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Microsoft Certified Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate · Free Practice Question Easy

Question 41

Scenario: Roxxon Energy Corporation (NYSE: ROX) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered at the One Roxxon Plaza in Manhattan, New York City. It is one of the largest fuel conglomerates around the world. The Corporation generated billions of dollars in profits each year by refining and manufacturing products related to oil through its many holdings. The founder of the company, J.T. Jones hired you as a Microsoft Power Automate SME to assist with their IT projects.

At the moment, the team is working on flow functions.

Which is the correct syntax for a string in a flow function?

  • A

    This is my string.

  • B

    'This is my string.'

  • C

    makeString(This is my string.)

  • D

    "This is my string."

Reveal correct answer

Correct answer: B

Explanation

  • Flow requires single quotes (') around a text to make it a string.

Types of functions

Functions are grouped into 10 different categories like math and logic. The categories are just a logical organization to making finding the function you need easier. Below you will get an overview of each category and some examples.

Keep in mind as you go through the various examples, we use static text and values. This is to allow you to test and recreate the examples as easily as possible. In your flows, you may substitute dynamic content in place of this static data. Just ensure that your dynamic data is in the correct format for the function.

In the screenshot below, you will notice to the right of each category header (like String functions or Collection) the words "See more." By selecting "See more," the complete list of functions for that category will be shown.



Select See more beside String functions.



String functions

String (text) functions are used to modify strings, find characters in a string, format strings, and more. Text manipulation is a core skill often used when trying to better format or modify data you received from somewhere else.

An example of a string function is the formatNumber function. This function can convert a number into a string in a given format. A common request is to make a string look like currency. To change the number 12.5 into $12.50, use the following formula:



The C represents the Currency numeric format string. Don't worry, a list of the other options are available at Standard numeric format strings. You also might be asking what if you wanted to show the number as currency but with the Yen symbol? There is an optional parameter where you can pass the locale.



Collection functions

These functions are used for arrays and strings. They may be used to check if an array is empty, to grab the first, or last item, or even for join, union, and intersection operations.

An example of a helpful Collection function is length. You can use length to return the number of items in a string or array. The following example would be used to count the number of characters in the string "I love Power Automate."



The output would be 22. You can use this type of function for validation or in conjunction with the String functions to manipulate strings.

Logical functions


These functions are used to work with conditions, to compare values, and to do other logic-based evaluations. These are often thought of as If statements where you want to compare if a number is greater than another number. Flow supports all of the logical comparisons you would expect.

In the example below, an expression will compare if 12 is greater than 10 and then output the appropriate string. This will also be your first expression that uses more than one function. We will combine if and greater logical functions.



The result of this expression would be the string "Yes". To understand the expression, work from the inside out. Greater(12,10) returns true or false depending on if 12 is greater than 10. Since it is, the value returned is true.

Now that you know the answer is true, you can see that the If function returns the data after the first comma. In this case that is the string "Yes". Had it been false then the string "No" would have been returned.


Note: While you can write logical expressions as shown above, there is also an action called Condition that lets you write If statements without an expression.



Here is the same condition written using the action.



You will find over time that you use a combination of both methods depending on your requirements.


Conversion functions

These functions are used to change the type of your data. This can be simple things like converting a text number into an integer, or more complex functions like changing the encoding of a file from base64 to binary. Knowing that these functions are available will help you overcome problems you encounter when getting your data shaped correctly.

A common scenario is the need to use int or float to change a text number into an actual number. This is common when importing data into your flow from a data source. The number 12 or 12.4 may be stored as text. In order to use that number in a logical function or write it to a location that expects a number, you will need to covert it. The following example changes the string "12" into the integer 12.



That will output the integer 12. Had it been the string "12.4" then you would need to convert it to a float because of the decimal digits. In that case you would use



Now you could use text number to do the previous example.



This would output the string "No" because 12 is not greater than 12.4. Combining functions like this is common and is a useful pattern to learn.


Math functions

Math functions do exactly as you would expect. They allow you to add, subtract, multiply, and perform other similar functions. In addition, Math functions allow you to find the smallest and largest numbers of several numbers or get a random number, among other things.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is a different function for adding numbers (add) and for subtracting numbers (sub). Many formula languages add negative numbers to produce subtraction, but flow does not. To add two numbers together, you use the following:



This would return 25. If you wanted to add three numbers, then you would need to add a second function like so:



This would return 40. As you have seen before, you will often find yourself nesting functions to get your desired results.


Date and time functions

These functions are used to return the current date and time, change time zones, find specific info about a date and time, and do other date/time manipulations. If you have date and time values in your data, you'll need these functions.

One important thing to remember as you explore date and time functions in flow is that they are often based on UTC. Most data sources pass data back and forth with flow in UTC format. Also, if you use the function UTCNow() that will return the current time in UTC format. If you want to use that to compare to user data that is currently in the Eastern Time Zone, then you will need to use the following formula to convert it:



This will output 01-09-2020 05:39 PM. For a complete list of the date time format options, review Custom date and time format strings.


Referencing functions

The referencing functions are used to work with the outputs of your actions and triggers. The nice thing is that the majority of the time, flow will write these functions for you. When you add dynamic content to your flow, you are using referencing functions without knowing it. If you add dynamic content and then hover of that content, you can see this in action.

In the screenshot below, by adding the User name dynamic content from my trigger to the Inputs for Compose you can see this in action.



By hovering over the User name with the mouse pointer, you can see



Flow created the expression using the triggerOutputs for you. It is the pulling from the Headers property the x-ms-user-name-encoded property. Most of the time in flow you will reference these properties via dynamic content. But it is possible to write your own expressions to recreate this if necessary. Each trigger and action will have different formats for how you retrieve their data.

Explore these functions by adding different triggers, actions, data sources, and apply-to-each loops in your flow. Then, use their properties as dynamic data to see more examples. The good news is writing these types of expressions is not common.


Workflow functions

The workflow functions are used to retrieve information about your flow and are closely related to the referencing functions. One of the functions is called workflow. You can use it as shown below.



This will return the ID of the current flow run. You could use this for error reporting or logging if needed. These functions are not commonly used.


URI parsing functions

These functions are used to dissect a URI that is passed in as a string. You may use these functions to find the host, path, query string or other portions of the URI. The following example shows you how to use uriQuery to get the query string portion of the given URI.



This would return the string "?Test=Yes" which you could then parse with string functions to get the value passed in from the URI.


Manipulation functions

Manipulation functions are used to work with specific objects in your flow. You can do things such as find the first non-blank value, work with properties, or find xpath matches. These functions are used typically in JSON or XML node evaluations.

One function you may find handy here is coalesce. This function will allow you to find the first non-null value from a specified set of values. You use the function as shown in the following formula:



This formula would return the string "Power Automate". Handy when you are passing in multiple values and want to find the first one that is not null.

A. Strings in Microsoft Power Automate should always be enclosed in quotation marks to be recognized as string values. Without the quotation marks, the text will not be interpreted as a string and may result in errors.

B. In Microsoft Power Automate, strings should be enclosed in single quotation marks (' ') to indicate that it is a string value. This syntax is the correct way to define a string in a flow function.

C. The syntax provided is incorrect for defining a string in a flow function. The correct way to define a string is to enclose the text in single quotation marks (' ') to indicate that it is a string value.

D. While double quotation marks (" ") can also be used to define strings in some programming languages, in Microsoft Power Automate, strings should be enclosed in single quotation marks (' ') to be considered valid syntax.

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