Automate Microsoft Teams Integration with Dynamics 365, PowerApps and Portals

Introduction

Hello Everyone,

Welcome again to the Power Guide Mentorship Program.

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well and are in good health.

This pandemic and resulted isolation have made us turn to technology, to stay connected with our friends and colleagues in ways that we never imagined.

Almost overnight, video conferencing and digital collaboration have become a big part of our daily life and work. With COVID-19 continuing to impact people and countries around the world,  Every organization encouraging our teams to work from home as much as possible, as are many organizations in this region. And they expect this trend to continue across the world.

During this tough time, Microsoft's top priority is the health and safety of employees, customers, partners, and communities. And they are promoting and encouraging everyone to Microsoft Teams for all kinds of collaborations and communications use.

By making Microsoft Teams available to as many people as possible, Microsoft aims to support public health and safety by keeping teams connected while they work apart.

Everyone around the world is now working, learning, and connecting with colleagues, friends, and family through the power of technology. From kitchen tables to living room couches, and from home offices doubling as home schools—people are relying on Microsoft Teams to work and learn.

Businesses large and small are depending on Teams for mission-critical work. First responders are using Teams to communicate when lives depend on it. Governments are turning to Teams to move medical supplies to where they are needed most. Doctors and nurses are using it to consult with patients, and researchers are collaborating on it across continents to find a vaccine. And teachers are using Teams to teach students in entirely new ways. Important moments of human connection, achievement, and celebration have all moved online.

Hence, having a smooth Integration of Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform is one of the most common requirement these days.

This article focuses on - Automate of Microsoft Teams Provisioning with various Microsoft and Non-Microsoft Products so that every user who is sitting at any corner in the world, could collaborate, connect, and communicate with each other online with ease.

Today, In this article I am going to share the information about the Automation of Microsoft Teams Provisioning and it's Integration with PowerApps and PowerApps Portal. 


Business Challenge

Let me first explain my business use case that pushed me to think about implementing this feature:

Being an Ambassador of 365 Saturday (World largest MVPs Community), we organize many training, webinars, and events worldwide. However, from the last few months due to the COVID-19 lockdown, we have been organizing these events online (almost every weekend) via Microsoft Teams.

Hence, being an Organizer or Admin of the Event, we all have pressure to organize and manage these events online in the most effective and efficient manner.

Since we are using Microsoft Teams for all online Events, We have been doing the following activities manually almost every weekend:

• Create a new Team for a new Event.
• Add all the Event Organizers and Admin as a Team Owner
• Add all the Attendees as Guest Team Members (Outside or Internal Users)
• Send a Team Invitation (Meeting) to all the participants along with the Event Schedule.
• Remove/Delete the Team once the Event is finished (Optional).

Managing Teams within an Organisation for a specific project is an easy Job. Your Manager (being a Team Owner) needs to add only respective project members, However, just think, how tedious job it is when I have to create a Team and Add 500+ Participants manually, few of them need to be added on a request basis and all of these participants are not event part of your organization.

This made me think to design a reusable automate solution, which you can Plug and Play with any of the data source or power platform components like PowerApps, PowerApps Portals, Power Virtual Agent, Dynamics 365, Common Data Service, SharePoint, and many more...

Components and Technology Used

• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Power Automate
• PowerApps Portals/PowerApps
• Microsoft Graph APIs
• Azure Portal
• Microsoft Graph Explorer

Pre-Requisites:

• Dynamics 365 License/Trial
• Power Automate License/Trial
• Azure Subscriptions/Trial
• Global Admin Rights on Azure Active Directory

High-Level Requirement and Configuration

D365 Configuration:

• In Dynamics 365, I have Event, Organiser, and Attendee (Event Registration) Entities.
• Event and Attendees have 1:N relation, which means an Event could have multiple attendees.
• Organizer and Event have 1:N relation, which means one Organizer could host multiple events.
• I have a Boolean field on Event - "Publish to Teams", which publish an event on PowerApps Portals and Automate Teams configuration in Microsoft Teams
• I have a PowerApps Portal, which displays all the Events along with Event's Agenda, Speakers, and Registration option to allow Attendees to Register for a particular Event,

Business Requirement:

• Once an Organiser Publish the Event (set Publish to Team field's value to true), a new Teams should get created in Microsoft Teams with the same name as Event Name.
• The Organizer of that event should get added as the Owner of that Team.
• And, all the Attendees of that Event should get added as a Guest Members of that Team,
• Create a Team Meeting and Send the Meeting Invitation link to all the Event Participants.

