Exercise - Creating a manual flow and using expressions

6 minutes

Let's say you need to find out how much it would cost to carpet a room based on its square footage. In this exercise, you create a manual flow that uses your input to do those calculations.

Sign into Power Automate.
In the Copilot box, type Create an instant flow with two compose actions. Then select Generate.
Copilot automatically generates a flow. Review the flow to make sure it has a Manually trigger a flow trigger and two Compose actions.
Select the Manually trigger a flow trigger. The properties pane expands on the left. Select Add an input.
Choose Number and name it Square Footage.
Select Add an input, choose Number again, and name it Cost. This input will represent the cost per square foot.
Select the first Compose action.
Select the Inputs field and notice the blue button with a lightning bolt on top and fx on the bottom appears on the right side of the input field. Select fx to bring up the expression editor.
In the formula input field, type in mul(. Power Automate knows that you're using the multiply expression and automatically adds a ) at the end for you.
Select the Dynamic content tab below the formula input field in the expression editor.
Place your cursor between the two parentheses in the expression field and select Square Footage from the dynamic content. You can also begin entering "square" into the Search field, and the dynamic content will filter to Square Footage. When you do, notice your formula adds the referencing function triggerBody()?['number'] to your formula.

Tip

If you don't see Square Footage, select See More next to the action's title in the Dynamic Content box to show more property options.
To complete our mul formula, add a comma (,) and find/choose Cost in the dynamic content.
The complete expression should look like this:
```
mul(triggerBody()?['number'],triggerBody()?['number_1'])
```
In this expression, number indicates the first input for our trigger (the square footage), and number_1 refers to the second trigger input (the cost).
Select Add to save the expression into the Compose step.
You know your expression is correct if it's added into the Compose step. If you hover over it you should see code resembling the image below (which matches what we just saved):

This Compose step will now calculate the square footage of the area multiplied by the cost per square foot based upon inputs you provide. However, we still need to convert the final result to currency to get the output we desire.
Select the second Compose action and select the Inputs field. Select the blue fx button to open the expression editor.
Place your cursor in the edit field and type in formatNumber(.
With your cursor between the parentheses, select the Dynamic content tab and choose Outputs from the previous Compose step.
Next finish the expression with , 'C2'.

The C formats the number as currency, with the 2 representing how many decimal places. Refer to Standard numeric format strings for more number formats.
The complete expression is:
```
formatNumber(outputs('Compose'), 'C2')
```
Important

You may need to rename your Compose. In our example images, Copilot named the first Compose in the flow as Compose1. In your flow, Copilot may have named the first Compose without the '1' (such as our formula above). If this is the case, remove the 1 in Compose1 in your formula.
Select Add to save this expression in the inputs of the second Compose step.

Now after our flow is triggered, it first multiplies the two numbers, then converts the result into the correct currency format. This gives you a quick way to get the cost associated with carpeting a room.
Your completed flow should look similar to this:
In the top-right of the flow editor, select the Save button. Once it's saved select Test.
Choose Manually, and then select Test.
Enter the two number inputs, Square Footage and Cost, and then select Run flow at the bottom. Select Done to continue.
The page reloads, and you will see green check marks next to each step of your flow.
Selecting each step expands the details, showing you the inputs and outputs of each step.
Selecting the first Compose shows the multiplied value of the two numbers you entered, while selecting the second Compose shows the currency format of that multiplied value.

Great job on using expressions in your flow! Let's recap the steps we used in this exercise.

Manually trigger a flow - Allowed us to press a button to trigger a flow, and then enabled us to provide manual inputs. In this case our two inputs were Square Footage and Cost (per square foot), which we're using to find out the total price to carpet a room.

Compose - We used this action to write expressions using the data input into in the flow. First, we multiplied the two inputs from the trigger. This gave us the correct result numerically, but we still needed to convert it to currency. We then used another Compose action to format the multiplied result into currency, giving us the answer to how much it would cost to carpet a room.

Hopefully, you now feel confident that you can use expressions to manipulate data in your flow. If not, please review the content in the previous units. Then proceed to the knowledge check so you can complete this module.

Exercise - Creating a manual flow and using expressions

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