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Overview

This wiki is where we will track notes about power automate flows. Not so much what changes we make -- those will be issues -- but, why we make the changes we make. Importantly, this wiki will also serve as an instruction manual.

• The README will list all of the production flows along with a brief description of their purpose. This will serve as a brief overview of the flows that are up and running.
• The Development Projects project board will list all of the production flows as well. The cards with the flow names on them will show us how the flows fit into the larger landscape of all development projects. Additionally, they will be categorized by working status.
• This wiki will also have a page for each flow. This is where we can add more in-depth discussions about design decisions that were made.

Instructions

Ideas for new flows

If you have an idea for a new flow, you should:

1. Add it to the Ideas/Eventually/Maybe column of the Development Projects project board.
2. Add a basic description of what you want the flow to do and why, but don't add any specific tasks.

Creating flows

When you are ready to start working on a flow:

1. Move the card to the Active Development column of the Development Projects project board. Still don't add any specific tasks to this card.
2. Create an issue in the power_automate repo titled Create <flow name>.
3. Link the card in the Development Projects project board to the issue in the power_automate repo using the user/repository#number syntax.
4. Create the flow and mark the issue from step 2 complete. When you mark it complete, it should be reflected in the card in the Development Projects project board
5. When the flow is running correctly, move the card to the Maintenance column of the Development Projects project board.

As you experiment and learn new things, make sure to add them to the appropriate section of this wiki. (add link when pages are created)

Updating flows

If you want to update or repair a flow:

1. Move the card back to the Active Development column of the Development Projects project board. Still don't add any specific tasks to this card.
2. Create an issue in the power_automate repo titled <change> <flow name>.
3. Link the card in the Development Projects project board to the issue in the power_automate repo using the user/repository#number syntax.
4. Fix the flow and mark the issue from step 2 complete. When you mark it complete, it should be reflected in the card in the Development Projects project board
5. When the flow is running correctly, move the card to the Maintenance column of the Development Projects project board.

As you experiment and learn new things, make sure to add them to the appropriate section of this wiki. (add link when pages are created)

Deprecating flows

Sometimes, we no longer need flows or we replace them with a different flow. When that happens:

1. Move the card back to the Deprecated/Abandoned column of the Development Projects project board.

Add a brief description of why it was deprecated and lessons learned to the appropriate section of this wiki. (add link when pages are created)

Why are we going to all of this trouble?

Great question! I'm thinking that to myself as I'm typing this. And, I may later decide that this is way more complicated than it needs to be. However, here are the reasons I started down this path:

• Learning and using Power Automate is still new to me and I'm still making lots of mistakes/changes.
• I need to be able to track those changes somehow. Power automate doesn't have a versioning system at all (that I'm aware of) and it doesn't have a very good system for commenting code.
• I could track these changes in the cards on the Development Projects project board, but that would require me to use that board differently for power automate projects than all the other projects I'm tracking on that board. For example, I don't put specific changes I want to make to the freqtables package on that board.
• Additionally, I need a place where I can write down lessons learned. Because Power Automate uses action blocks instead of code like R, there isn't an obvious way to maintain development notes directly in Power Automate. For example, I have an R folder on my computer for keeping little tips and code snippets, and I can put them under version control. Power Automate doesn't really have anything like that built in. I'm hoping the system described above will work. I'm sure it will take some tweaking over time.