Real-world scenario using Flic's physical button, SharePoint and Flow

Description

This blog walks through a real-world scenario of how Flic's physical button can integrate with SharePoint and Flow to give real-time status of all technicians (or engineers, consultants, contractors, ETC) who are at their customer's location. When the technician arrives, he/she clicks on Flic once whichsends the manager information of the technician's location and the current weather conditions. Weather conditions of the technician's current location plays an important role in the time spent and hence this information is also provided to the manager via email.
In this example, the Flic app on an iOS device is used.

Setting the scene
This short video describes the scenario used in this blog.

Flic
In this scenario we are using three different Flic buttons who colors are black, white and green. To learn more about Flic you can go to their website.

The short video walks you through pairing the Flic button with iPhone using Bluetooth. Here we are pairing three buttons to a single phone, however, in real-life scenario you will need only one.

SharePoint
Two SharePoint lists have been created. The Flic Owner list keeps track of the buttons assigned to the technicians. The UUID or Universal Unique Identification is used to identify the button. Here are screenshots of the list and the columns

The Enforce unique values option has been selected for the Button UUID column. This will avoid any duplicates

The Flic list is used to save all the information using Flow. Here is a screenshot of all the columns

Connections
Following are the four connections used.

 1. Flic : You will need to create your own Flic account prior to setting up this connection. This account will also be used to configure the Flic app on your smart phone.

 2. MSN weather:

 
 3. SharePoint: In this demo SharePoint Online is used, however, the same can be done with SharePoint On-Premises as long as Gateway is installed and configured.

 
 4. Office 365 Outlook:
 

 
If you intend to send emails out to managers or supervisors then you will need Office 365 Users as well
  
 
 
Flow

This video walks through a step-by-step process of how to build the two Flows. The first Flow is when the engineer/technician arrives at the location and the second flow is when he/she departs.

Demo

In this video we will first connect the 'Flic White - Technician arrived' and 'Flic White - Technician departed' Flows that we made to the Flic button using the iPhone app. Then walk through an entire example of when an engineer/technician arrives and departs from a location and how the Flic button's integration with Flow will update the SharePoint list with information from Flic and MSN weather. Here's the video

Conclusion

Currently Flic is in preview mode in Flow and already has several great features and functionalities available. The integration of Flic's physical button using a smart phone makes these regular, lengthy and manual tasks into a one-click automated process. Stay tuned for more blogs on how Flic with Flow can make your life a lot easier and faster!

Helpful links

• Flic connector
• Run your flows by pressing a Flic smart button (Preview)
• Connecting Flow to the real world - Flows can now be triggered directly from physical buttons
• Update a secondary SharePoint list using Flow