Power Automate User Group May 2026

Gabriela Zelaya · May 28

bbdevdays Event Overview: Gabriela provided a comprehensive overview of the upcoming bbdevdays virtual conference, highlighting registration details, keynote speakers Rhea Saxena and Richie Cotton, Skills Labs, Power Automate sessions, innovation activities, and networking opportunities.

bbdevdays Hackathon Details: Gabriela outlined the bbdevdays hackathon, a virtual competition running from May 18th to September 8th, where participants can build prototypes or customizations using Blackbaud solutions and APIs, compete in four tracks, and collaborate in teams or individually.

Power Platform Regional Workshops: Gabriela announced upcoming Power Platform regional workshops in Silicon Valley, Columbus, and the DC area, offering hands-on coaching, networking, and skill-building opportunities for participants to connect Blackbaud data and products.

New and Updated Blackbaud APIs: Gabriela provided updates on new and enhanced Blackbaud APIs, including RENXT, planned gifts, custom fields, volunteer API changes, constituent actions, Grants Connect, membership APIs, and upcoming payment connectors and Power BI custom connectors.

Power Automate Flow Success Story: Vicky shared a success story about using Rebecca S. Power Automate flow to extract Sky API and SKY list data, significantly reducing processing time for list extraction from over an hour to five minutes for education management tasks.

Optimizing Power Automate Queries for Large Reports: Jason raised questions about improving efficiency in Power Automate custom report queries, with Alex and Glen providing guidance on breaking queries into manageable parts, using ad hoc queries, and leveraging ask operators to reduce data volume and improve performance.

Donor Ranking Automation Project: Kevin presented a project to automate donor ranking and lifetime giving calculations using Power Automate, Excel Office scripts, and JSON files, reducing processing time from 18 hours to 22 seconds for 23,000 records.

Eventbrite Webhook Integration with Raiser’s Edge: Susan described a webhook flow that integrates Eventbrite ticket purchases with Raiser’s Edge, automating participant record creation and error handling for event management.

Scheduling and Running Daily Gift Reports: Alex demonstrated how to schedule and run daily gift reports in Power Automate, explaining the use of date variables, conditions for weekend data, and Query API limitations for date range filtering.

Webhooks and Summary Notes Field in RENXT: Alex explained the limitations of webhooks for tracking changes to the summary notes field in RENXT, noting that constituent record change webhooks do not provide before-and-after values and suggesting alternative approaches for monitoring changes.

Documenting Power Automate Flows with AI: Alex shared methods for documenting Power Automate flows by exporting them as zip files and using AI agents like Copilot or Claude to generate technical documentation, including a workaround for flows within solutions.

Adaptive Card Design and API Limitations: Alex and Ramandeep discussed adaptive card design for RENXT tiles, including conditional display of sections, handling API limitations for pledge and write-off data, and methods to avoid excessive loops in Power Automate flows.

Testing Power Automate Flows in Sandbox Environments: Christopher asked about connecting Power Automate to a development environment for safe testing, with Austen recommending the SKY Developer sandbox and the use of dummy records for controlled experimentation.

https://youtu.be/bsssdXfRj2g