Power Automate User Group June 2026

3rd Tuesday of each month 

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Upcoming Events and Resources: Erik announced upcoming workshops, bbcon sessions, new APIs, and the customer hackathon, providing links and encouraging continued engagement, with Tad confirming his participation in future events and offering ongoing support.

Regional Workshops and bbcon Sessions: Erik shared details about two-day regional workshops in Silicon Valley and a one-day bbcon pre-con session, covering Power Automate and Power BI tracks, and noted changes to session formats at bbcon.

New APIs and Add-Ins: Erik announced the release of the Payments API, new metadata in RENXT Query, and new add-ins for campaign, funds, and appeal tabs, with a certified connector for Payments API in testing.

Customer Hackathon: Erik described the customer hackathon launched at bbdevdays, outlining participation options, tracks, and the competition's end date, encouraging submissions and providing links. 

Power Platform Center of Excellence and Governance: Tad Thompson from Microsoft provided an in-depth overview of the Power Platform Center of Excellence, focusing on administration, security, governance, environment management, and application lifecycle management, with Erik facilitating the session and engaging the group in related questions and discussion.

Security and Governance Overview: Tad explained the transition from the Center of Excellence kit to the Power Platform Admin Center, highlighting features such as environment control, sensitivity labels, and automation for onboarding makers. He described how organizations can manage connectors, control sharing, and enforce guardrails set by IT.

Data Loss Prevention Policies: Tad discussed the creation and application of data loss prevention (DLP) policies, allowing organizations to restrict connector usage by environment, user, or group, and enforce approval processes for publishing apps, flows, or agents.

Environment Groups and Default Environment: Tad described environment groups as a way to provide pre-configured environments for makers, enabling sharing and testing before publishing. He also addressed the challenges of the default environment and the automation of provisioning new developer environments.

Application Lifecycle Management: Tad emphasized the importance of solutions in Power Platform for backup and migration, explained pipelines for managed approval processes, and described integration with tools like Visual Studio, GitHub, and Azure DevOps. He also covered automated testing for agents and version support for rollback.

Agent 365 Administration: Tad outlined the Microsoft Admin Center's capabilities for managing agents, including dashboards for agent inventory, sharing, blocking, and reporting, as well as approval workflows and granular access control.

Project Sharing and User Questions: Erik opened the floor for participants to share projects and ask questions, leading to discussions on embedding Microsoft Forms in Blackbaud, troubleshooting Power Automate flows, SharePoint-based role management, and handling receipt numbers in acknowledgement flows 

Embedding Microsoft Forms in Blackbaud: Brenda asked about embedding Microsoft Forms in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge versus linking, and Alex clarified that both methods are functionally equivalent, with embedding offering a more integrated experience but no additional technical benefit.

Troubleshooting Date Discrepancies in Power Automate Flows: Christopher described an issue with date discrepancies in a major gifts flow, and Alex guided him through tracing dynamic content, understanding time zone conversions, and adjusting the flow to use UTC now for accurate date reporting.

SharePoint-Based Role Management for Flows: Hallie shared a solution inspired by Shelby bbdevdays session, where a SharePoint list is used to manage user roles and notification recipients for Power Automate flows, allowing easy updates without modifying individual flows and improving transparency.

Handling Receipt Numbers in Acknowledgement Flows: Candy inquired about automating receipt number assignment in flows, and Alex explained using the gift system record ID as the receipt number, updating receipt details directly in Power Automate, and alternatives for ensuring uniqueness, with Carol providing additional guidance on relevant actions.

Split Gift Handling in Receipt Flows: Candy asked about split gifts, and Alex clarified that the gift ID should be used for receipt assignment, not the split ID, to avoid complications and ensure correct processing