Posts

Function Friday - URI Parsing Functions

Sometimes you need to work with URI (uniform resource identifiers) in Power Automate. URIs point at something, like websites, files, and so forth. You should be familiar with their most common format, the URL (uniform resource locator): https://barretblake.dev/blog/?hello=23 The first portion (“https”) identifies the protocol or scheme. The second portion (“barretblake.dev”) points to the domain, or server, where the target is located. And the next portion (“blog”) points to the specific resource on that target server. A URI can also include optional parameters to be passed in. In the example above we’re passing in the parameter “hello” and a value for it of “23”.

Friday, September 16, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

The Employee Right to Privacy

I’ve seen a lot of posts on social media in recent months where people are complaining about their companies spying on them and what they’re doing on their employer-issued equipment and accounts. I want to put this in as plain a statement as possible. ANYTHING you do on employer-issued equipment or using employer-issued accounts is, at the very least, subject to monitoring by your employer. And at worst, belongs to your employer.

Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 7 minutes Read

Function Friday - Date and Time Wrap Up: Timezones and Ticks

This time I’m walking through the remaining Date and Time functions. These include the functions that convert between and work with timezones: convertFromUtc, convertToUtc, convertTimeZone, utcNow. But first, we’re going to take a look at ticks. Ticks Just what the heck are ticks, anyway? Ticks are an integer value that represents the total number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since January 1, 0001 at 12 am midnight, Universal time. These numbers can obviously get quite big. For example, the ticks value of September 9, 2022, at 10:00 AM UTC time is 637983144000000000.

Friday, September 9, 2022 | 4 minutes Read

Power Automate - Starting With A Template

Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Video: Power Automate - Starting with a Template

A new video this week. I delve into how quickly you can create a Power Automate flow using one of the thousands of provided templates. https://youtu.be/cjMJvRuHAsc

Tuesday, September 6, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Azure Back to School 2022 - Saving Customer Relationships with Azure Cognitive Services

For those of you who missed it yesterday, you can catch one of my two Azure Back to School sessions below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUL7Iuac3bI&ab_channel=BarretCodes

Sunday, September 4, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Azure Back to School 2022 - Moving Massive Mountains Of Magnificent Data

Friday, September 2, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Azure Back To School 2022 - Saving Customer Relationships With Azure Cognitive Services

Friday, September 2, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Function Friday - More Date and Time Fun: startOf and dayOf

Previously I’ve walked through how to do some date math, formatting, and parsing. Now I’ll drill into a few of the other date and time functions around getting certain values related to a particular date and time. dayOf Functions There are three functions that are closely related: dayOfMonth, dayOfWeek, dayOfYear. All three function in the same manner. They return a numerical value that represents the particular DateTime’s value in reference to the current month, week, or year.

Friday, September 2, 2022 | 2 minutes Read

An Introduction To Databases

Something a little different this time around. Lately, both at work and in my personal projects and learnings, I’ve been dealing with a wide variety of databases. Databases in general are a core component in application infrastructure. Despite that, they get far less focus in the blogosphere than other topics like UI, UX, APIs, and the like. I get it. Databases aren’t sexy. They aren’t cool. They’re just the core that supports the entire application. Nothing important.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022 | 6 minutes Read

Microsoft Power Automate - Creating Our First Flow

power automate

Tuesday, August 23, 2022 | 1 minute Read

Video: Creating Our First Power Automate Flow

Another introduction video. This one covers an overview of creating a simple flow in Power Automate. https://youtu.be/AFUt1VoNMUc

Tuesday, August 23, 2022 | 1 minute Read