Microsoft Teams Concepts

Before proceeding with solution design, I would like you to know a few fundamental concepts of Microsoft Teams, which is very useful from the developer perspective. Can have a look at this article.

• Microsoft Teams allow anyone with a business or consumer email accounts, such as Outlook, Gmail, or others, can participate as a guest in Teams.

• In order to add any Guest User (that doesn't belong to your organization) in Microsoft Teams, you can add them manually in Teams as well. however, to automate this process, these users need to be added in Azure AD as a Guest Users

• Owner/Admin of the Team must be a licensed Azure AD User

• Guest Team members are not necessarily to be a licensed Azure AD User. They could be Guest Azure AD Users as well.

• As an admin, you can add a new guest user to the organization in a couple of ways.

• Global admins or Teams admins and team owners add a guest to a team in the Teams clients or in the Teams admin center
• Add guests to your organization through the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) B2B collaboration.

• By default, guest access is turned off. As the Office 365 admin, you must turn on guest access for Teams before the admin or team owners can add guests. Follow this article
• Authorize Guest Access in Microsoft Teams, Follow this article

Solution Design

I have designed the Low Code - No Code solution using Power Automate, Microsoft Graph API and Azure

So a very high level we are going to perform the following tasks:

• Azure AD - To Register an Azure Application, so that we can call and authenticate Microsoft graph API
• Microsoft Graph API - To perform an operation in Azure AD and Microsoft Teams
• Azure AD - Retrieve/Create and get Access Token of Azure AD User
• Microsoft Teams - Create Team, Add Team Owner, Add Guest Team Member and Create Teams Meeting
• Dynamics 365 -  Data Source, which will pass all relevant information to Power Automate, like Team Name, Team Owner, Team Members, etc
• Power Automate -  Trigger on a particular event and Pull the information from Data Source (like D365) and automate the Team Creation, Adding Team Owner, Adding Team Members, and Send Team Invites to all participants

Here is a high-level Architecture of the same:

Let's get started...

Azure AD Configuration:

1.  Navigate to the Azure Portal.

2.  Search for App Registrations. Click App Registrations as shown below.

3.  Click on New Registration.

4.  Enter the Name and click Register.

5.  In the left panel, click Overview. Copy the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID values. These values will be used in Flow for authentication.

6.  In the left navigation, click Certificates & secrets. Click New client secret.

7.  Enter the description and set its Expiry to Never and click Add.

8.  Copy the secret value which will be used in flow for authentication.

9.  In the left navigation, click API Permissions.

10.  Click Add a permission. Select Microsoft Graph API as shown below.

11.  Click Application Permission and Add the following Permissions (Add permission based on your need). 

I have added the following Application and Delegate Permission based on my Requirements and the operations I need to perform using Microsoft Graph API.

12.  Click Grant admin consent.

Power Automate Configuration:

Since this is one of the most complex and key step of Team Configuration.

Let me first explain the Algorithm of complete logic, that I have converted to Power Automate.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

function CallPowerAutomate()

{

----Global Variable Initialization----

// Initialize few variables to store Azure AD configuration like clientid, secretkey and tenantid etc

// Initialize few more variables to store the value of HTTP JSON Response

For Example- We have to call Microsoft Graph API multiple times to create Team, to Add Member, to Add Owner, to retrieve the user from Azure AD, to create new users in Azure AD, etc.

In order to call Microsoft Graph API, we have to use HTTP requests in Power Automate. And get HTTP Response in JSON format. In order to store these JSON values, we need some additional variables to be initialized.

----Create Team----

// Using Microsoft Graph API - Create a new Team in Microsoft Team with default owner

----Add Attendees in Team as a Team Members----

Please Note - To add any user in Microsoft Team as a Guest User, the user needs to be present in Azure AD in the same tenant of Microsoft Teams.

