Uploading button

[Tamras]

Edit -- i think I just figured this out and I can't delete this post.  I just inserted a new 'attachment' field...but I read a post somewhere indicating PowerApps does not support more than one attachment fields so unsure if this is the right way to do it. I'll continue testing. 

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Is it possible to add a button in PowerApps that would upload files to SP Document library? Not attachments. I basically need two attachment controls -- one control would be to attach all supporting documents while the other to upload docs requiring review and approval.  I want the latter to be stored in a document library while the supporting docs can remain as attachments on a list item. Search results mentioned about uploading the attachments to a document library using Flow but I don't need all attachments to be uploading -- so I'm hoping its possible by adding an 'upload' button. Basically, when user clicks the upload button, user selects the document and it will be uploaded in library.  I just need to figure out what type of control I could use for user to select the document from local drive. 

[Tamras]

@Pstork1 I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I added a flow and it saved a file in the library but when I open the file, it says "Failed to load PDF document"

Below is my formula on Upload button OnSelect. I don't know how I could actually get the FileContents right.

UploadToLib.Run("", AddMediaButton3.FileName, AddMediaButton3)

Also tried "" and AddMediaButton3.Media as FileContents.

UploadToLib.Run("", AddMediaButton3.FileName, "")

Flow

[Pstork1]

What kind of control is AddMediaButton3?  Tow things I would check:

1) Make sure the filename has a .pdf extension on it when you save it in SharePoint.  Otherwise you won't be able to open it.

2) I think your real problem is getting and passing the contents of the file you want to upload.  How exactly are you uploading the file?  And where is it being stored after upload and before you pass its contents to Flow?

[RandyHayes]

@Tamras 

Try changing your formula to this:

UploadToLib.Run("", AddMediaButton3.FileName, AddMediaButton3.Media)

Your Flow should have two parameters, the filename - which is coming from the AddMediaButton3.FileName, and the FileContent, which will come from AddMediaButton3.Media

Your Run formula has three parameters from what I see. I don't know what the first one is for, but you might need to look at redoing your flow to have just the two parameters - FileName and Media(Content)

[Pstork1]

@RandyHayes I actually tried to reproduce his issue in a Lab. And his real problem is the same one that we run into trying to save an uploaded image.  AddMediaButton3.Media doesn't contain the bytes for the file. It contains an APPRES://BlobManger reference.  The file is cached in the browser and the bytes aren't directly available to PowerApps other than for display as an Image.  John Liu has an interesting workaround using an  Outlook connector to get retrieve the Bytes of the image and send them to Flow.  But even he admits its a Hack.  Given the current capabilities in PowerApps and Flow I don't think this is possible without either a Hack or an external Azure Function.

http://johnliu.net/blog/2019/4/flowninja-hack-87-lock-microsoft-flow-powerapps-trigger-to-upload-ima...

[RandyHayes]

@Pstork1 

I'm sitting here scratching my head trying to understand why it is that I have this working flawlessly in several apps.

In most of them we used a detached Attachment Control to give us an "Open File" dialog and be able to select files.  Once the user selected a local file, it was added to a collection/gallery.   We've since changed a couple to use the AddMediaButton since it now seems to open a dialog with the "*.* All Files" instead of the Image files.

The Collection has two columns in it - fileName and Media

fileName is pretty obvious.  Media (is convertible) so viewing as a string shows it to be a URI to the App resources blobs (appres).

Once  the user was satisfied with their selections, a button was pressed and a flow was called.

Formula on the button:

ForAll(galPendingUpload.AllItems, UploadFile.Run({file:{name:fileName, contentBytes:Media}}))

This in turn is hitting a flow to do the upload to a sharepoint library.

This works like a charm.  Any type of file is selected and any type is uploaded and in SharePoint.

So, it's been a while since I've had to cross that bridge since I have a working solution, and I had to try to remember what got that working so well.

You reminded me actually...it was a post by John Liu.  However, not one on hacks or anything, but one that seemed to be the most simplest of all.  That was to use Flow Studio (or manually) to alter the trigger of a flow.

The unused Outlook Connector would worry me...how long until that's not supported and everything breaks?

The change of the flow trigger seemed lasting.

The one that seems perhaps best overall is the Azure Functions to do this, but again, have something working, no need to alter.

Anyway - turns out my Flow had some tweaks and I highly recommend the article above to do the trick.  It's pretty simple and will get right to the results.

BTW - Flow Studio is awesome - however, it is a subscription service after a free month.  You can still do it manually, but the studio is sweet.

[Pstork1]

Its essentially the same solution.  In the post I cited John Liu uses the Outlook connector since it already has the right JSON defintion.  Otherwise you can change the JSON manually or with Flow Studio.  Either way the key is to get the FileContents actually passed to Flow as a BYTE parameter.  The post I cited is his latest revision, published 4/2019. You are using the earlier one which is cleaner, but requires more tooling or a higher level of knowledge.  I had also forgotten the problem uploading files requires this kind of workaround.

[Tamras · Accepted solution]

Thank you both.  I finally got this to work after many attempts.

@RandyHayes  - the link provided helped but it didn't quite work, it was missing a step or for some reason it was giving an error message regarding headerSchema.  It worked after removing the "headerSchema" settings from definition.json file, except can't edit the flow again, it was giving a Cannot read property 'dynamicallyAddedInfo' of undefined error.  Bottom line, I ended up with the following "triggers" settings:

"triggers":{"manual":{"type":"Request","kind":"PowerApp","inputs":{"schema":{"type":"object","required":[],"properties":{"file":{"type":"object", "title":"File Content","x-ms-content-hint":"FILE","properties":{"name":{"type":"string"},"contentBytes":{"type":"string","format":"byte"}}}}}}}}

It doesn't seem to matter if I create a Manually Triggered or PowerApps button, I still ended up modifying the definition.json "triggers" settings. 

With Manually Triggered flow, I had to change 3 items

• triggers > manual > kind: PowerApps  (from triggers > manual > kind: Button)
• remove "headerSchema" setting - in order to import.
• remove "x-ms-dynamically-added" setting in order to edit the flow.

With PowerApps button flow, I only needed to add some properties

• Original settings - was returning formula syntax Run() in PowerApps

"triggers":{"manual":{"type":"Request","kind":"PowerApp","inputs":{"schema":{"type":"object","required":[],"properties":{}}}}}

• Inserted the following in "properties":{} - returned formula syntax Run({file:Record}) in PowerApps

"file":{"type":"object", "title":"File Content","x-ms-content-hint":"FILE","properties":{"name":{"type":"string"},"contentBytes":{"type":"string","format":"byte"}}}

**Not sure if the above can be shortened further but its working so far and I can also edit the flow.

Lastly, the formula on button's OnSelect:

UploadToLib2.Run({file:{name:AddMediaButton3.FileName, contentBytes:AddMediaButton3.Media}})

The PDF file successfully uploaded to SharePoint. 

Flow:

Note: I don't have Flow Studio, I just manually modified the json file in NotePad++