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Jason Hand - Cloud Advocate for Microsoft Azure

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No-code Automation for Azure Boards Using Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents

Recently, I debuted a new video project on the Microsoft Developer YouTube channel I call a "micro workshop".

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What is a Micro Workshop?
In short, it's a video tutorial explicitly designed, recorded, and edited for multi-channel distribution in a variety of formats, including short form.

It is an instructor led technical walkthrough, that teaches the audience β€œhow to” solve common real-world challenges while encouraging questions and interactions through bite-sized short form content.

This specific "No Code"Micro workshop teaches you how to build real-life solutions, from start to finish, using Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, and Azure DevOps Boards.

If you would like to learn how to create real-world automation to solve common scenarios with Azure Boards, this micro workshop will not only show you what you can build in just a few minutes but inspire you to continue your own "no code" development journey.

Watched beginning to end, the entire micro workshop is just under 45 minutes in length but can be watched in 4 individual parts - each 15 minutes or less, complete with step by step chapter markers and instructions in the video description.

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Things You'll Learn Upon completion of this micro-workshop:

Part 1: How to Create a Pre-Populated Azure DevOps Project

(Watch part 1 - 6 minutes)

We'll begin our workshop by signing into (or signing up for) a couple of accounts we'll need.

To follow along with this micro workshop, you'll need the following accounts.

We'll also use the Azure DevOps Project Generator to create sample data that we'll use in parts 2-4. We'll also take a look at what we will automate in the following steps.

πŸ”— Azure Signup
πŸ”— Azure DevOps Signup
πŸ”— Power Virtual Agents

Part 2: How to Create Azure Logic Apps to Auto-create Multiple Work Items

(Watch part 2 - 15 minutes)

Automatically creating multiple Task work items at once when someone creates a new User Story is the goal of Part 2. Logic Apps are where we'll create the "no code" automation to do all the work.

I'll walk you through step by step as we create an Azure Logic App from scratch.

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Part 3: How to Create a Scheduled Azure Boards Status Email w/ Azure Logic Apps

(Watch part 3 - 9 minutes)

Azure DevOps has built in functionality to provide a daily email report. However, it's not all that customizable. The good news is that you can create a daily summary email from scratch to provide information out of Azure DevOps exactly the way you want to see it.

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Part 4: How to create an Azure Boards Chatbot with Power Virtual Agents

(Watch part 4 - 10 minutes)
The final part of this micro workshop leverages Power Virtual Agents and Power Automate to create a chatbot that interfaces with Azure DevOps. We'll have our bot retrieve all of the work items that are "Assigned to Me" and put a link in chat that takes me straight to the work item.

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That's it!

I hope you enjoyed this "micro" workshop. If you have any questions, be sure to drop a comment.

Related Resources

πŸ”— Get Started with Azure DevOps (Docs)
πŸ”— Introduction to Azure DevOps (Learn)
πŸ”— Get Started with Azure DevOps (Learn)
πŸ”— Overview for Azure Logic Apps (Docs)
πŸ”— Introduction to Azure Logic Apps (Learn)
πŸ”— Power Automate vs Logic Apps
πŸ”— Built-in Connectors in Azure Logic Apps (Docs)
πŸ”— Overview - Power Virtual Agents (Docs)
πŸ”— Introduction to Power Virtual Agents (Learn)
πŸ”— Get Started with Power Automate (Learn)
πŸ”— Azure Signup
πŸ”— Azure DevOps Signup
πŸ”— Power Virtual Agents
πŸ”— Azure DevOps Project Generator

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