How to create a flow from scratch

Create a cloud flow that performs one or more tasks automatically after it’s triggered by an event. For example, create a cloud flow that notifies you by email when someone sends a tweet that contains a keyword you specify. In this example, sending a tweet is the event, and sending mail is the action.

Prerequisites

• An account on flow.microsoft.com
• A Twitter account
• Office 365 credentials

Specify an event to start the flow

First, you will need to select what event, or trigger, starts your flow.

In Power Automate, select My flows from the navigation bar on the left.

Select New, and then select Automated-from blank.

Give your flow a name in the Add a name or we’ll generate one field.

Enter Twitter into the Search all triggers field.

Select Twitter – When a new tweet is posted.

Select the Create button at the bottom of the screen.

Connectors support multiple types of authentication. For example, SQL Server supports Azure AD, SQL Server authentication, Windows authentication, and SQL connection string. Users choose which type of authentication they want to use when configuring a connector.

If you haven’t already connected your Twitter account to Power Automate, select Sign in to Twitter, and then provide your credentials.

In the Search text box, type the keyword that you want to find.

Specify an action

Select New step.

In the box that shows Search connectors and actions, enter send email, and then select Send an email (V2).

If prompted, select the sign-in button, and then provide your credentials.

In the form that appears, enter your email address in the To box, and then select your name from the list of contacts that appears.

In the Subject box, enter New tweet from:, and then type a space.

In the list of tokens, select the Tweeted by token to add a placeholder for it.

Select the Body box, and then select the Tweet text token to add a placeholder for it.

Optionally, you can add more tokens, other text, or both to the body of the email.

Near the top of the screen, select Save.

Test your flow

Send a tweet with the keyword that you indicated, or wait for someone else to post such a tweet.

Within a minute after the tweet is posted, an email message notifies you of the new tweet.

Use the Send email (V2) action to format email in which you customize the font, use bold, italic or underline, customize the color and highlight, and create lists or links, and more.

Manage a cloud flow

In Power Automate, select My flows in the navigation bar on the left side.

In the list of flows, do any of the following:

To pause a cloud flow, set its toggle to Off.

To resume a cloud flow, set its toggle to On.

To edit a cloud flow, select the pencil icon that corresponds to the flow you want to edit.

To delete a cloud flow, select the . icon, select Delete, and then select Delete on the message box that appears.

To view the run history of a cloud flow, select the flow from the My flows page, and then view the history under the 28 day run history section of the page that opens.

Select a cloud flow run from the list of runs to see the inputs and outputs of each step.

You can have up to 600 flows in your account. If you already have 600 flows, delete one before you create another flow.

Next steps

• Add steps, such as different ways to be notified, to your flow.
• Run tasks on a schedule, when you want an action to occur daily, on a certain date, or after a certain number of minutes.
• Add a cloud flow to an app to allow your app to kick off logic in the cloud.
• Get started with team flows and invite others to collaborate with you to design flows.

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You don’t need a template to create a flow. In this video, Gini von Courter demonstrates creating a flow from scratch that creates a new task on a specified Wunderlist list when a new task is created in Dynamics.

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– [Instructor] When I look at my activities in Dynamics, … I have a list of tasks, … and while I can present those on a dashboard in Dynamics, … I actually like carrying my tasks with me, … and the way that I do that … is using another application called Wunderlist. … Wunderlist is supported for the Power platform. … You can connect to it, you can add things to it, … you can read things from it. … So, I’m going to show you how to create a flow … that will take any task that I create here in Dynamics 365 … and automatically add it to Wunderlist, … so I can carry it around on my phone … where I carry my other Wunderlist tasks. … You may not have a Wunderlist account, … and if you don’t, I’ll show you … how to create one real quickly. … We’re simply going to go search for Wunderlist, … and we’re going to go to the official Wunderlist site, … and create a free account. … We have two different choices of accounts we can use. … We can use a Microsoft account, … which is what I do for my personal Wunderlist, …

By understanding these 5 terms and their meanings, creating flows will be easy to do and you will be able to create more complex flows if needed later or be able to create even better flows than even the templates that Microsoft has available.

What a Microsoft Flow can look like

There are flow templates available, but it helps to know how to create your own flow because Microsoft doesn’t always have the template you want or need. Plus, you’ll be able to create custom flows more easily in the future.

