Sri Lankan Microsoft Biz Apps Monthly Meetup - March 2024

Dear All,

Greetings! I hope you are well and staying safe.

We had 27 successful monthly meetups earlier with a lot of fun, networking, and knowledge-sharing and ended up with great memories.

It is time for another monthly meetup, which will be held on the 29th of March at 2:30 p.m. (GMT+5:30).

Agenda:

Avoiding Web UI Scraping: Unlock Efficiency with Exposed APIs in Power Automate Flows by Agnius Bartninkas

WHAT: Join an enlightening session designed for Power Automate enthusiasts, exploring a game-changing approach to web automation. Discover the power of leveraging exposed APIs rather than mimicking user actions on web interfaces. This session will equip you with the skills to seamlessly integrate with hidden APIs, enhancing the efficiency and robustness of your Power Automate flows. WHY: Automating web actions through the user interface is common in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), but it comes with challenges. Web page GUIs frequently change, without any prior notice, leading to disruptions in automated flows. The solution lies in tapping into "exposed APIs" — undocumented but publicly accessible APIs used by some web pages. This approach brings higher efficiency, greater stability, and lower development costs, making it a game-changer for advanced Power Automate developers, also making it possible to do the same thing in cloud flows that previously absolutely required the use of RPA. HOW: Learn the step-by-step process to integrate exposed APIs into your Power Automate flows: - Utilize browser developer tools to uncover hidden APIs used by web pages. - Understand parameters required for API requests, such as custom headers, date stamps, pagination, etc.. - Utilize appropriate Power Automate actions to send requests, mimicking browser behavior. - Parse the JSON responses retrieved from the API. TAKEAWAYS: Upon completing this session, you will: - Learn to build more efficient and faster flows by tapping into exposed APIs. - Gain insights into why exposed APIs result in more stable flows with less frequent maintenance. - Acquire hands-on skills in identifying, reverse-engineering, and implementing exposed APIs in Power Automate flows. The session will show how to use Power Automate cloud flows to tap into an exposed API instead of using desktop flows to scrape a web page UI. The same can also be done in desktop flows just as well, but APIs make much more sense in the cloud. We will explain why during the session.

The target audience is intermediate to advanced Power Automate developers (either cloud, or desktop, or both).

Kindly spread the word with colleagues and make this network even broader. We express our sincere thanks to you for making the Sri Lankan BizzApps community a strong and vibrant group!

I hope to see you all at the event!