There are basically two types of Azure AD Users

Member (Licensed) - User is licensed and active Member of Azure AD

Guest (Non-Licensed) - User is present in Azure AD as a Guest User, which doesn't need a license

Team Guest Member could be Member or Guest in Azure AD

// Retrieve all Attendees and Read each Attendee's Email Address

 Foreach(Attendees)

{

// Get Attendee Email Address 

// Perform Query in Azure AD using Microsoft Graph API to check whether any user of above Email Address present in AD or not

// if Present, then get the unique id of the user

// Add the user (Attendee) in the Team

// If not present, create a new user in Azure AD as a Guest User using Microsoft Graph API

// get the unique id of the user

// Add the user (Attendee) in the Team

}

----Add Organizer in Team as a Team Owner----

Please Note - To add any user in Microsoft Team as an Owner, that user needs to be present in Azure AD in the same tenant.

Team Owner must be a Member (Licensed User) in Azure AD. Guest cannot be added as Team Member

// Get Organiser Email Address 

// Perform Query in Azure AD using Microsoft Graph API to check whether any user of above Email Address present as a member or not

// if Present, then get the unique id of the user

// Add the user (Organiser) in the Team as a Team Owner

// If not present

// then do nothing, because we already added a default Owner while creating a new Team

}

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Power Automate Complete Steps (1 to 30)

Sub Steps of Step 26 (26-1 to 26-8)

Sub Steps of Step 26-7 (26-7-1 to 26-7-7)

Sub Steps of Step 29 (29-1 to 29-3)

Sub Steps of Step 30 (30-1 to 30-2)

Explanation of each Power Automate Step

// Step to Trigger Power Automate

1.When an Event Publish in Dynamics 365

// Step to Retrieve Organiser Email Address, We need the email id of an organizer to check whether a user of that email id already present in Azure AD or not

2. Get Organiser (custom entity - lookup on Event Entity) from Event Record

3. Get Contact Record (from Organiser record to read organizer Email Address

// Step to Initialize a few variables to store Azure AD Configurations and HTTP Response JSON values

4.Variable to Store Primary Owner of Teams (that we are going to create)

5.Variable to store Client Id, captured from Azure AD App

6.Variable to store Secret Key, captured from Azure AD App

7.Variable to store Directory (Tenant Id), captured from Azure AD App

8.Variable to store Attendee Email Address

9.Variable to store Guest User (Attendee) Guid already available in Azure AD

10.Variable to store Guest User (Attendee) Email already available in Azure AD

11.Variable to store JSON Body (use to add existing attendee in the team)

12.Variable to store JSON Body (use to add new attendee in the team)

13.Variable to store new Guest User (Attendee) Id created in Azure AD

14.Variable to store Type of Azure AD user, if he/she already present (Member/Guest)

15.Variable to store JSON Body (use to add organizer in Team)

// Call Microsoft Graph API using Power Automate HTTP Request to create a new Team. Also, Parse the HTTP JSON Response to retrieve newly created Team Id

16.Create a new Team with the same name as Event Name in Microsoft Team

17. Wait for Team to create, so delaying process for 30 seconds before performing the next step

18.Initialize Variable to Store newly created Team JSON response (store only location parameter from the whole response)

19.Initialize Variable to Store newly created Team Id from location parameter

// Call Microsoft Graph API using Power Automate HTTP Request to get Access Token. Authorization Token is one of the mandatory input parameters in order to Create a Microsoft Team meeting.

20.HTTP Request to Get Access Token

21.Parse HTTP JSON Response

22. HTTP Request to Create Team Meeting

23. Parse HTTP Response

24. Initialize Variable to Store Team Link (from joinURL parameter)

// We have used Two parallel branches (One Branch is to Retrieve all Attendees and add them in a newly created Team as a Guest Team member while Other Branch will be used to Retrieve the Organiser and add them as a Team Owner)

Left Branch:

// Retrieve all Attendees (participants) associated with an Event

//Read the email id of each Attendee.

