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Getting dynamic data feed to and from SharePoint list

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Using out-of-the-box PVA with Power Automate; successfully got static data (column values) from a SharePoint list back to PVA chat with 'string' as my only option...1) initiated variable, 2) get data (SP list and column), 3) apply to each (row), and 4) append string...but now I would like to set up an alert in TEAMS (or can I do this with PVA/P-Automate within SharePoint as well?) that is prompted by reaching a threshold in a SharePoint list (e.g., an item is 'Overdue'...or within 2 days of expiration, etc. - off calculated date columns, for instance). Is there a way to do this with basic, out-of-the-box PVA/P-Automate functions?

Also, much like a Power BI scheduled update of dynamic data from a SharePoint Online list into a PBI Report/Dashboard, can I create a 'scheduled' dynamic data feed into a PVA/chat bot for management to view each morning on Teams? possibly via Adaptive Cards or something else? or even a PVA chat bot on SharePoint itself?

And lastly, our team is also interested in being able to automatically post 'Teams' PVA chat bot user input into a SharePoint list.

Any and all advice would be appreciated! Thank you.

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SupportBryn Microsoft Employee on at

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Hey there @Anonymous,

Power Virtual Agents is first and foremost intended to be a Chatbot, and with that in mind, those first two functions are not the sort of thing that PVA-linked flows are intended to handle. With that in mind, however, Power Automate can most certainly do those things! It has functions that will allow you to send messages and alerts through Teams, and specific types of flows dedicated to triggering when user-defined conditions are met. For more specific help on building those flows, I'd recommend checking out the Power Automate Forums here!

For your final concern, that should be something PVA is able to do! You would want to go about that by having the user answer various questions, and storing those answers in variables, which you then feed into a Flow created from within PVA. Once you have that information on the Power Automate side of things, you should be able to populate one of the actions from the Sharepoint Connector, such as the Update Item or Create Item actions, which you can then tie directly to a Sharepoint list through the Connector!

Hope this answers your questions!
Thank you for using Microsoft Power Platform Communities!
Bryn Baker
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Microsoft Power Platform
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Thanks Bryn! We are just starting to creating PVA bot prototypes within TEAMS (with basic O-365 license).
Our team is certainly going to look into this shortly, as we also create SharePoint lists (along with calculated columns, Power Automate, and Nintex workflows within the SharePoint Online environment), and have, for instance, 'overdue' date thresholds that we would like to provide as chat bot 'Alerts' within TEAMS....also we are looking into a 'scheduled' daily data report format (again, straight from a SharePoint list) put out by the PVA bot...we were also wondering if we could locate PVA bots directly within a SharePoint Online site....one last question...can we do all of the above with PVA and Power Automate (O-365/TEAMS) licenses? Or will we have to obtain a PVA license upgrade and also have to have access to the Bot Framework Composer? Also...any ideas and opportunities regarding a 'Subscription' model? I look forward to your feedback concerning this.

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SupportBryn Microsoft Employee on at

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Power Virtual Agents does not support external triggers for Flows, it is a conversational bot, therefore items such as the Overdue date thresholds and scheduled daily data reports would need to be addressed through Teams Messages sent from Power Automate, separately from your Power Virtual Agents Bot.

Yes, you can embed PVA Bots directly into Sharepoint sites! Just tested it myself to make sure.

First, you will need to go into your published PVA Bot, go to the Manage Tab, and go to the Channels sub-tab. Once in there, you will want to click on Custom Website. Copy the provided HTML code and save it somewhere to be reused later, or click the Share to Email option to receive a copy of it in that way.

Then, you will need to go edit the permissions of your Sharepoint site, as they default to only allowing specific domains to embed their iframes there. This guide explains how to go about that process. The specific URL that needs to be allowed for PVA embedding is "web.powerva.microsoft.com".

After the URL has been allowed, you will need to add the embedded bot to a given page/section of a page on the site itself. This guide will explain how to do that. I will provide a clarifying screenshot regarding Step 2, as it can be slightly vague about which "+" it is referring to.

When hovering near the top of an open section of your Sharepoint site in the editing window, this plus icon will appear:

This is where you must click to open the context menu where you can select the Embed Web Part.

To my knowledge, SharePoint connectors are not considered Premium connectors, so those should not require Premium licenses, only standard ones.

I am not sure what you are referring to by "Subscription Model" in particular, but our licenses are Subscriptions by nature.

Hope that was thoroughly helpful!
Thank you for using Microsoft Power Platform Communities!
Bryn Baker
Support Engineer
Microsoft Power Platform
If this post helps, then please consider accepting it as the solution to help other members find it more quickly! Have a great day!

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Thanks again Byrn for kindly providing this very helpful information! I will certainly discuss this with my team as we move forward with our project.

Cheers for now - Jsea

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Hello Bryn,

Thank you again for your assistance.

As mentioned earlier, our team is developing a prototype/POC for the PVA chat bot in the TEAMS environment (and maybe embedding it in a SharePoint web part--as you kindly explained). I only have the O-365/TEAMS license for now, not the exclusive PVA license, nor Bot Framework Composer.

Having said that, my colleague was wondering if we could present an input form to the user from within the PVA Chat bot topic flow, where the user can fill in the blanks from the form and it could be delivered in TEAMS, or via Outlook.