Creating a flow is relatively easy to figure out. You’ll want to create a flow where a connector performs one or more tasks automatically when you want to trigger an action. Now that you understand the Microsoft Flow terms, here’s a short video on setting up a Microsoft Flow from scratch or from a template.

If you need additional help, you can always take a look at the Microsoft Flow documentation to see a number of extensive step-by-step guides and in-depth on-premises gateway information.

Download the Microsoft Flow mobile app for Android or iOS. Please note: The Microsoft Flow app ONLY allows you to create flows from templates. At this time, you cannot create flows from scratch in the Microsoft Flow mobile app.

Flowcharts are used to display a relation between the content or to show a certain direction. A flow chart can be altered in whatever direction you like if you make it yourself from the scratch. The alternate way on Word , to create a flowchart with an already existing format, is to add ‘SmartArt’ which is a tab under ‘Insert’. Select a template of your choice and make a flow chart.

Or, you can simply design your own flow chart, according to your requirements and make changes accordingly. Here is how you can make a flowchart on MS Word from the scratch.

1. Open your MS Word file, Go to the Insert tab and Click on the Shapes Icon. Starting from the beginning
2. Clicking on the shapes icon will show you all the shapes that you can add for any work on MS Word. Right at the end of this window,you will find the option for ‘New Drawing Canvas’. Click on that to create a canvas on your word file. Draw a canvas for your drawing The option for ‘drawing Canvas’ on Word

The purpose of a drawing canvas is to adjust all your content within a boundary. This will help you adjust your flowchart in a more symmetrical manner.

Your canvas will appear like this. You can alter the size of the canvas by bring the cursor the end of the canvas and when the arrow-like cursor appears, click the corner and expand.
Once you create the drawing canvas, you need to add the gridlines. Gridlines will help you in placing all the shapes in alignment, and in the right position. For this, you need to click on View. There, you will find an option for ‘Gridlines’ with an un-checked box next to it. Adding the gridline

The minute you select that box, the grids will appear all over your Word file.

The Grids will spread over your page

The second way to get gridlines for a word file is to click on the canvas, and click on the format tab next which appears on the top tool bar.

Method 2 to add grids

Under Format, you will locate the option for Align,which is what you need to click next.Click on ‘View Gridlines’ to make the gridlines on your screen visible. You can edit the gridlines by clicking on the ‘Grid Settings…’ which is right under ‘View Gridlines’.

After drawing the arrow,you can change the type of the arrow shape by right clicking on it, and clicking on ‘Connector Types’. Out of the three, you can choose any to create the following arrows.

Straight Connector, Elbow Connector,Curved Connector. Choose the one that you think will look good with your shapes Shaping the arrows makes your work look good.

Use the yellow diamond (connector) on the arrow to bring a curve or adjust the curve.

you can see how you are pulling your connector and how your arrow will change Elbow connector Finalizing the arrows

This is how it will all look once the arrows have been edited, the shapes have been placed. If you like, you can also alter the border for your canvas just how I have through the shape outline option under format. The trick to edit a shape is to select or click that shape once. This will make the format tab appear where you will see all the editing options.

Your flowchart

Microsoft Word provides built-in tools for creating and arranging different types of flowcharts. You can create your own flowchart by using different shapes and SmartArt. Here’s how to do it.

Making a Flowchart in Word

When working with shapes in any Office application, it’s always useful to use gridlines to make sure everything is sized and placed correctly. To make the gridlines appears, head over to the “View” tab and tick the “Gridlines” checkbox.

Your gridlines will now appear on your Word document.

Next, switch to the “Insert” tab and then click the “Shapes” button (we’ll go through SmartArt later).

A drop-down menu displays a large library of shapes you can choose from. We’ll be focusing on two things here—the connectors in the “Lines” group near the top and the shapes in the “Flowchart” group near the bottom.

Before we continue, it’s important to understand the intended purpose of the shapes. You may want to consider reading this comprehensive list that details the meaning of flowchart shapes, but here’s a quick overview of the basics.

• Rectangle: Used for process steps.
• Diamond: Used to show decision points.
• Oval: Used as the terminator shape, indicating the start and end points of a process.

