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Send Excel table to MS Teams chat with PVA & PA

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Posted on by AdobeMax

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

Categories:

Building Copilot Studio chatbots in Microsoft Teams

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CU22081450-0 Most Valuable Professional on at

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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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Wesso 51 on at

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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:
PVA topic is triggered
Call an Action > Power Automate (Cloud Flow)
Cloud Flow will get the Excel data (the data in Excel has to be in a Table)
Cloud Flow action to post message to user as Flow bot with Excel data (bonus of using Flow bot is that the Flow bot can post Adaptive Cards so you can use Designer | Adaptive Cards to create and format a very nice looking message)
Inform user that they will receive a message from the Flow bot instead
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.

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