with the fly-by-presents for your expressions course 😁
Thank you for your feedback. Based on my experience this is just a new UI on the top of Response action. So once you set it up, it keeps working. The glitchy part is when you set it up and configure it. For the licensing keep that in mind the licensing fee becomes significant when you are looking into hundreds of users and most of those big players have enterprise agreement with Microsoft that they don't even care about licensing fee. And you are right. I love "Response", simply because it NEVER failed me. I always know if that is not working, I am doing something wrong.
It is just random. Sometimes number works and sometimes doesn't. I spent long hours with this action. I give it a few months before I evaluate it again.
Now I noticed something even more interesting. Freeze the video at 11:55. Notice that the output shows "sum":"23" while based on our definition of sum as number when we were adding output parameters, it should be "sum":23 So although we define the parameter as number, the control produces string output. Power Platform team at Microsoft has some unfinished work here :)
Yes - it looks string types for this action will always work / other types is just lottery. Btw - I also dig deeper and I am able to return array serialized to string using this free action - than in power apps using some regex magic it is possible to convert string to Collection.
Anyway - you are creating awesome content Sir (both here and in Udemy) It is a pleasure to watch your channel. All the best for 2022 🙂 I am your big fan.
Great video, thank you. Question, have you had to return a date type back to Power Apps? I can't seem to make Power Apps recognize the value as a date no matter what I do, it sees it as Text. Here is a sample of the latest schema I tried (object that has a array property called "data" ) please see ColumnC, is a date type column in my SharePoint List: { "type": "object", "properties": { "data": { "type": "array", "items": { "type": "object", "properties": { "ColumnA": { "type": "string" }, "ColumnB": { "type": "integer" }, "ColumnC": { "title": "ColumnC", "x-ms-dynamically-added": true, "type": "string", "format": "date" } } } } } }
While this is an old video Ali your assessment is just wrong. No one should have to pay more for a response/respond function that works and can pass all types of data. This is a citizen developer platform and there should not be a "Poor" mans choice for the users who are the platforms focus. Respond should work the exact same as Response.
You just saved my life. I've been trying to do the same (coincidently into a dropdown!!!) with the free one and spent most of my weekend trying this with Respond to PowerApp or Flow. I did find the the Response is free (my organization) and it took me 15 minutes to make it work. BIG Thank you!!
This is the video everyone should watch during their initial attempts at an app. Excellent. Succinct. To the point.
Ah perfect video.... exactly what I was looking for.
In short, if you need to return an object or an array to PowerApps, use 'Response' instead of the PowerApps response action.
Thank you so much for this great content. I spent days looking for the right way to parse a Jason file through PowerAutomate and send the output to PowerApps. Great Content !
Thanks a lot for making such a nice video which explains clearly the use of "Response" action in Power Automate along with its benefit over "Respond to Power Apps".
Happy New Year Alireza. Liked the way you presented the difference between the connectors. Wish you more and more viewership and fans
very useful and clear to understanding these two connector, so appreciated
Watching in nov/2024 from Brazil, and sir, it has been well done!
Thanks so much for this!!! I've been trying to do it for days
This is super-helpful and very clear. Thank you for putting this video together.
How cool is that 🙂 thank you so much. fantastic video and i am currently watching the course you made recently. all is perfect.
How to respond twice in same flow ? I have tried both methods without luck :-/ "The execution of template action 'Response_2' is skipped: another response action has already executed."
Awesome. I am making an application to generate images and audio from OpenAI. I have a problem with responding to PowerApps. Please advise how to mange the respond of Images & Audio.
Thanks for the amazing video
Thank you for this!!! I want to try to use this to execute a stored procedure in SQL. I have been using the response and the data comes back but I can't get it into powerapps. But your method is different. Great content 👌
to return the calculation in your "Respond to a PowerApp or Flow" scenario, you need to initialize a variable right before the step Respond to a PowerApp or Flow and use this variable as output.
Isn't he actually do that @10:31 and it didn't work?!
This is really amazing. Really thank you a lot
This guy just flexed the Response action on us 😔. Great content 👍
Excellent excellent video. Great use case.
Sir, I have a question, I am using this to list the files in the folder. And if we have new files added it folder, can we dynamically set it so that it doesnt have to be hardcoded output?
