This Power Automate flow shows the power the Microsoft Power Platform has to automate workflows. I did something similar for an executive who was wasting time with the menial task of filling out certificates. This freed them up to do more important tasks, and resulted in quicker turnaround time for the certificate recipients.
The idea is that grade-school teachers would have a spreadsheet template pre-filled out with students and their parents and the parent’s email. Optionally, the teachers could fill out the spreadsheet and an administrator could cross reference students with their parents and their emails (perhaps another opportunity for automation). Then the spreadsheet would get emailed as an attachment to a dedicated email. The Power Automate would then do the hard work, and fill out each report card, email it to the parents, and copy the data to a master SharePoint report cards list.
Here is an example of a spreadsheet filled out for a couple teachers. This would then be emailed as an attachment.
We use a Microsoft Word document template for the individual report cards like this.
I’m not going to go through all the details of the Power Automate, however it will be triggered by an incoming email to a specific email address. Some additional security could be done here. This is also a premium flow because it contains Word Online connectors. There are lots of other details that need to be addressed, and edge cases.
The email the parents receive is customized and includes a PDF attachment (Sorry kids who try to change their F’s into A’s).
A SharePoint list is then updated. This list can be used as a master reference that continually gets updated over the years. Perhaps each grade sends in a spreadsheet. We can then group by teacher, or search for a particular student. The data could also be exported to a spreadsheet or Power BI to be analyzed for things like teacher performance reviews, or problem students, or learning trends.
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