Power Automate News: Five Connectors Added

Power Automate News: Five Connectors Added

For Finnish interests, photo and video grabs, and just plain fun, five independently published connectors have arrived in the Power Automate platform. And for those keeping track, that makes a grand total of 678!

Finland

Before we take a look at one new connector for photo and video, let’s take a look at two independently published connectors by Timo Perlita. These address either Finnish travel or business information. For those who have active interests in Finland, these address a heretofore untapped space for Power Automate connectors.

independent publisher connector icon
Finnish BIS

Want to search for or about Finnish companies? The actions of the Finnish BIS connector give users access to the Business Information System, or BIS, by letting automation do the heavy lifting.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Strong starting entry, though limited geography. Three stars.

independent publisher connector icon
Finnish Railway Traffic

With the Finnish Railway Traffic connector’s actions, users can get data sourced from traffic control and capacity management apps: Liike, Reaali and Loki about the train service in Finland. This app will be important when gathering travel information in and around Helsinki where the railways boast 77.9 millions riders per year and another 14.9 million riders who are classified as long-distance, travelling beyond the borders of the capital city.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Strong start for travelers in Finland. Three stars.

Photo and Video

independent publisher connector icon
Pexels

Pexels, a super-handy app for graphic designers and bloggers, can now be accessed with this Power Automate connector from That API Guy, another independent publisher. The Pexels website is full of free stock photos, and royalty free videos and images. This connector’s six actions include:

  • Get a specific Photo from its ID.
  • Get a specific Video from its ID.
  • Get a list of real-time photos curated by the Pexels team.
  • Get a list of the current popular videos.
  • Search Pexels for any photos that you would like.
  • Search Pexels for any videos that you would like.

I could see this being improved with a trigger that notifies me when all of the photo (or video) options I’ve requested have been gathered and tie it to an ability for me to approve or reject specific ones.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Four stars!

Fun and Fantasy Part II

After Heidi’s post about the recent release of 16 Power Automate connectors, her tweet prompted a spirited encounter on LinkedIn where it seems there are a few genuinely thought-provoking ideas about the place of fun and fantasy in the Power Automate world. Should creators add some tongue in cheek to the occasional humdrum nature of the behind the scenes?

Do creators, by making fun connectors (a la Dad Jokes) in order to better learn their craft then lend a higher level of quality construction to the more complex and complicated ones where intimate knowledge of an app may be needed?

And what of fun for the rest of us? Would an occasional Chuck Norris joke delivered to our inbox make our days more tolerable? Plus, as Dr. Adrian Colquhoun commented, “After all, there is much to do, and too few hands to achieve it.”

In the Fun and Fantasy category, I’m tempted to give lots of stars to connectors that tickle my funny bone, but then what if YOU don’t share my same sense of humor? Does that lessen my credibility as a reviewer?

And, of equal importance are questions like: “Do these sorts of connectors dilute the pool of possibility or create confusion for the searcher who desperately needs business automation?”

Or (playing the devil’s advocate) have you considered how annoyed certain (humorless) managers would be if they found out they’d been paying their IT staff to add fun and fantasy into the workplace? Gasp! Speaking only for myself, I’ve definitely worked for companies where a weird and undocumented standard exists which says you can be fun, just not too fun and fun “line” can move without notice.

With this myriad of questions (the answers to which require balance I think), two more connectors in this category arrived from creator Troy Taylor, Robohash and XKCD.

independent publisher connector icon
Robohash

For fun and frolic (and maybe robot enthusiasts) comes this robot-cartoon-image-generating connector. The Robohash app generates unique robot, monster and other images using your IP address and the text you input. This one while entertaining is of limited use for your day-to-day business unless it requires an urgent need for the creation of characters.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Two stars

independent publisher connector icon
XKCD

XKCD, “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” by American author Randall Munroe, has a new Power Automate connector with two actions that get a specific comic by comic number, or gets the current comic, which is updated Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. If you post a Friday Funny to your Intranet, this might be right for you.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Two stars.

I know there are still more connectors in the pipeline. We keep adding them to Connector Review so you can view the growing list of them either by keyword or alphabetically when you want to know whether a connector exists for your app. When you cannot find the right one for you CONTACT US!

Kimberly Kratz
Posted on:
Kimberly is a Virtual Assistant but real person who works on the team at Reenhanced. She’s also a professional writer and editor. When she’s not painting a portrait or dreaming up her next steampunk quest, she works as a Reference Librarian in the city.
Post author