Thank you !! Until I have seen this I could not get rid off record variable returned from PA..... thanks
Great workaround! But I am getting "The flow input and output schema cannot be represented in WADL. code: FlowWadlConversionNotSupported" When saving the flow. I tested in in power automate and works just fine. The first time the response was seen as a boolean. while in power automate you clearly could see the JSON... removing and adding it to the solution again rendered the WADL errors. even recreating inside the canvas app... bizar
Hi , it was a great explanation . tnk u . it helped me. also i wanted to contribute - the issue with the number not responding back to apps is still true, but when i used text instead of numbers every other functionality is same - it worked . I just tested . hopefully this helps someone.
Hello Alireza, Thanks for the great video and tips. From this I have created a flow using the Response action sending the output to PowerApps. Works perfectly and fills a collection in the canvas app. Then I figured out how to apply two schemas to the Response action so that I can send two sets of array/items generated by the flow that use two different schemas. The body of the response looks like this { "StorePrices": output, "ZonePrices": output} where output is from a previous action in the flow. No flow error. Setting a variable for the response, this works perfectly for the StorePrices property and it fills the collection in the canvas app. However, power apps does not recognize ZonePrices so I can not get that in a collection. Any suggestions for this problem?
Great explanation, I guess MS won’t leave the PA response action as it is since it’s hard to believe that something as simple as working with integer does not work! Anyway, Response works reliable as you say. Wouldn’t it be nice if MS removed it from the Premium category? Really enjoyed the video, keep the good work!
add a variable before to the respond to a powerapp or flow
Respose request is much better and preferred and reliable 👍
Interesting another case where Microsoft have tried to reinvent the wheel and made it square.
Not sure why they would make something that way unless you were trying to sell more licenses.
Thanks for your insights and sharing.
Question: respond to powerapps has 2mins time out, does the respond has time out too? Because i have 2000 excel data to retrieve and it time out.
Yes. If something takes two minutes to complete, you cannot use Response. In that case just make the call without response. When the job is complete but the result somewhere on the database side (Like a SharePoint list item) and check the value on PowerApps using a timer.
Excellent information
how will we handle error with Response action. WIth respond to powerapp or flow, we could do it by creating new variable of error.
Hi Alireza, great insights, thanks ! The question I have is how long will powerapps wait for the response ? Your demo is of a synchronous request/response to a flow, but what if the flow takes a longer time to complete ? Is there a recommended pattern to implement an asynchronous response to a request that does not lock the user from continuing work in the app ? Something like I send a request and a couple of minutes later I want to show the user a notification that the request has completed ?
This is something that I explained in details in my latest course "Microsoft Power Automate for PowerApps developers". Unlike traditional desktop apps, when you make a synchronous call to a Flow, it doesn't lock the screen.
@@AlirezaAliabadi Thanks for your reply. For the other question, I found it takes 1 minute for Power Apps to timeout, so if the flow responds within 60 seconds there should not be an issue.
@@stephanebouillon2538 True, now if you think it takes longer than that, then make an asynchronous call and use a timer control to check for the results on your data provider.
@@AlirezaAliabadi Thanks, you confirm what I was thinking for this scenario. By the way, I had a (very) long-running flow that combines data from multiple sharepoint lists, and by using another approach than apply for each I was able to avoid the loop, and now it returns the combined result/report in a matter of seconds.
With http response action can We return the values to Power BI..?
if we use indirect call from PowerApps to Power Automate, how to know Power Automate workflow which has been finished
So, my experience is the exact opposite: so far Respond to PowerApps has worked reasonably well (provided that the flow lasts less than 120 seconds) but when using Response to pass back a JSON table it does not show in PowerApps...
As always, EXCELLENT content especially for aspiring PP Pro Developers! I'm still only a bit deeper than scratching the surface, but if I 'read between the lines', would you say (or recommend) that using the above process is typically how one should reliably pull relevant Data (parameterized or not) from a Data Source(i.e. Dataverse) into a Power App and Post back changes/selections?
I always pick reliability over easy of use. If you are dealing with something like Dataverse, there are direct connectors that do the job much easier, but still even with Dataverse, there are scenarios that I throw a Flow in between and that's when I need to implement an atomic transaction like placing an order that should update multiple tables to be successful and if one update fails, everything else needs to rollback.
