Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags

This has been an interesting article for me to write. I hope you will find it equally interesting to read.

The tight integration of Flow and SharePoint Online in the Office 365 ecosystem allows for some powerful interactions of the prominent social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and in turn lead to the creation of some cool and exciting business applications. The end results are simple yet superior business products.

In this article, we will go by this outline,

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Let’s get started with the detailed stepwise instructions.

Step 1

Create a custom list in SharePoint Online – “The Twitter List”. The list  contains the below columns.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags
 
Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Step 2

From the list, click on “Flow” and then “Add a Flow”. On the pane on the right side that pops up, scroll through and look for “See more templates”. Click on it.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags
 
Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Step 3

The previous step will take you to the platform of Flow. Please register using the same Office 365 credentials if prompted/asked for. Within Flow, select the section “Social Media” from the header. This will open all existing flow template based around prominent social media networks. Select the flow “Save tweets that include a specific hashtag to a SharePoint list”, as depicted in the screenshot below,

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Step 4

In the next step, you will be asked to provide and authenticate a Twitter account that is going to provide the context for querying all the feeds from the data pool of twitter.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags
 
Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Once the twitter account completes the necessary permissions/authorizations, you will be redirected to the below screen. We are now ready to proceed with designing the flow. Click on “Continue”

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Step 5

This is the design screen of the Flow. There are 2 sections

  • When a new tweet appears – Here, we decide the search parameter
  • Create Item – Here, we assign or map the values from Twitter data to SharePoint list columns

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags

Step 6

Now, in this step, we will look for the appropriate search query. You can perform a query on Twitter on various search queries such as –

  • Any hashtags
  • Any particular username
  • Any phrase or sentence
  • Any location

 

Marvel just dropped their final trailer for Avengers Endgame yesterday. Let us see what folks on Twitter are saying about that. We will search in Twitter for the hashtag “#AvengersEndgame”.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags

Step 7

In this step, we will map the SharePoint list columns with the appropriate Twitter data available. From the “Create Item” block as shown below, select the correct site from Site Address. Once, it is selected, select the list in consideration.

After the list is selected, the list columns will be populated. On clicking the text boxes, a new pop up will appear. This section contains all the data available for use from Twitter. You can map any of the fields to the SharePoint list columns as shown below.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Map all the twitter data to your SharePoint list as per your requirements.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Once everything is selected, click on “Save”

Step 9

When the flow is saved, you can click on “Test” to execute the flow once. After clicking on “Test”, select the option “I’ll perform the trigger action” and then click on “Save and Test”

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags
 
Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

Step 10

This previous step will save flow. If everything goes well, you will be seeing a confirmation screen for the same.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

And that’s almost done!!

If you go back to your SharePoint list, it will be populated with entries (It was flooded with Avengers Endgame tweets and records, as it was a very high trending hashtag). But the Picture column will be still in hyperlink mode.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

To fix this, just change the settings of that column from hyperlink to picture, and it's done!!

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags 

There you go – your SharePoint list is live with the data from Twitter.

Create SharePoint List Items From Twitter Hashtags