Hovering over any of the shapes in the drop-down menu displays a text bubble showing the shape’s purpose.

Let’s go ahead and insert our first shape. Back at the shapes menu, select the shape you’d like to use in the flow chart. Since this is our first shape being used in the flowchart, we’ll use the oval shape.

Once you select the shape, you’ll notice your cursor turns into a crosshair. To draw the shape, click and drag.

After drawing the shape, you’ll notice a new “Format” tab appears with commands that let you format your shape, change the outline and fill color, and more.

To insert text inside the shape, select the shape and then start typing.

Let’s insert another shape and then connect the two shapes. We’ll add a rectangle to indicate another part of the process. Repeat the above steps to insert the shape.

To connect the two shapes, head back to the shape menu and select the connector you want to use. We’ll use a simple line arrow for this example.

Once you select the arrow, click the center handle on the first shape and then, while still holding down your mouse button, drag to the center handle on the next shape.

As with shapes, you can also format the arrow with different line widths, colors, and so on.

If you plan to use the same line format throughout the entire flowchart, right-click the inserted line after you’ve formatted it and select “Set as Default Line.” You can do this with shapes, too.

Creating a Flowchart with SmartArt

In addition to using shapes to create your flowchart, you also have some pretty handy options with SmartArt. Head over to the “Insert” tab and then click the “SmartArt” button.

In the Choose a SmartArt Graphic window, select the “Process” category on the left, chose a type of process (we’re using the “Picture Accent Process” option here), and then click “OK.”

This SmartArt graphic is designed explicitly to detail a process. It groups shapes for adding photos (1) and text (2).

Enter the relevant information. If you don’t need a particular object, you can get rid of it by selecting it and pressing the delete key. On the other hand, if you can copy the objects if you need to add additional information.

Stephen Siciliano, Partner PM Director, Power Automate , Wednesday, October 18, 2017

When working with Microsoft Flow, you may notice that some services are faster than others at triggering flows. This depends on how the individual service publishes events to Microsoft Flow. Until last week, Microsoft Forms, for example, would notify your flows once-an-hour about new survey responses. We shared some details about this last month, and promised that it would be resolved in mid-October. We have now improved this, so rather than waiting an hour for new data, form responses appear in Microsoft Flow nearly instantaneously (under a minute).

We have already updated the Microsoft Forms templates to take advantage of this new, faster trigger, but you can also build flows from scratch that take advantage of this behavior.

Building the trigger

To get started with a flow that is triggered from Microsoft Forms, select Create from blank on your My Flows page. Then, select Search hundreds of connectors at the bottom of the screen. This will give you a list of the 170+ different triggers that Microsoft Flow supports. Search for Microsoft Forms to find the right trigger:

Once you have selected the trigger, you will need to pick which form you want to start this flow. Select the dropdown under Form Id and you should see a list of all of the forms that you have created (you need to create the form before you can use it in a flow).

Now you have set up the trigger. However, in order to be able to use the data inside of your flow, you now need to add a new action.

Getting the response data

If all you want is a notification that there has been a response, you don’t need to actually get the data that was submitted in the form. However, if you want to save the response data somewhere else, such as in a SharePoint list or a spreadsheet, you’ll need to add a new action. To find the action, select New step, Add an action and then search for Microsoft Forms. You will see the action Get response details.

On this action, you’ll need to select the same Form Id that you used in the trigger. Then, click in the Response Id text box, you’ll see the Dynamic content menu pop up:

In the Dynamic Content you’ll have one option: Response Id. Select this option — this means that you’ll get the response details for the responses that caused the trigger. There can be more than one response at the same time, so the Response Id actually represents a list of responses. As a result, when you select this input you’ll get an Apply to each added around this action.

Adding other actions

Any actions you have after the Get response details action should be inside of that same Apply to each container. For example, you can add the Send an email action:

Now, when you configure this action you should see the Add dynamic content menu appear and you will see the list of each of the fields that your form has. Use these fields to fill out an email, add data to a spreadsheet, or any of the hundreds of different actions that Microsoft Flow supports!

As a final note, if you have previously built any flows that use Microsoft Forms, you will have to re-build them using the above pattern to take advantage of the new trigger.

