Best 365 solutions for the following...

Copper Contributor

Hi, I currently have a number of automation tasks I would like to build solutions for and I'm wondering whether they can be built entirely in the 365 software range (PowerBI, Flow, Sharepoint, PowerApps) (I'm a new user). To give a couple of examples:

 

Task 1:

1. Pull csv file 1 from an FTP server

2. Apply some data transformations to a locally stored csv/database file 2 based on file 1 (e.g. appending, groupby)

3. Save the updated file 2

4. Execute API instructions (upload data based on file 2)

5. Run this task automatically on a weekly basis. 

 

Task 2:

1. Triggered via a new email into outlook - microsoft exchange account

2. Run this email against a locally stored machine learning model (the model is already built), which returns category data.

3. Based on this cateogry data, move the email into another folder within outlook. 

 

Task 3:

1. Pull data from an SQL server

2. Pull data from an API

3. Do some data manipulation

4. Use this report to generate an email report or dashboard

5. Execute this daily

 

I know I can achieve all of the steps in python, but I'm looking for something more robust using 365 software. I've had a quick look at PowerApps, but that looks more geared towards apps with user interaction.?

 

Where would be a good starting point for fully automating these tasks using 365 software?

 

Thanks in advance,

1 Reply

For those types of tasks Flow can help. Open Flow and review the Templates, there are hundreds of them to help you get started.

A lot of good tutorials are at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/flow/?utm_source=flow-sidebar&utm_medium=web

 

PowerBI can be used to connect to a wide variety of data sources and perform transformations without using Flow. Get started with this at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guided-learning/