From the Microsoft Power Platform blogs: Mapping table; Azure Key Vault; Power Pages Helper; CoE starter kit notifications

In this week’s Power Platform blog roundup:

• Using 'mapping table' in your Power Automate flow
• Integrating Azure Key Vault with Power Automate: overcoming cross-tenant challenges
• Power Pages Helper
• CoE starter kit: efficient testing strategy for inactivity processes – admin simulations for maker clean-up approvals

Using 'mapping table' in your Power Automate flow

On the Let's Power Automate blog, Tom Rhia noted that when you use Power Automate flows to import data, you might run into a situation in which the input doesn't contain everything. He pointed out that instead of getting the full information you might just get some IDs from the source system. And while the system knows what it means, neither you nor the flow has a clue.

Rhia stated that you need the full name, not just some ID that nobody understands. But, he asked, how do you reflect this in the flow and what's the best way to 'translate' it?

Rhia explained that the approach you don’t want to use is to translate it in a loop. He stated that it would take a long time to process each data row in a cycle, even for a reasonably small amount of data. What you want to do is process them as quickly as possible, all at once with the "select" action, he wrote.

Yet if you stick to the 'select', there's no way for any preprocessing, everything must be done in the action using expressions. Meaning also that you should prepare the translations to be expression friendly – in a mapping table.

In his blog post, Rhia explained how to create and use a mapping table.

Integrating Azure Key Vault with Power Automate: overcoming cross-tenant challenges

Writing on his blog, Clavin Fernandes noted that while Power Automate is a powerful tool for automating workflows across various applications and services, managing credentials can sometimes be challenging.

Fernandes wrote about a somewhat challenging scenario where you use a personal Azure account or subscription to interact with Azure Key Vault in a different Microsoft 365 subscription.

He stated that when you attempt this, you might run into an error; however, he explained that you can navigate this obstacle by creating an Azure AD (Microsoft identity) application to seamlessly use Key Vault in Power Automate.

In his blog post, Fernandes shared details on the error message and provided the solution, which not only offers a workaround but also ensures secure and controlled access to your sensitive information stored in Azure Key Vault.

Power Pages Helper