What is Power Automate?

Power Automate is a service for automating workflow across the growing number of apps and SaaS services that business users rely on.

By understanding these 5 terms and their meanings, creating flows will be easy to do and you will be able to create more complex flows if needed later or be able to create even better flows than even the templates that Microsoft has available.

What a Microsoft Flow can look like

There are flow templates available, but it helps to know how to create your own flow because Microsoft doesn’t always have the template you want or need. Plus, you’ll be able to create custom flows more easily in the future.

Creating a flow is relatively easy to figure out. You’ll want to create a flow where a connector performs one or more tasks automatically when you want to trigger an action. Now that you understand the Microsoft Flow terms, here’s a short video on setting up a Microsoft Flow from scratch or from a template.

If you need additional help, you can always take a look at the Microsoft Flow documentation to see a number of extensive step-by-step guides and in-depth on-premises gateway information.

Download the Microsoft Flow mobile app for Android or iOS. Please note: The Microsoft Flow app ONLY allows you to create flows from templates. At this time, you cannot create flows from scratch in the Microsoft Flow mobile app.

Use Power Automate to set up workflows for lists and libraries in SharePoint and OneDrive for work or school. Power Automate helps you automate common tasks between SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 and third-party services.

Create a flow for a list or library

Navigate to a list or library in SharePoint. Power Automate appears under the Automate option available in the command bar of SharePoint lists and libraries and OneDrive for work or school on the web. For SharePoint, the option to create a flow will only be available for site members who can add and edit items. The option is always available for OneDrive for work or school in the browser.

Note: Power Automate can connect with SharePoint Server through an on-premises data gateway. Power Automate does not appear in SharePoint Server.

At the top of the list or library, select Automate > Power Automate > Create a flow.

Select a flow template from the right-hand panel. Some commonly used flows appear. Get started with common scenarios, such as sending a customized email when a new item is added to the library. Use these templates as a starting point to create your own flows. Or, choose the custom action flow templates, found at the bottom of the list, to create a flow from scratch. After selecting a template, complete the remaining steps in the Power Automate site.

To connect to a list or library, follow the instructions on the Power Automate site. Credentials are verified for each service used in the flow. For Microsoft 365 services, such as SharePoint and Outlook, connections are created automatically. For third-party services, to sign in to each service, select the link provided.

The following steps happen in the Power Automate designer. The first action to appear, also known as a trigger, determines how the flow is started. Add additional actions after the first action. Each new action is dependent on the previous action.

One type of flow performs actions automatically when items are added or changed in a list or library. For example, the following flow template sends an email when an item is added to the list. A second type of flow can be started only after you select an item. To start this flow, select the Automate menu in the command bar in SharePoint. The type of trigger you previously selected determines if the flow is started automatically, or manually, from the command bar.

Add any necessary information, or change the default values provided for the template in the designer. To modify the default values, under Send Email,select Edit. The options for the Send Email action include changes to how the email appears to displaying additional fields from the SharePoint item.

Configure the flow, and then select Create Flow.

Note: To learn more about Power Automate, view the guided learning videos.

7. After the flow is created, select Done.

Note: See all of your flows and check status on the Power Automate website.

After creating this particular flow, add an email to the list or library to send an email like the following.

To learn how to edit a flow in a SharePoint list, see Edit a flow for a list in SharePoint. To learn how to delete a flow in a SharePoint list, see Delete a flow from a list in SharePoint.

Note: Power Automate is not available in the classic experience.

If the default behavior is set to the classic experience, Power Automate does not appear in the command bar of your list or library. If the new experience is available, to enable it for your list or library, navigate to List Settings, and then select Advanced Settings. For more info, see Switch the default experience for lists or document libraries from new or classic.

For more info about SharePoint lists, see What is a list in SharePoint?. For more info about Power Automate, see Get started with Power Automate.

Microsoft Word provides built-in tools for creating and arranging different types of flowcharts. You can create your own flowchart by using different shapes and SmartArt. Here’s how to do it.

Making a Flowchart in Word

When working with shapes in any Office application, it’s always useful to use gridlines to make sure everything is sized and placed correctly. To make the gridlines appears, head over to the “View” tab and tick the “Gridlines” checkbox.

