Table of contents

• Examples of adaptive cards
• When to use adaptive cards
• Adaptive cards vs. PowerApps cards
• Create adaptive cards
• Important things to remember
• Copy the JSON payoad
• Adding it to your flow
• Adding dynamic data into the message
• Who is the sender / recipient of the card?
• Processing adaptive card outputs
• Further reading
• Get into it
• Microsoft resources:

Examples of adaptive cards

You will mostly use adaptive cards in Microsoft Teams by sending them with Power Automate. They can be used to simply display information or to ask users to input data. That data can then be saved in SharePoint or used elsewhere. Here you can see to simple examples in Microsoft Teams.

Technically, you can use adaptive cards in other areas like Outlook or Azure Bots, but I will focus on Microsoft Teams here. Outlook actionable messages are a great way to bring modern messages to your Outlook users. Take a look here:

Create adaptive cards

The creation of adaptive cards is done in an online designer: https://www.adaptivecards.io/designer/. By using drag-and-drop to place display and input elements, you can create fully custom cards. You can choose from various input types like text or date, as well as buttons that open a URL or submit data to a database.

When you drag-and-drop elements into designer, those elements will automatically get put into an overall JSON schema. That schema describes your adaptive card. You will need to copy this later on to your Power Automate workflow.

Important things to remember

1. Choose the correct host app. In most cases this will be Microsoft Teams:

2. Check your designed card in light and dark mode by using the Theme dropdown.
3. Be aware of the version at the top right. The versions mainly dictate the features available to use. Depending on your selected host, you can only use up to specific version. As of February 2025, Microsoft Teams supports max. 1.5 (Check here if necessary).
4. If you are using inputs and want to process them later, give every input an Id. An Id is a unique identifier that you need to use later in your flow to read the entered data.
5. To help the user understand what they are entering in what input, give every input a label.

Copy the JSON payoad

The JSON payload describes your adaptive card with all its texts and inputs. There is two ways to do that:

1. Copy payload with the button on the top right, this will copy it to your clipboard

2. Select all from the card payload editor below your card and copy it to your clipboard.

Adding it to your flow

As of now, you will find three main adaptive card actions in Power Automate. There are also other actions with cards and triggers, which I will not go into right now.

1. Post card in a chat or channel

This is used to send information to a user or channel. The information is read-only.

2. Post adaptive card and wait for response

This is used to interactively send information to a user or channel, meaning users can input data in form of text, choices, dates and more. Remember here, that flows do not wait indefinitely.

3. Update an adaptive card in chat or channel

This can be used to update an existing card, for example when a user inputs data and you want to respond with that data as a confirmation. Only available in group-chat or channel.

Adding dynamic data into the message

If your flow triggers from a SharePoint List and you want to use a column value, feel free to do that like you always would. Just make sure you keep the correct JSON schema. After inserting dynamic inputs, check all commas and quotation marks.

Who is the sender / recipient of the card?

You can send cards from the Flow-Bot, a User or a Copilot Studio Agent. These are the possible recipients of your message in Microsoft Teams.

1. Flow-bot to user, group chat or channel. User-directed cards will go to the users “Workflows” chat. For group-chat directed cards, you need to have the group-chat id.
2. User to group-chat or channel. This will include a hint of the flow owners name.
3. Bot to User. The bot will look like a 1:1 chat for the recipient and include the bots name.

Processing adaptive card outputs

If you did not insert dynamic content into the JSON, you can choose your outputs with the Id you gave them in any following actions. If you cant see your input elements or their ids, check your ids and if you already inserted data into your adaptive card schema. If so, either remove it or use an expression to get your data.

If not available, this is the expression you can use. Replace your action name within body() and the id of your input after data/.

outputs('Post_adaptive_card_and_wait_for_a_response')?['body/data/textName']
outputs('Post_adaptive_card_and_wait_for_a_response')?['body/data/selecteddate']
outputs('Post_adaptive_card_and_wait_for_a_response')?['body/data/favoritenumber']
outputs('Post_adaptive_card_and_wait_for_a_response')?['body/data/people-picker']

Further reading

Get into it

Leveling up your adaptive cards

Microsoft resources:

Schema Explorer | Adaptive Cards

Samples and Templates | Adaptive Cards