Use Power Automate to get updates on latest Power Platform features

One way to stay up to date on the latest Power Platform news and features: Build a flow! As soon as an article is posted on the blog, you can send yourself notifications and a link to the article.

The example below is one that I use to get instant updates on Power Platform news. In this flow, when a new blog post is made, I will get a message from the Flow bot posted to me in Microsoft Teams. You can set this up to be any type of notification though. Perhaps you want everyone in your company to stay up do date, you might have a dedicated Teams channel for the updates to go. I also prefer this method rather than “Subscribing” to a blog (which you can still do of course) because the I spend most of my time in Teams. As an instant message, I’m more inclined to open and read it too compared to an email.

Start in Power Automate by building a new Automated cloud flow. In the example, I’ve set it up with the Power Apps blog. Select the RSS trigger, When a feed item is published. Enter in the RSS feed URL as shown below. Set the determining property to PublishDate. You will have to create a separate flow for each blog you want updates from, so select one of the following to use:

• Power Apps: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/feed
• Power Automate: https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/feed/
• Power BI: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/feed
• Power Virtual Agents: https://powervirtualagents.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/feed
• Rishona’s blog: https://rishonapowerplatform.com/feed/

To get the RSS feed URL of any blog, all you need to do is go to the blog and find the RSS button. When you click on it, the URL you need will appear in your browser’s URL bar.

For the next action, you can add any kind of notification you want. I’ll use a Teams message from the Flow bot. The message will contain a clickable link to the full article and a summary of the update.

Add the Microsoft Teams action Post message in a chat or a channel. Set the following values:

• Post as: Flow bot
• Post in: Chat with Flow bot
• Recipient: Your email

The message will use dynamic content from the RSS trigger. First, add the Feed title dynamic content. Add a line break, then add Feed summary dynamic content.

We will make the Feed title a hyperlink that will take you to the full article. In the message, highlight the Feed title line of text. Change the font size to 18, and bold and underline it. Then, click on the </> code view button.

Type in the highlighted parts as shown below. Make sure there are no spaces or line breaks when you type it in. You will type <a href=”Primary feed link dynamic content“>Feed title</a>

You can now save the flow. You wont be able to test it immediately, but you will see it work the next time a blog post is published.

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