Forum Discussion
Beginner lost in vocabulary - seeking a way to create folders programmatically
Hi there, let me see if I can help a bit
Microsoft Teams uses SharePoint to store documents.
- When a Microsoft Team is created, a SharePoint site is created to store documents for that Team
- Each Channel in the Team has a Folder in the 'Documents' library (default library) of that SharePoint site
Power Automate is used to create Flows. A Flow is a workflow, that triggers either manually or when an event of some type occurs e.g. a new document is added to a Document Library, an email is recieved, a List item is created or modified etc (there are hundreds of triggers for different applications)
The Folder creation Flow you mention is usually associated with a specific Library. If you want to create a set of folders each time a new SharePoint Site is created then you can use a Site Design Script to run a Workflow when the Site is created.
Microsoft provides lots of free training material here: Microsoft Learn | Microsoft Docs
I hope that helps a little.
I hope this helps.
It does help, and I thank you for it.
I am now going to express frustration, which is directed at the situation in which I find myself. and not at you - nor do I expect you to provide answers! I hope people will give answers and opinions, but I can't demand them.
I also frankly welcome opinions along the lines of "You're going about this entirely the wrong way", because right now it looks to me that the answer to how to start with MS 365 is "Have a completely different background"
Some specifics:
- is it a 'Library' called 'Documents', a 'Document Library' called 'Documents', or something else?
- Does that answer vary between SharePoint versions, and how do I determine what version I'm using?
- are 'files' and 'Documents' interchangeable terms? Is an executable program a 'Document' if it is stored in a 'Library'? Is a 'folder' in a 'Library' exactly analogous to a folder in a folder on an NTFS filesystem?
- I investigated Site Design Scripts and it looked promising at first - but then I found no verbs for creating folders. I did find information on getting more functionality by calling Flows (but then we're right back to figuring out how flows can be created that are not bound to Sites) and PnP (yet another mystery, which in turn depends on PowerShell Core, which is a further mystery)
- I followed the link to Microsoft Learn, took the Learning Path quiz, and told it I was a beginner interested in Teams and Microsoft 365. I got a suggested path full of Azure. The intro to Azure tells me that it's cloud based and can do many things, but does not in any way mention why my interest in Teams and MS 365 means I should study Azure.
Thanks to all who tolerate this free-form rambling.
