Introduction
Site Templates or Site Designs are a way to apply additional functionality commonly across multiple sites. We can apply it during the site provisioning process or after the creation of a site. Site designs have now been renamed as Site Templates. There are out-of-the-box Site Templates that you can apply to sites and the creation of a custom site template/design that applies company branding, theme, etc. is also possible.
Many a time we would need the ID of the Site Template to apply it to the Site. In this article, we will see how we can fetch the Site Template ID of all the Out of the Box Site Templates using Power Automate
Scenario
While I was applying the Showcase Site Template to a newly created site, I was fetching the ID from the official documentation where it listed the ID as 89f21161-0892-497a-91cb-5783eeb1f5f2
I tried using this in the PowerShell Cmdlet and even after many tries, the template was not getting applied which was when I decided to fetch the ID for Showcase Site Template from SharePoint and we can achieve this by issuing a POST request to the URL :
| _api/Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.WebTemplateExtensions.SiteScriptUtility.GetSiteDesigns?store=1 |
Ensure that you append ?store=1 so that it fetches you the Out of the Box Site templates else you will get only the Custom Site Designs/Templates that you have deployed in the Tenant.
Setup the flow
To test this out, we will create a flow that is triggered manually and add the action Send an HTTP request to SharePoint with the below parameters
|
Site Address |
SharePoint Admin Centre URL |
|
Method |
POST |
|
Uri |
_api/Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.WebTemplateExtensions.SiteScriptUtility.GetSiteDesigns?store=1 |
The above action will output the body in the below format:
We need to pick the Details like Title and ID which are present in the Results Array of the body object. To do that, let’s add a Select action that will take the results array as the input and map the needed fields so that it will output a JSON of the required fields. We will use the below expressions in the select action
|
From |
outputs(‘Send_an_HTTP_request_to_SharePoint’)?[‘body’][‘d’][‘GetSiteDesigns’][‘results’] |
|
Title |
item()?[‘Title’] |
|
Id |
item()?[‘Id’] |
|
Description |
item()?[‘Description’] |
|
SupportedWebTemplates |
item()?[‘SupportedWebTemplates’][‘results’] |
Now that we have the filtered output that contains the Site template details, for easier review, we will convert it into a CSV file and share it back via email. We will give the Selection action’s output as the input to the Create CSV table action and use its output as an attachment in the Send an email action.
Thus the overall flow will look like this:
Test the flow
Lets manually trigger the flow which will pick the site details from the REST URL which goes through the Data format operations like Select and Create CSV actions and we will get the final CSV via mail which would look like this:
|
Title |
Id |
Description |
SupportedWebTemplates |
|
Department |
73495f08-0140-499b-8927-dd26a546f26a |
Engage viewers with department news, events, and resources. |
[“68”] |
|
Event planning |
9522236e-6802-4972-a10d-e98dc74b3344 |
Coordinate and plan event details with your team. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Leadership connection |
cd4c26b2-b231-419a-8bb4-9b1d9b83aef6 |
Build organizational culture by connecting leadership and teams. |
[“68”] |
|
Project management |
f0a3abf4-afe8-4409-b7f3-484113dee93e |
Collaborate with your team to share project details and resources. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Training and courses |
695e52c9-8af7-4bd3-b7a5-46aca95e1c7e |
Prepare training course participants for specific learning opportunities. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Training and development team |
64aaa31e-7a1e-4337-b646-0b700aa9a52c |
Brainstorm and plan opportunities to help others learn. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Learning central |
b8ef3134-92a2-4c9d-bca6-c2f14e79fe98 |
Provide a landing experience for your organization’s learning opportunities. |
[“68”] |
|
New employee onboarding |
2a23fa44-52b0-4814-baba-06fef1ab931e |
Guide new employees through your organization’s onboarding process. |
[“68”] |
|
Crisis management |
905bb0b4-01e8-4f55-b73c-f07f08aee3a4 | Share news, provide support and connect people to resources in a crisis. |
[“68”] |
|
Team collaboration |
c8b3137a-ca4c-48a9-b356-a8e7987dd693 |
Manage projects, share content, and stay connected with your team. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Blank |
f6cc5403-0d63-442e-96c0-285923709ffc |
Create your own custom site starting with a blank home page. |
[“68”] |
|
Showcase |
6142d2a0-63a5-4ba0-aede-d9fefca2c767 |
Spotlight a product, event, or team using visual content. |
[“68”] |
|
Topic |
96c933ac-3698-44c7-9f4a-5fd17d71af9e |
Engage viewers with informative content like news and events. |
[“68”] |
|
Retail management team |
e4ec393e-da09-4816-b6b2-195393656edd |
Unite retail store managers, emphasize store news, and share management resources. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Store collaboration |
811ecf9a-b33f-44e6-81bd-da77729906dc | Coordinate and prepare retail teams with current store news, resources, and training. |
[“1″,”64”] |
|
Volunteer center |
b6e04a41-1535-4313-a856-6f3515d31999 |
Onboard, train, and prepare volunteers for campaigns and events. |
[“68”] |
The Supported Web template ID tells on which Base Web Template, the Site Template/Design can be applied because we cannot apply a Site Template on a non-compatible Web Template. From the 4th column in the above table, the Web templates correspond to:
- 1: Team Site Without Office 365 Groups
- 64: Team Site
- 68: Communication Site
- 69: Channel Site
With this exercise, I was able to confirm that the ID mentioned in the Official Documentation for Showcase was “89f21161-0892-497a-91cb-5783eeb1f5f2” but the value we received from the REST API was “6142d2a0-63a5-4ba0-aede-d9fefca2c767”. So, I have raised a document updation request to get this changed.
Summary
Thus, we saw how we can use Power Automate to fetch all the SharePoint Out of the Box Site Templates and their IDs.
