This is the fifth post in a series of articles in which I explain how to integrate Power BI, Power Apps, Flow, Azure Machine Learning and Dynamics 365 to rapidly build a functioning system which allows users to analyze, insert, automate and action data.

In the previous article I covered how to create an API enabled dataset.

In this article I will cover how you can use MS Flow to create and automated workflow which will integrate the various components that we have built thus far as illustrated in the diagram below.

Prerequisites

Before you can complete this tutorial you will need to make sure that you have access to use MS Flow as well as registered Power BI with Azure AD so that you can push data into an API enabled data set. For more information on how to register Power BI you can refer to the previous article.

Create the Flow

Log onto MS Flow using the following URL https://us.flow.microsoft.com

Once you have logged into MS Flow click on My Flows and then select New > Create from blank using the drop down menu.

This will land you on a second screen in which you will need to click Create from blank once more.

After clicking create from blank once more you should see a screen like the one below.

The first thing we need to add is a Power Apps Trigger. To do this search for the word PowerApps and select the first result back from the search.

Add Power BI action

Next we will add the an action to our flow. Click on + New Step after the PowerApp connector and search for Power BI. Then select Add rows to dataset (preview)

This will open a new window in which you will select the workspace, dataset, and table name. The workspace will be called Customer Segmentation and corresponds to the Power BI Workspace you used to create the customer segmentation report. The dataset should be called WholeSaleCustomer and corresponds to the name of the API enabled dataset that we created in Power BI. The table name is the default table name for all API enabled datasets that are created in Power BI.

Next, we will use the dynamic content wizard to get the data from PowerApps into each of the appropriate columns in the API enabled dataset.

NOTE You must do this next step correctly and in the right order because as of the time of this writing there is no way to remove elements once they have been created.

Click on Add dynamic content and then in the pop up menu on the right select Power Apps See More.

This will open an additional option to Ask in PowerApps.

Select Ask in PowerApps and notice how flow automatically generates a field in the flow called Addrowstoadataset_CustomerName.

Complete the same steps for each column in the Power BI dataset. Be sure to select Ask in PowerApps for each new field. Once done your action should look like this.

This will automatically create parameters in the flow which will surface in the Power App once the Flow has been added to the Power App. As a sneak peek to what I mean here is a screen clip of the step to call the flow from inside PowerApps, we will do this step later in this tutorial series.

Add Azure Machine Learning action

Now we will add a new action between the PowerApp connector and the Power BI one to call the Azure Machine Learning API. To do this we will use the HTTP event. As of the time of this writing there is no OOTB connector or action to Azure Machine Learning Studio.

After you have added the HTTP event fill out the details as follows.

You can get the URI from the Azure Machine Learning Experiment > Request/Response page. Also, be sure to include the Content-Type and Authorization information. The authorization information needs to include the keyword bearer as well as the API Key which you can get from the Azure Machine Learning Experiment page.

Next, we will add a dynamic body as follows.

This will take the data that comes out of Power Apps and pass it to the Azure Machine Learning API for scoring. The machine learning model responds with the grouping the customer belongs to by using a clustering alogrithm. The Azure Machine Learning service responds with a JSON document that needs to be parsed in order to get the appropriate information.

Parse the JSON response

After the HTTP action we will add a Parse JSON action and take the Body of the HTTP response as input. We will also use the following Schema.

{
	"type": "object",
	"properties": {
		"Results": {
			"type": "object",
			"properties": {
				"output1": {
					"type": "object",
					"properties": {
						"type": {
							"type": "string"
						},
						"value": {
							"type": "object",
							"properties": {
								"ColumnNames": {
									"type": "array",
									"items": {
										"type": "string"
									}
								},
								"ColumnTypes": {
									"type": "array",
									"items": {
										"type": "string"
									}
								},
								"Values": {
									"type": "array",
									"items": {
										"type": "array",
										"items": {
											"type": "string"
										}
									}
								}
							}
						}
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

 

This schema can also be generated by dropping the sample payload generated by the Azure Machine Learning Service Request/Response document in the Sample Response section.

Your action should look like the image below.

You flow should now look as follows.

Using the HTTP event is adequate for this tutorial however a more robust solution would be to use Azure Functions.

You can grab the sample C# code generated in Azure Machine Learning Studio to jump start the development of the “server-less” function.

Add conditional logic to Category data

Last, we will add some conditional logic to the Category field in the Power BI event. Click on the Category field in the Power BI event and select Experssion.

Enter in the following code to the expression box.

if
(
      equals(triggerBody()['Addrowstoadataset_Category'],''),
      first(first(body('Parse_JSON')?['Results']?['output1']?['value']?['Values'])),
      triggerBody()['Addrowstoadataset_Category']
)

This will check to see if the Category field has been filled out in the Power App and use that value otherwise if the category field is null it will use the value from the Azure Machine Learning model.

Test the flow by clicking Test in the top right hand corner of the flow.

In the next post I will show you how you can integrate the flow into the Power App and then integrate the app into a Power BI Dashboard.

Hopefully you have found this to be another practical post.

Until next time

Anthony