Scheduled Cloud Flow: How the Data Operation Connector Improved My Automation
Keeping your sales team informed doesn’t have to mean manual reports or digging through CRM data. In this video, Heidi Neuhauser walks through building a scheduled cloud flow that automatically queries Dataverse for won opportunities each day and posts a polished summary directly into a Microsoft Teams channel, all without writing a single line of OData from scratch.
Key Takeaways
- Setting up the scheduled trigger: The flow is configured to run daily at 10pm using a scheduled trigger, making it a fully automated, hands-off process once built.
- Using “List Rows” in Dataverse: The List Rows action retrieves only the columns you need — in this case, opportunity name (topic) and actual revenue — rather than pulling every field from every record.
- Building OData filters without the headache: Instead of writing OData manually, Heidi uses the FetchXML Toolbox to visually build filter criteria — filtering for opportunities with a status of “Won” and an actual close date of today — then converts it to Power Automate parameters with one click.
- Transforming raw JSON with the Data Operation connector: The raw JSON output from Dataverse is reshaped using the Select action to map only the desired fields, making the data far more readable before it reaches end users.
- Creating an HTML table for clean formatting: A Create HTML Table action converts the selected data into a neatly formatted table, ready for display in Teams.
- Posting to Microsoft Teams: The final step uses the Teams connector with the Flow Bot to deliver the formatted opportunity summary to a designated sales channel.
