Using Expand Query in Power Automate with CDS

[PowerBack19]

Power Automate plus the Common Data Service

Before We Dive In

If you use Power Automate (Flow) and model-driven Power Apps, then (hopefully) you are aware of the “Common Data Service (current environment)” (CDS-ce) connector. Within this connector, there is an “Expand Query” option. This blog post will help explain how to use this.

Note: Check out Sara Lagerquist’s excellent blog called “CDS vs CDS: What Connector should I use in Power Automate?“. This will help you understand the difference between the Common Data Service connectors.

Let’s Dive In Power Apps Solution

To get started, I have already created a solution within the Power Apps maker site called “PA Flows” (for “Power Automate Flows”). The next step would be to create a new flow within the solution.

Power Automate solution created within Power Apps maker site

Create new Power Automate flow within solution

Note: For this example, I have already started a flow with a Flow Button as the trigger. You can utilize whatever trigger you would like within your flow(s).

The Flow Setup

In the flow, I have a “List Records” action (renamed “List Opportunities”). In this example I am listing the Opportunities from Dynamics 365. I also have a simple ODATA “Filter Query” of “statecode eq 0” (0 = Active/Open).

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[Ksepahman]

@PowerBack19  Thanks for the instructions. Though I still cannot get the 'fields' I called from other entities. So following your instructions, I did the following:

As you can see, I am not getting the 'first name' field. Then I thought there might be an issue with the schema. So, ran the flow to see how the result of previous step (list records) look like. And I have the following result:

Having followed the instructions, I m not entirely sure where this has gone wrong. Can you help with this?

Many thanks,

[PowerBack19]

@Ksepahman - I would suggest you set the HTML columns to "Automatic" and do a test run. Then check the output to see what is listed.