We are part of the SharePoint team and we would like to consolidate our questions for a user who wants a new SharePoint site. For example: Do you need any libraries?, how many? what are their names? what is the retention period (5, 7, 10 years)? document sensitivity level (public, internal use, confidential)? do you need any lists? how many? names? ....etc., etc. Currently, I have a lengthy string of boolean, number, multiple selection, and user response nodes in my topic to cover this....which gets a bit unwieldly-for me, as well as for the user...any suggestions? Is it possible to create an entry form to consolidate/take the place of this lengthy node sequence?

Thank you and kind regards - jsea

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SupportBryn Microsoft Employee on at

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Yes, you definitely can use a form to gather information more directly! In Teams as well as Outlook, we have our Adaptive Cards that can be used to gather information. For Teams, the submitted information can be relayed through emails, Team Messages, or other forms of communication that are integrated with Power Automate. For Outlook, this can be done through traditional HTTP methods such as GET and POST.

The implementations for Teams are somewhat different than the implementations for Outlook, so I'll provide documentation for both below.

The top-level documentation regarding Adaptive Cards is located here, covering many topics such as Authoring Cards, Rendering Cards, Templating, and more! This can be used to help introduce your team to the concept, alongside the more specific documentation below.

For either of the two standards (Teams and Office), you can prototype your Adaptive Cards here, in our Designer Environment. Adaptive Cards are a JSON structure that is platform agnostic, so they are quite simple to make and interact with, and your team can explore the Documentation and design Scheme through the various tabs of the site at the top.

The Teams/Power Automate-related Adaptive Card documentation is here, which gives a basic overview of the functionality, walks developers through making their first Adaptive Card, and then provides further samples to guide initial exploration on the usage of the tools, which can be scaled upwards to larger forms like you mentioned.

One particularly important part that I'll highlight for your potential initial testing is that if you wish to take in data from your Adaptive Card, rather than just displaying things for the user to have as reference, you must make sure you specifically use the "Post an adaptive card as the Flow bot to a Teams user, and wait for a response" action, rather than the "Post your own adaptive card as the Flow bot to a user" action, otherwise your Flow will continue to move forwards without actually waiting to see what information the card has provided.

For Outlook, Adaptive Cards are part of our Actionable Messages feature. For a full overview of that, see here. Adaptive Cards are the main method of interaction for the feature, but there are some other requirements to keep in mind that are explained there. For the particulars of Outlook-specific Adaptive Cards, see here for explanations of the differences of implementation between them and the Teams-compatible Cards.

Hopefully that answers your questions!

P.S. - Just to let you know, it is possible to use Adaptive Cards within Power Virtual Agents directly as well, but that would require the Bot Framework, which you mentioned you have not touched as of yet, so I left it out. If you wish for me to provide that information as well, let me know! I just figured this post was getting a bit long, so I'd keep focused on what you specifically asked about.
Thank you for using Microsoft Power Platform Communities!
Bryn Baker
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Microsoft Power Platform
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Thank you Bryn!

As far as licensing goes, will we need to acquire the fully-fledged license of Power Virtual Agents to be able to create and manage Adaptive cards?...both in the TEAMS and in the Outlook environments?

And I assume the fully-fledge version of PVA comes with the Bot Framework Composer?...which I believe is needed to create Adaptive cards?

Kind regards - Jsea

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SupportBryn Microsoft Employee on at

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You can test Adaptive Cards in a trial environment for PVA for Teams! As for Outlook, the documentation I provided has a section addressing how to gain access to test out Actionable Messages here. This portal is used both to gain the ability to test out Actionable Messages in a smaller test set of Users, as well as to gain the ability to use them across your entire organization if you find they are something you gain value from using.

Bot Framework Composer is also something you should be able to test from within a Trial Environment of Power Virtual Agents, but it is only necessary to create Adaptive Cards if you want to use them within a Web PVA Bot, rather than a PVA for Teams bot, which can use them natively through the Power Automate integration.

The documentation for using Bot Framework Composer to make Adaptive Cards can be found here.

Adaptive Cards are just a JSON schema that is publicly available to use by any app developer who wants to integrate them into their applications, and they can be quickly created by hand by typing up a JSON file, or through the Adaptive Card Designer.

In order for any proper long-term development of Power Virtual Agents/Power Automate, you will need licenses, but all of the features that you have asked about using within them so far are ones you will definitely be able to try out in the Trials!

For the specifics of licensing across Power Platform's various offerings, you can find Documentation and Guides at the bottom of this page.

Hope that helps!
Thank you for using Microsoft Power Platform Communities!
Bryn Baker
Support Engineer
Microsoft Power Platform
If this post helps, then please consider accepting it as the solution to help other members find it more quickly! Have a great day!

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Thank you Bryn...I will discuss this with my team and research the reference material you kindly provided.

Thank you once again!

Kind regards - Jsea

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Hi Bryn,

I took a look at the PVA-Adaptive Card instructions and, assuming I should have access to the Bot Framework Composer from my basic O-365 TEAMS PVA application, i do not see the selection for it as it appears in the MS instructions...see below...should I speak with my IT/TEAMS administrator?

What I see...

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