One of my clients called me the other day and asked whether it was possible to export the selected order that was selected in the current report page – as she wanted to send the information to another user. I explained the export data feature from the visual action menu but she didn’t want to download a file and then locate that and then switch to Outlook and click new mail – type the correct the e-mail and attach the file – that was not very Power like – to much clicky clicky – because all the data was actually available when she had filtered the report for that particular record – the e-mail she wanted to mail the data to and off course the data she saw on the screen.
Hmm… Let’s see how we can use the PowerPlatform stack to solve this requirement.
A Power BI report to use a the demo
Based on the AdventureWorks database I build a report to select a Customer Key and filter it by a specific SalesOrderNumber
So, when the user has selected a sales order we should be able to send the information about the current sales order to either the customer or a alternate e-mail address.
PowerApps to works
Well we do have visual to integrate a PowerApp in our report and even though its in preview and there are some hickup’s we can make it work
But in order to insert it we do need to do this in a browser so let’s publish the report.
After I publish the report to the service, we can switch to edit mode and insert the PowerApp visual in the service.
This will introduce to a start screen with instructions on how to get started.
The important part is to include the fields from the datamodel you want to have access to in the PowerApp and this is done by adding the fields to the “PowerApps data” sink in the visuals pane.
As soon as you add the first field the PowerApp visual will change and let you select either to choose and app or create a new app
I added all these fields as I want to be able to access them in PowerApps
You have to use either Chrome or Edge browser to do this and keep calm – you will experience difficulties selecting the PowerApp visual with the mouse if you deselect it – try using the tab to rotate through the visual selection instead.
When all the fields is added we are ready to create a new app – well depending on the browser behaviour – so if it doesn’t work in Edge try in Chrome 🙂 – so click new app and a new tab with PowerApps will appear
Notice that a Gallery control is inserted and its linked to “‘PowerBIIntegration’.Data” – which is the filtered records in PowerBI –
If I modify the Gallery Title field to show SalesOrderNumber instead – you can see the magic
As is selected in PowerBI
Let’s modify the PowerApp
We don’t need the gallery control – so I delete this and insert a couple of other controls
So, I insert
- Label to show sales order number
- Text box to enter an email address
- Check box to select whether to include a csv file
- A mail icon for mail using office365
- A mail icon for mail using flow and include the csv file
- HTML text control to construct the mail body
One of the first thing I get trapped in is when showing the SalesOrderNumber in the label control.
The PowerBIntegration object is a table with records so you have to refer to a specific record/row to get the information from the field.
Therefore, use the FILTER function or in this case the FIRST function to get the value you need.
Let’s construct a message body
We can do this by constructing a HTML text with this formula
“Dear ” & First([@PowerBIIntegration].Data).EmailAddress & “<br><br>” &
“<b> Sales Order Number: </b>” & First([@PowerBIIntegration].Data).SalesOrderNumber & “<br>”
& “Products: “
& “<table width=’100%’ border=’1′ cellpadding=’5′ style=’border:1px solid black; border-collapse:collapse’>” &
“<tr style=’background-color:#efefef’>
<th>Model</th> <th> Sales Amount </th>
</tr><tr>” &
Concat(PowerBIIntegration.Data, “<td>” & ModelName & “</td> ” & “<td>” & ‘Sales Amount’ & “</td>”, “</tr><tr>”)
& “</table>”
This will give us this table in the HTMLText control – you can expand the table to your needs.
Let’s send an email
In order to send an email without a CSV file we can use the built in Office 365 Outlook datasource via View and Data sources
After adding this we can add a formula to the OnSelect property of the mail icon.
Test the function by clicking the run button
And hit the envelope – and
We get a notification
And after a while an email
Does it work from PowerBI – yes
You have to give the app an name and save it (and publish) – and switch back to your Power BI report
And your PowerApp visual will now show the newly created app in the visual – and when we select another customer and sales order – we see the app values changes.
And when clicking the send mail icon, we get a notification and an email.
Now the tricky part – include a CSV file
In order to do this, we need help from another member of the PowerPlatform family – Microsoft Flow – this is because we cannot include files or create files using the Office 365 Outlook connector.
This can all be done using the flow – and this is the part that took me the longest time to solve.
First let’s connect a flow to the second envelope on the PowerApp screen –
You can either create a new flow or use an existing.
As this blog post is a bit long, I will show you how the final flow looks like and take you through the steps/actions in the “CreateCSVFile” flow
When I add the flow, you see that the run statement has 4 arguments
These are added in the flow via the “Ask in PowerApps” in the different steps.
Let’s look at the flow
The flow has 5 steps
The first step “PowerApps” has no settings but builds the connection to the PowerApp “click”
Next step is creating a variable called csvdataasjson.
And the argument value contains a string value that is provided by the call from PowerApps.
This will actually be a JSON string containing the records we want in our CSV file.
Next step “Parse JSON” takes the value of the variable and uses the dataoperation Parse JSON to parse the JSON string into an object
Remember to update the Schema if you change what you send to the flow via PowerApps.
The next step “Create CSV table” takes the output from “Parse JSON” and can convert the JSON to a CSV table
I have used the advanced options to show the headers.
The final step uses the “Send an email (V2)” action to send and a email
The To, Subject and Body argument uses the “Ask in PowerApps” to create arguments we can use when we run the flow in PowerApps
Call the flow from PowerApps with arguments
In PowerApp we can now activate the flow with arguments from the data using the OnSelect action on the second Mail icon
Notice the arguments the Run statement matches the PowerApps variable names in the Flow.
The initialize_value contains the a formula to construct a JSON string – if you need to include more fields from the PowerBI Dataset you simply extend the string construction.
If you check a flow run you can see the result in the Value box
Now save and republish the app and lets see if it works via PowerBI.
Let’s mail a CSV file
– A tip when moving back and forth from PowerApps to PowerBI – switch between report pages to refesh the PowerApp visual – this updates the app better than refresh of the page.
When clicking the second envelope we will activate the flow via PowerApps
And after a few seconds I receive an email
Including a CSV file with the Orderlines
To summarize
By using the power of each element of the PowerPlatform we can send an email with the selected record/s in PowerBI – but it might be a bit advanced for the citizen developer.
- Power BI to find the data
- PowerApps to mail a simple e-mail with the information
- Flow to include a CSV file in the mail
Please vote for this idea if you want to make it easier to create the JSON string in PowerApps – https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/PowerApps-Ideas/Add-JSON-stringify-or-something-similar-for-debugging/idc-p/268352#M25884
And let me know if you have questions or feedback to my method – POWER ON !
Erik Svensen - Blog about Power BI, Power Apps, Power Query 