Over the past 5 years, we have witnessed a lot of changes in workers, the workplace and technology. In today’s fast-paced environment with everything happening within quickly, integrating items within a single application is essential for end user productivity. Using Microsoft Teams can offer a robust feature set to enhance team productivity. One of the lesser-known capabilities is the use of Adaptive Cards within Microsoft Teams, which, when combined with Power Automate, can revolutionize how data is collected from users. This post will outline using Microsoft Teams Adaptive Cards with Power Automate, focusing on key use cases for data collection, and provides visual aids to enhance understanding.

What are Adaptive Cards

Adaptive Cards are a way to present content within Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps, such as Viva Connections. They are lightweight, versatile, and can be customized to fit various needs, from simple notifications to complex solutions. Adaptive Cards used as part of a Power Automate flow allows for the automation across apps and services.  Adaptive Cards can be used to create interactive forms within Teams, while Power Automate can handle the workflow logic, ensuring that data is processed and stored appropriately.

Adaptive Cards and Power Automate can be used in many ways. When focused on productivity, the focus should be on productivity gains. Often this is essentially taking data that you interact with and including within the “flow of work”. Often, this is Microsoft Teams. Below, we will explore examples of user productivity gains that can be used in your organization.

Employee Surveys

Collecting feedback from employees is crucial for improving culture and productivity. Adaptive Cards can be used to create interactive surveys that employees can fill out directly within Teams. Power Automate can then process the responses and store them in a SharePoint list or send them to an email inbox. This would allow for others to have access to data, review for future reference and add additional automation or integration.

An HR team wants to collect feedback on a recent company event. They create an Adaptive Card with questions like “Rate the event on a scale of 1-5” and “What did you like the most?”. Power Automate captures the responses and stores them in a SharePoint list for further analysis.

Support Requests

Facilities, IT and general support requests can significantly reduce downtime and improve employee satisfaction. Adaptive Cards can be used to collect detailed information about issues, such as the type of problem, urgency, and additional comments. Power Automate can then route the request to the appropriate department and responsibility as well as log the details of the request within the ticketing system.

An employee needs to request that a desk needs to be repaired and submits a support request via an Adaptive Card. The card collects information like the location name, issue description, and urgency level. Power Automate routes the request to the support team’s channel and creates a ticket in the system.

Meeting Feedback

This is one of my favorite. We all attend a ton of meetings, so gathering feedback after meetings can help improve their effectiveness. Adaptive Cards can be used to collect feedback on meeting content, presentation quality, and overall satisfaction. Within the meeting chat or following up, Power Automate can aggregate the responses and provide insights to the meeting organizers.

After a team meeting, participants receive an Adaptive Card asking for feedback on various aspects of the meeting. Responses are collected and processed by Power Automate, which then generates a summary report sent to the meeting organizer.

How to get started with Adaptive Cards and Power Automate

To begin using Adaptive Cards with Power Automate, you need to have access to Microsoft Teams and Power Automate. Designing Adaptive Cards is done within the site/browser, so there is no custom application needed.

Below are the steps to get started:

1. Designing Adaptive Cards – Adaptive Cards are designed using JSON. You can design Adaptive Cards using the Adaptive Cards Designer, a visual tool that helps you create and preview cards.
2. Visit the Adaptive Cards Designer at https://adaptivecards.io
3. Start with a template or design your card from scratch

4. Use elements like TextBlock, Input.Text, Input.ChoiceSet, and Action.Submit to build your card. In the example that is loaded, pay attention to the text, buttons, images and other attributes that are mapped. Within the next step, you will map the values to the items within the Power Automate flow.
5. Creating a Flow in Power Automate
   • Log in to Power Automate at https://make.powerautomate.com/
   • Create a new flow by selecting ‘Create’ > ‘Automated flow’ or modify an existing flow.
   • Choose a trigger, such as ‘When a new response is submitted’ in Microsoft Forms or ‘For a selected message’ in Teams.

6. Add actions to the flow, then include ‘Post adaptive card and wait for a response’.
   • Take the existing JSON from the adaptive card and update the value fields to be mapped to the correct field.

• Since we selected to ‘Post adaptive card and wait for a response’, we need to ‘Parse JSON’. This will take the response and allow us to use those fields within another action. In this example, I am utilizing ‘Send an email”

Microsoft Teams Adaptive Cards and Power Automate together offer a solution for collecting data from users within the flow of work and in an efficient manner. By leveraging these Microsoft 365 tools, you can streamline workflows and enhance communication. Whether it’s gathering employee feedback, handling support requests, or collecting meeting feedback, Adaptive Cards and Power Automate can be tailored to fit various use cases, transforming the way teams operate.