//Find each Attendee Email id in Azure AD using Microsoft GraphAPI

//If the user is already present in AD, get the unique id of that user and add directly in Teams as a Team Member, 

//If not present, then first add the user in Azure Ad, get the newly created user id and then add it in Team as a Team Member

25. Use List Record Step to Read all Attendees associated with a Published Event

26. Add Apply to each control

  26-1 Use Apply to each, to read all retrieved attendee one by one

  26-2 Pass List Record Result (done  in 25) as an Input to Apply to each

  26-3 Use Get Record Step to get Email of Attendee

  26-4 Store the Attendee Email in a variable (initialize in step 8)

  26-4 HTTP Request to retrieve user information from Azure AD

  26-5 Parse the HTTP Request, JSON Response

  26-6 Store the ID, Email of User from JSON Response

  26-7 Add Condition Control

     26-7-1 Condition to Check, whether, the user is already present in AD

     26-7-2 If yes, Add the User directly in newly created Team

     26-7-3 If no, HTTP Request to Add the user in Azure Ad as a guest user

     26-7-4 Parse HTTP Request, JSON Response

     26-7-5 Store the JSON body to add the user in Team as a member

     26-7-6 Delay of 30 sec to make sure user is available in AD after creation

     26-7-7 Add the newly created Azure AD Guest User in Teams

// Send the Team Meeting Link to All Attendees

  26-8 Send the Team Meeting Link to Attendee

Right Branch:

// We already got the Organizer Email in Step 2 and 3

//Find Email id in Azure AD using Microsoft GraphAPI

//If the user is already present in AD, get the unique id of that user and add directly in Teams as a Team Owner, 

27. HTTP request to find Organiser in Azure AD

28. Parse JSON Response

29. Apply to each to read JSON value

  29-1 Pass Json Response as Input to Apply to each

  29-2 Store User Type in a variable (initialize in 14)

  29-3 Create JSON Body and Store it in in variable (initialize in 15) to Add the organizer in Team as a Team Owner in Later step

30 Add Condition Control

  30-1 Add Condition to check whether Organiser as an AD member present in AD.

  30-2 If Yes, then add organize as a Team owner in newly created Team

Microsoft Graph API

I know this article is a bit complex and hard to understand from a beginner's perspective. Because I have used so many Advanced features of Power Automate and other Azure components. But trust me, the intension of writing this article is not only to demonstrate the Power of Power Platform but also to showcase the capabilities of Microsoft Graph API, which is very useful nowadays in many requirements.

Let me explain some fundamental concepts of Microsoft Graph API...

What is Microsoft Graph API?

If we have to perform any operation in Dynamics 365 either from within the CRM Application like forms and views, through JavaScript, Plugin, Workflow, C# code, or through any language, Microsoft has given one Rest API called - Dynamics 365 WEB API (Enhanced version of Organisation Service or OData). And that API is only restricted to perform operations in Dynamics 365 only.

However, you already know that Microsoft Dynamics 365 is tightly coupled with numerous other Microsoft products and services like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Teams, Office 365. Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft Excel, and many more. And we often need to interact with these products and services to fulfill various business needs.

Hence, in order to interact with all these products and services, Microsoft introduced a new Rest API called Microsoft Graph API, which enables you to access various Microsoft Cloud service resources.

Why we call this API as Graph API?

The Graph API is named after the idea of a "social graph" — a representation of the information on Facebook. It's composed of nodes — basically individual objects, such as a User, a Photo, a Page, or a Comment.

What are the capabilities of Microsoft Graph API?

Microsoft Graph exposes REST APIs and client libraries that provide a Gateway to access data on the following Microsoft 365 services:

• Office 365 services: Delve, Excel, Microsoft Bookings, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook/Exchange, Planner, and SharePoint
• Enterprise Mobility and Security services: Advanced Threat Analytics, Advanced Threat Protection, Azure Active Directory, Identity Manager, and Intune
• Windows 10 services: activities, devices, notifications
• Dynamics 365 Business Central

Are there any pre-requisites that need to be taken care of before consuming Microsoft Graph API?

