Contact

Header image
Header filter
Header slant

Microsoft Power Automate

Header quotes Modern Process Automation Header quotes

Power Automate: An Overview of all
BC Triggers

If you want to develop your first Power Automate flow, you might ask yourself: where should I start? The starting point of a flow is always a trigger. This article will give you a helpful overview of the triggers for Business Central available to you in Power Automate - divided into three categories. You’ll also find some basic hints on how to use them, so you can get started with your first flow right away!

Business Central as a Flow Trigger

The Business Central connector for Power Automate offers you the possibility to start a flow based on business events in Business Central, which can integrate other Microsoft 365 products (Outlook, Teams etc.) as well as a lot of other connectors into your workflow. For example, you can request approvals from Business Central or create your own action.

Like all Power Automate connectors, the Business Central connector also provides triggers and actions.

A trigger is always the first element in a flow and defines its starting point. The triggers for Business Central can be divided into three categories.

  1. BC triggers for record changes
  2. Triggers for approval workflows
  3. Action-based triggers

Hint: if there are different versions of a trigger (e.g. V2 and V3), use the latest version if possible.

1. BC Triggers for Record Changes

These triggers are executed as soon as a record is created, modified or deleted, for example when a sales document is created or a property of an item is changed. The following triggers are available:

Trigger Records

The trigger “When a record is changed” is triggered as soon as you make any change (create, modify or delete) to a record. The trigger “When a record is modified” is only triggered when a change is made to an existing record - but not when you create or delete a record.

If you are unsure which trigger is the right one, take a look at the information placed at the end of the shown trigger (and action) tabs.

Get Trigger Information
Hover over the small i to see further information.

All these triggers have in common that the fields “Environment, “Company”, “API Category” and “Table Name” are required.

Records Mandatory Fields

The output of all these triggers is the “Row id” of the record that has just been processed. This corresponds to the “SystemId” field in Business Central and is used in the following steps to retrieve additional information about the record and to process it further if necessary.

2. Triggers for Approval Workflows

There are triggers for approval of new master data and documents for the tables that are most frequently used in purchasing, sales and financial accounting.

Triggers for Approvals

These triggers are invoked when the “Request approval” action is used on a corresponding page in Business Central:

BC Send Approval Request

3. Action-based Triggers

In case you cannot map your workflow using the previous triggers, the Business Central connector provides another method that allows you to add an additional flow to the Power Automate action menu by clicking on ‘Automate > Power Automate > Create * flow’ in the action area “More options” on any page in Business Central.

Create Flow

If you select ‘Create approval flow’, you will receive a selection of templates to continue with. Or click on ‘➕ Create from blank’ to start with a flow that only has the trigger ‘For a selected record’ that you can design entirely to your liking.

Create Approval Flow

If you select ‘Create action based on flow’, you will receive a different selection of templates to continue with. But if you select ‘➕ Create from blank’ you will also start with the trigger ‘For a selected record’.

Create Action based on Flow

If you select ‘Create automated flow’, you will receive another set of templates to continue with. Or you choose ‘➕ Create from blank’ to start with a completely empty flow with neither trigger nor any action so that you can design the flow entirely to your liking.

Create Automated Flow

When you create a new flow that starts with the trigger “For a selected record”, you can specify - which is optional - in which environment, for which company (client) and on which pages or tables the action should be available. If you leave the fields blank, the action will be available in all environments, for each company and on all pages. In addition to a single page, you can also specify a table. In this case, the action should be available on all pages whose source table is specified.

Trigger for a selected Record

Hint: if you have experience in development for Business Central, you can also integrate an action that can be used to invoke the flow as a custom action in the action menu in Business Central. Flows with the trigger ‘For a selected record’ will appear automatically in the Power Automate tab.

New Actions

Get started with your first Power Automate Flow!

You should now have a useful overview of the available triggers for Business Central, so you can easily find the right trigger for your needs and start developing your first Power Automate flow for Business Central. To define what your flow does, use actions. For example, to implement an approval workflow in Power Automate.