Five Connectors in the Soup
After sifting through this year’s 35 new connectors, I found that this group addresses a variety of topics including: business research, temporary data storage, organizational management, workflow, and visual collaboration.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever made your own vegetable soup?
Unless you’re following a recipe, chances are your soup will be different every time you make it because what goes into the pot depends on what’s fresh from the garden or in your kitchen pantry. Likewise, you can think of each of the different connectors in today’s review as addressing automation and workflow like different vegetables added to the Power Automate soup. With that in mind we’ll start with Pantry. <—- See what I did there?
Data Storage
Just like an old-school kitchen cupboard, Pantry provides “perishable” data storage for small projects, storing data securely for as long as you and your users need it. (Think prototypes.) The API deletes the data after a period of inactivity, just like a person who removes the science experiments from your home or office refrigerator.
The five connector actions include:
- Create and or replace basket
- Update basket contents
- Delete a basket (cannot be undone)
- Get basket contents
- Get pantry details
Four stars
Organizational Management
Actsoft Mobile Workforce Plus is an excellent, cloud-based choice for any organization that provides services, and which needs to automate management of vehicles, orders and people.
The Power Automate connector’s generous list of sixty! possible actions can provide users with a well-rounded ability to create, update and gather information. Its four triggers offer extensive detail about how they work and include a poll for:
- Form data
- Order
- Order status
- Timekeeping
Five stars
Business Research
If you’ve never heard of Companies House, it might be because you neither work nor do business in the UK. This warrants a little understanding. Companies House, an executive agency sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, incorporates and dissolves limited companies in the UK, registering company information and making it available to the public.
You can use this independently published connector’s actions when researching the details about a business that operates in the UK as it provides access to the Companies House database. This includes details such as: address, company filing history, annual turnover, elected company officers, or other important players known as Persons of Significant Control (PSCs) in the top echelon. A handy tool if this is your jam.
Three stars
Whiteboard Collaboration
The Miro connector’s actions let users work in Miro’s visual collaboration and whiteboarding platform.
- Create a new board or new card widget.
- Create a copy of an existing board.
- Update a specific board.
- Update or delete a specific widget.
- Get a specific board or single widget.
- Get all widgets.
Independently published, this connector is a basic start for online collaboration.
Two stars
Workflow
Understanding the SECIB connector provided me with a real challenge to assess it as my French abilities are limited to freshman year of high school when in chapter one of the textbook, the great concern was Jack’s whereabouts, i.e. “Ou est Jacques?” And, where we all learned that our ability to say “Deux croissants et un café s’il vous plait,” would at least get our day started with a continental breakfast.
With this thought in mind, please accept this particular review with “un peu de grâce.”
Si vous parlez français ou travaillez en France, en Belgique ou au Luxembourg et que vous utilisez déjà l’application SECIB, ce connecteur est peut-être fait pour vous.
Translation: If you are French-speaking, or work in France, Belgium or Luxembourg, and you are already using SECIB app, then this connector might be for you.
The SECIB connector allows app users to automate their workflow. For instance, you can trigger a workflow when a new case file is created in SECIB neo. Its two actions let you either get each firm for the current user, or retrieve a view’s data from the database.
Microsoft’s own documentation suggests this use case, “you can trigger a workflow when a new case file is created in SECIB neo and then process this case file before sending an email notification with the case file’s information to other SECIB’s users.”
Three stars
These additions to our Power Automate soup offer just a tiny glimpse into the vast array of available Power Automate connectors, and like reheated vegetable soup, it’s always better the second time around. So, you might want to read yesterday’s helping of connector reviews, What do Coffee, COVID-19 and Drugs Have in Common? We’re available to help you GET STARTED implementing Power Automate connectors into your work recipe.