•  You need to have Azure Subscription
• You need to Register an Application in Azure. Capture its ClientID, SecreTKey, and Tenant ID.
• After you register your app and get authentication tokens for a user or service, you can make requests to the Microsoft Graph API.

Which language I can used to play with Microsoft Graph API?

Microsoft Graph API supports CORS, which means it is a Platform and Language-Independent API. Few languages that can be used to consume Microsoft Graph API are:

ASP.NET, C#, JAVA, Node JS, Android, Angular, Javascript, IOS, PHP, Python, React, Ruby, and many more.

What is the syntax of Microsoft Graph API?

Here is the syntax of Graph API-

{HTTP method} https://graph.microsoft.com/{version}/{resource}?{query-parameters}

Here,

HTTP method - GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, etc
Version  - Microsoft Graph currently supports two versions: v1.0 and beta. The v1.0 version includes generally available APIs. Use the v1.0 version for all production apps. The beta includes APIs that are currently in preview.
Query Parameter - Same like you use the query parameter and query in ODATA and D365 Web API

For Example - Below is the syntax of Microsoft Graph API to retrieve Azure AD user by Email Address

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users?$select=id,mail&$filter=mail eq 'arpit@dynamics.community'


Any Tool, where I can test the Request and Response of Microsoft Graph API?

Microsoft Graph Explorer is a web-based tool that you can use to build and test requests using Microsoft Graph APIs. You can access Microsoft Graph Explorer at

 https://developer.microsoft.com/graph/graph-explorer.


Postman is also a tool that you can also use to build and test requests using the Microsoft Graph APIs. You can download Postman at

https://www.getpostman.com/

I would recommend going with Microsoft Graph Explorer, as it is more informative and user friendly from a troubleshooting perspective.


Can I consume Microsoft Graph API in Dynamics 365 Plugins, Custom Workflow, etc?

Yes, it is possible. Since Graph API can be consumed through C# code, therefore you can write the same logic in Plugin also.


Can we call Microsoft Graph API from PowerApps Portals? Tell me with Real-Time Example?

Yes, it is possible. You can call Microsoft Graph API from PowerApps and Dynamics 365 Portals.

You can pass Input Parameters from Portal to Power Automate. Power Automate can call the Graph API and return the response back to PowerApps Portals. (Can refer my previous article for this)

If your organization is restricted to use Power Automate, you can also use Plugin, C# Code or JavaScript to perform the operations.

 Real-Time Example -  In PowerApps Portal, Microsoft is planning to deprecate the Local Authentication feature and recommend to use Azure AD B2C as a default Portal Authentication option.

Azure AD B2C users are the Guest AD Users created in Azure Active Directory, which doesn't require an AD license

Now, In order to interact with these Azure AD B2C Users from Dynamics 365 or Portals, we don't have other option except Microsoft Graph API to perform the following activities:

• To change the user's contact details in Azure like email, contact number, name, etc.
• To automate the user creation in Azure AD from Dynamics 365 and Portal
• To map existing D365 contacts with Azure AD B2C users.
• To manage the Invitation process for Azure AD B2C users.
• Automatically create username and password for Azure B2C users

Now, let's see how we have used Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate in our requirement

To Interact with Azure AD:

• Retrieve Azure AD User details (like Unique Id, UserType, etc) by Email Address.

• Create a Guest user in Azure AD, if the user is not already present.

• Get Acces Token of Azure AD User

To Interact with Microsoft Teams:

• Create a new Team in your Microsoft Teams

• Add Team Owner (must be Azure AD Member, not Guest User)

• Add Team Members (must be either Azure AD Member or Guest user)

Let's have a look, how we have consumed Microsoft Graph API in Power Automate

Retrieve User from Azure AD based on Email Address

Create a Guest User in Azure AD without sending an Invitation

Create a new Team with name - Power Guide Mentorship

Create a Team Meeting

Get Access Token of Azure AD User to authenticate Microsoft Graph API

Add Team Owner

Add Team Members as Guest Team Members

I hope this article helps you to Automate your Team's Provisioning.

That's all folks for today. Stay tuned for more updates. 

Stay Safe and Take Care !!

Cheers