Hello!
I want to create a flow with a Chatbot that returns a (nicely formatted) table as reply in a chat. This table is not massive (5x5 or so), but the data in it will have to be dynamic (e.g. come from an Excel sheet where data changes weekly).
I have tried to accomplish this from different angles (directly from Excel; through Sharepoint list), but I keep thinking there must be an easier way than pulling it cell by cell and printing it into a message.
I see the flow like this:
1) PVA topic is triggered
2) PVA topic calls PA script
3) PA script pulls (dynamic) data/table from Excel
4) PVA prints the table nicely/readable into it's reply message.
Is there an easy/obvious way how I can achieve it?
Best
Max
Hi @AdobeMax
What @renatoromao is a method.
Another method I can think of involves using the Flow bot.
This does mean the response will not be coming from your bot but from the Flow bot instead.
Similar to the above but with some tweaks:
Does give you the flexibility of having a very nice message (adaptive card) to the user, but the user experience is slightly disjointed as they will need to jump to the Flow chat. However if the user's primary output is getting this Excel data and that's it, this might not be so bad since it's all within Teams anyways.
Hi @AdobeMax ,
It's a good idea, but we have some limitations.
Today, we can use a Markdown in the PVA, but we cannot implement tables for Teams chat using Markdown.
Use markdown to format Power Automate approvals - Power Automate | Microsoft Docs
Also, we cannot use Adaptive Cards in PVA using Power Automate.
Vote here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Virtual-Agents-Ideas/Adaptive-Cards/idi-p/399095
You only can use Adaptive Cards with Bot Framework Composer.
My suggestion:
- PVA topic
- Call an action > Power Automate
- Power Automate get the Excel data - How to get excel data using Power Automate – Power Platform Learning (wordpress.com)
- Create a list using Markdown - Use markdown to format Power Automate approvals - Power Automate | Microsoft Docs
- Return to your PVA as text output
- Show the output variable inside a message on the PVA bot
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