Your gridlines will now appear on your Word document.

Next, switch to the “Insert” tab and then click the “Shapes” button (we’ll go through SmartArt later).

A drop-down menu displays a large library of shapes you can choose from. We’ll be focusing on two things here—the connectors in the “Lines” group near the top and the shapes in the “Flowchart” group near the bottom.

Before we continue, it’s important to understand the intended purpose of the shapes. You may want to consider reading this comprehensive list that details the meaning of flowchart shapes, but here’s a quick overview of the basics.

• Rectangle: Used for process steps.
• Diamond: Used to show decision points.
• Oval: Used as the terminator shape, indicating the start and end points of a process.

Hovering over any of the shapes in the drop-down menu displays a text bubble showing the shape’s purpose.

Let’s go ahead and insert our first shape. Back at the shapes menu, select the shape you’d like to use in the flow chart. Since this is our first shape being used in the flowchart, we’ll use the oval shape.

Once you select the shape, you’ll notice your cursor turns into a crosshair. To draw the shape, click and drag.

After drawing the shape, you’ll notice a new “Format” tab appears with commands that let you format your shape, change the outline and fill color, and more.

To insert text inside the shape, select the shape and then start typing.

Let’s insert another shape and then connect the two shapes. We’ll add a rectangle to indicate another part of the process. Repeat the above steps to insert the shape.

To connect the two shapes, head back to the shape menu and select the connector you want to use. We’ll use a simple line arrow for this example.

Once you select the arrow, click the center handle on the first shape and then, while still holding down your mouse button, drag to the center handle on the next shape.

As with shapes, you can also format the arrow with different line widths, colors, and so on.

If you plan to use the same line format throughout the entire flowchart, right-click the inserted line after you’ve formatted it and select “Set as Default Line.” You can do this with shapes, too.

Creating a Flowchart with SmartArt

In addition to using shapes to create your flowchart, you also have some pretty handy options with SmartArt. Head over to the “Insert” tab and then click the “SmartArt” button.

In the Choose a SmartArt Graphic window, select the “Process” category on the left, chose a type of process (we’re using the “Picture Accent Process” option here), and then click “OK.”

This SmartArt graphic is designed explicitly to detail a process. It groups shapes for adding photos (1) and text (2).

Enter the relevant information. If you don’t need a particular object, you can get rid of it by selecting it and pressing the delete key. On the other hand, if you can copy the objects if you need to add additional information.

Updated 1 year ago by Neil

Kissflow is built for team leaders who want to handle any kind of work that comes their way. We specialize in work that moves, so every module inside Kissflow is called a flow. There are five types of flows you can choose from.

1. Channels are streams where you can have discussions and share ideas about work.
2. Projects are workflows where the team has full visibility and control as an item moves from Not Started to Done.
3. Cases are similar to projects because they keep the user in control, but can have multiple resolution states at each step.
4. Processes are automated workflows where you can program the system to know what should happen next in the workflow.
5. Datasets are like spreadsheets for keeping records. They are often useful when you want to refer to that data in other flows.

For more help in choosing the right flow, see this article.

When you want to create a flow, click the Create Flow button. This leads you to the Kissflow Marketplace, where you can find lots of pre-built templates for datasets, projects, cases, and processes. Click Create from scratch to start any new flow, like a channel. Or, you can choose one of the pre-built templates. To install a template, just click the Install button and it will be loaded onto your account. All the templates are free.

You’ll get a chance to name the flow after you create it. Flow names can be a maximum of 80 characters. Different flows cannot have the same name. For example, you cannot have a process and a channel both called Marketing.

Processes, cases, and projects all have a form and a workflow. The form is the payload that carries the data through a series of steps called the workflow.

In processes, you can click Edit Process to create both the form and the workflow. Processes also allow you to manage the permissions for what data is seen at different steps in the workflow.

Processes have the ability to add integrations like webhooks and connections to other tools as well as sending custom emails. You can also generate reports on your processes.

In cases and projects, you create the form by clicking Edit Form and adding as many fields as you need. The workflow is made by adding steps to the visual board. In cases, you can also add multiple resolutions.

When you create a new flow, you become the Flow Admin. This means that you can control the sharing and security settings for it and assign other Flow Admins as well.