Enable users to discuss ideas

Article
02/04/2023

The Employee Ideas sample app template for Microsoft Teams makes it easy to capture ideas and suggestions from your colleagues and have colleagues vote for their favorite ideas. But you might want to make this more interactive by facilitating discussions around ideas.

Currently the Employee Ideas app posts messages to a teams channel when an Idea is submitted. In this article, we'll extend the app to provide a mechanism for users to go to the idea channel message so the can interact and discuss the idea with other users.

Watch this video to learn how to enable users to discuss ideas:

Prerequisites

Install the Employee Ideas app in a team from https://aka.ms/TeamsEmployeeIdeas.
Enable posting of Teams channel messages in the app settings.
Add the Power Apps app in Teams by selecting the ellipses (…) and searching for Power Apps.
Right-click on the Power Apps app, and select Pop out app to launch Power Apps in a new window.

Add the message ID column

The Employee Ideas sample app template posts messages to teams channels when an app or a campaign are created. However, it currently doesn't store any record of that message. Since we want the app to give users the ability to comment, and discuss the idea using the posted message thread, we'll update the app to preserve the ID of the message.

Open the Ideas app using Power Apps in Microsoft Teams.
Go to the Build tab.
Select the data panel.
Locate Employee Ideas table in the data panel.
Select … (ellipsis), and then select Edit data.
Select Add column.
Enter a, such as Message ID.
Select Create.
Select Close in the bottom-right corner to return to Power Apps Studio.

Update the submit button to capture the message ID

Now we'll update the button that submits ideas to store the message ID in the Employee Ideas table so that later we can facilitate joining the conversation.

In Teams, right-click on Power Apps from the left-pane, and select Pop out app.
Select the Build tab.
Select the team in which Employee Ideas app is installed.
Select Installed apps.
In the Employee Ideas tile, select the Ideas link.
Switch to the Tree View to see controls in the app.
Search for btnCampaignIdeaControls_Submit to find the button that will submit an idea.

Note

This control has an OnSelect formula with it that will create the Employee Idea record in Dataverse for Teams, and create the Teams message. Copy the formula outside of the app, in case you need to revert any changes.
Select the btnCampaignIdeaControls_Submit button in the tree view.

Find the part of the formula that begins with the following:

If(
    tglIdeaDetailControls_PostToTeams.Value,......

And replace that part of the formula with the following formula:

If(
    tglIdeaDetailControls_PostToTeams.Value,
    If(
        IsError(
            UpdateContext(
                {
                    locTeamsMessage: MicrosoftTeams.PostMessageToChannelV3(
                        gblSettingTeamId,
                        gblSettingNotificationChannelId,
                        {
                            content: Concatenate(
                                "A new employee idea has been created!",
                                "<br><br>",
                                "<b>Description</b>",
                                "<br>",
                                locFormRecordIdea.Description
                            ),
                            contentType: "html"
                        },
                        {subject: locFormRecordIdea.Title}
                    )
                }
            )
        ),
        Notify(
            "Message was not posted. You may not have access to the Team and/or Channel. Contact the app administrator.",
            NotificationType.Warning),
            Patch(
                'Employee Ideas',
                locFormRecordIdea,
                {'Message ID': locTeamsMessage.id}
        )
    )
);

Add a button to direct user to discuss idea

Note

This app is responsively designed. Follow the steps below to maintain responsive design.

In the tree view, search for the btnCampaignIdeaControls_Votes control.
With this control selected, switch to Insert panel, and select Button.
Switch back to the Tree View panel, and select Button1.

Note

The button should be in the same container as the vote button.

Update Button1 properties:

Property	Value
Text	"Discuss"
X	`btnCampaignIdeaControls_Votes.X - Self.Width - 20`
Y	`btnCampaignIdeaControls_Votes.Y`
DisplayMode	`If( IsBlankOrError(gblRecordCampaignIdea.'Message ID'), DisplayMode.Disabled, DisplayMode.Edit )`
Visible	`btnCampaignIdeaControls_Votes.Visible`

Set the OnSelect property of the button to the following formula:

Note

The example below uses msteams: as the launcher. This launcher can also be https:, or dynamically switch to use the appropriate client.

With({varMessage: gblRecordCampaignIdea.'Message ID'},Launch(Concatenate("msteams://teams.microsoft.com/l/message/",gblSettingNotificationChannelId,"/",varMessage,"?groupId=",gblSettingTeamId,"&parentMessageId=",varMessage)))

Save and publish the app.

Test the app

Now that you've the discuss button to the app, lets test the process:

Open the modified Ideas app.
Create an idea, toggling the post to teams toggle to yes.
Select the Discuss button.
Verify that you're taken to the posted message and can reply to it.

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