Overall I approach it case by case and I look into reliability, maintainability and ease of use to find the technology balance.
@@AlirezaAliabadi I haven't applied any learnings yet on Dataverse, but understand what you are saying. Thanks again!
Happy New Year Alireza. Wishing you more energy and fun from producing great courses and content 🙏🏾
I am about 70% through your Power Automate for Power Apps course, by the way & as usual a great course so far, and that was one of the comments I was compiling for feedback i.e. is there no free option for this premium "Response" action? Thank you for this video; it explains your love for that Power Automate action ... reliability. I will do some testing on this, but my thinking would be that, as a boy and not a dude at the moment 😅, can the developer not return the results using the Repond to Power Apps or flow as a string and then convert the string to JSON in Power Apps? As you mentioned this would be a bit more messing around and possible less reliable depending on how well you hand the string creation in Power Automate before sending the response, but I can't see why that would be soo unreliable as to overcome its "freeness" 😂 A lot of smaller organisations cannot/will not pay for these extra licences outside the seeded licenses.
Also, I think the issue with the response not working for the "Sum" test could have been that you sent values from Power Apps to flow that were integers, but the response from Power Automate after the run at 14m 05s showed that the response sent from Power Automate back to Power Apps was a string. Maybe Power Apps was not expecting that. Just a guess. I will test this myself.
Thank you for the video highlighting this interesting option. Ps: I like what you did with the fly-by-presents for your expressions course 😁
Thank you for your feedback. Based on my experience this is just a new UI on the top of Response action. So once you set it up, it keeps working. The glitchy part is when you set it up and configure it. For the licensing keep that in mind the licensing fee becomes significant when you are looking into hundreds of users and most of those big players have enterprise agreement with Microsoft that they don't even care about licensing fee.
And you are right. I love "Response", simply because it NEVER failed me. I always know if that is not working, I am doing something wrong.
If you your returned sum will be text/ string this will work. It looks this first action can work only with text fields right now.
It is just random. Sometimes number works and sometimes doesn't. I spent long hours with this action. I give it a few months before I evaluate it again.
Now I noticed something even more interesting. Freeze the video at 11:55. Notice that the output shows "sum":"23" while based on our definition of sum as number when we were adding output parameters, it should be "sum":23
So although we define the parameter as number, the control produces string output. Power Platform team at Microsoft has some unfinished work here :)
Yes - it looks string types for this action will always work / other types is just lottery. Btw - I also dig deeper and I am able to return array serialized to string using this free action - than in power apps using some regex magic it is possible to convert string to Collection.
Anyway - you are creating awesome content Sir (both here and in Udemy) It is a pleasure to watch your channel. All the best for 2022 🙂 I am your big fan.
Thanks 🙏🙏🙏
Beautiful, Thank you...
Great video, thank you. Question, have you had to return a date type back to Power Apps? I can't seem to make Power Apps recognize the value as a date no matter what I do, it sees it as Text.
Here is a sample of the latest schema I tried (object that has a array property called "data" ) please see ColumnC, is a date type column in my SharePoint List:
{
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"data": {
"type": "array",
"items": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"ColumnA": {
"type": "string"
},
"ColumnB": {
"type": "integer"
},
"ColumnC": {
"title": "ColumnC",
"x-ms-dynamically-added": true,
"type": "string",
"format": "date"
}
}
}
}
}
}
Here is your answer. Can you find date among JSON data types?
www.w3schools.com/js/js_json_datatypes.asp
@@AlirezaAliabadi thank you. I really appreciate your time. Will definitely be enrolling in your Power Apps course.
Thanks Alireza
Thwnks you
Very helpful video. I’m finally a man!!! 😂
🤣🤣🤣
Flow error- HTTP status code 504 Gateway Timeout
While this is an old video Ali your assessment is just wrong. No one should have to pay more for a response/respond function that works and can pass all types of data. This is a citizen developer platform and there should not be a "Poor" mans choice for the users who are the platforms focus. Respond should work the exact same as Response.
...so iam still a boy with my 55 years :D
Age doesn't count. What response action you use matters 🤣🤣🤣
Just kidding!
Happy coding
u save my life