Issue 002: Say farewell to Project Online and Publisher
Project Online and Publisher are retiring. Plus wave 2 dates, a Power Pages permissions check, and security news.
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Best Practices
Here I share the best practices I use for the Power Platform tools, drawn from my own experience and plenty of learning from other people's mistakes so I don't repeat them. None of this is set in stone, so adjust it to fit how you work. Consistency matters, especially when several people share a platform. I see it constantly: SharePoint sites with mismatched naming, lists with convoluted names, and flows nobody can follow. When you agree on rules, everyone always knows what something means, and onboarding a new person becomes far easier. Even if you never adopt my conventions, at least write your own down. And even if you work alone, building your own reference makes you think, and you will often spot places where things could be better. That reflection is half the value.
My Claude best practices (so far)
Prompting rules built by trial and error. Pick the right model, curate context, and iterate on your own process.
Power Automate: Join Action
Joins an array into a single string with the delimiter you choose. An empty array returns an empty string.
Power Automate: getPastTime function
Returns the current timestamp minus a number of time units. Always counts back from now in UTC.
Stuck? Check Your Strategy First
Hitting a wall usually means the strategy is flawed, not the tool. Questions to ask before you push harder.
Excel: Mid Function
Extracts characters from the middle of a text string, starting at a position you choose. Always returns text.
What is uv and why it's so useful in Python?
Installs Python, isolates each project, and manages dependencies with two commands.
Power Automate: Teams - Get message details Action
Returns the full message behind a message ID: body, sender, mentions, and reactions. The body arrives as HTML.
Power Automate: chunk Function
Splits a string or array into pieces of a fixed size. The last chunk is often shorter.
Excel: Sumif Function
Sums the values that meet one condition. A mismatched sum range is silently reshaped, not flagged.
Power Automate: Teams - When a new chat message is added Trigger
Fires when a message is posted in any chat the connected user is in. Returns IDs only, not content.
Excel: Countif Function
Counts the cells in a range that meet one condition. Text matching ignores case.