Adaptive Cards – what are they and how have we used them

Information in our fast-paced work worlds is growing rapidly. Being able to get information and respond fast is becoming ever important. To encapsulate all our business processes, the building of applications via Power Apps has become more popular. However, how do we get a client to input information without granting access to our internal systems? Or simplifying the CEO’s decision process without clicking through complex applications? Enter Adaptive cards!
Adaptive cards are pixel-perfect, actionable messages which can be sent via Outlook, Microsoft Teams, virtual bots and more. These cards can be created to show the information you want and can include input fields such as text fields, dropdowns, date and time fields, and checkboxes to return information from the recipient. The sending of cards and the returning of information is made possible through Power Automate, further utilising the returned metadata.
Examples of how OfficeLabs have used adaptive cards:

• In an asset management solution:
  • Due to the complexity of the application, as well as the number of stakeholders, we decided to use adaptive cards to relay key information to users via email about company assets.
  • In certain scenarios, recipients were asked to make decisions on assets when returned. For instance, if the item was damaged line managers were required to decide on whether to go ahead with the repair or not. If the repair was to go ahead, they would need to provide a budget code to the IT department.
  • Approve’ and ‘reject’ buttons were provided, along with an input field for the budget code if the item was approved.
    Learn more about the asset management solution we built.
• In an invoice approval solution:
  • To limit the number of touch points in the approval process, we decided to send adaptive cards to an approval group in Microsoft Teams.
  • This aligned to how decision makers liked to work and provided them with key details required to decide.
  • The card had input fields to determine if all work/supply’s had been completed, the approval status and any additional comments. If unknown to the approval group, the approval can be reassigned to a specific user. The user could be selected via a people picker, which leverages Microsoft Graft API to find any user in the company’s environment.
  • Learn more about the invoice approvals solution we built.

Above are just two examples of how we have used adaptive cards – for more examples of how these cards can be leveraged to extend your businesses processes, see the links below:

Adaptive Cards

Samples and Templates | Adaptive Cards

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