Power Automate - "Loading" message for Adaptive Card?

Hi @Ryan Carr,
This is a really good question! I don't think there is a way to do this at the moment unfortunately. The Adaptive Card Host SPA will make a call to the service URL you configured to fetch the card definition, and the card won't show until the response is returned.

One (admittedly imperfect) workaround you could try would be to use a “multi-card” approach, where your flow returns a very simple initial card that just contains an action button. That action would call a 2nd flow that builds the actual card with the summary details, and the resulting card would replace the initial simple card. This technique is described in more detail here:

Introducing Multi-card Interfaces with Adaptive Cards - Blackbaud Community

I have a few ideas for how Blackbaud could enhance the Adaptive Card Host SPA to show an initial card with “Loading…” - I'll put some thought into that.

@Ryan Carr
if you want to use Adaptive card, then yes, you can use the multi-card interface. I have a template on this that uses one flow instead of multiple flow: https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/586/69847 (this template can be found in template showcase, search AIAC will find it: All-Inclusive Adaptive Card)

So you can have a simple display like:

When the button “Load Giving Trend” is clicked on, then it will call the flow again and do all the “work” that takes time and when done, will display the real stuff.

This is good especially when you know the “loading” takes time. Your staff is using RE NXT daily and opening many constituent records, 90% of the time, they are likely not going to the constituent page to see the giving trend, and if it always load, you are wasting API quota and also performance hit on your flow.

If you really don't want a “click to load”, then Adaptive card isn't right for you. You can consider using AIO (All-In-One) custom tile by Glen

@Glen Hutson can provide some info

@Ryan Carr My idea (mentioned below) for enhancing the Adaptive Card Host SPA would be something like this (and would require Blackbaud to implement it):

• Blackbaud add support for a new optional query parameter, &showLoading=True to the configuration URL.
• When present, the Host SPA will immediately show a (default) card with a “Loading…” message (and thus, the add-in will be immediately visible)
• The Host SPA will then call the cardServiceUrl (your flow) to fetch the card definition (which may take some time)
• When the card definition is returned, it replaces the initial default card shown.

This would allow you to achieve the user experience you want and you wouldn't have to build 2 flows (one for the default card, and one for the “real” card).

(you'd still want to evaluate whether that is actually a good user experience in your scenario though)

@Ben Lambert
Great ideas @Heather McLean maybe can help drive it?

@Ben Lambert
I don't think this will work for Ryan, but I chose to use an button for our service request add-in because of the tile loading every time someone opens a constituent record. It would be nice if the add-in would not call the flow unless the tile is expanded/opened.

@Alex Wong
Very clever, Alex! This will be incredibly helpful when I finally get the time to create a “relationship” tile for our non-constituents. I’ve always found it frustrating that non-constituent records don’t indicate which constituent record they’re tied to, so creating a tile to display that information has been on my to-do list for a while.

I’m also very interested in learning more about how to limit which users can load a tile. So far, all the add-ins I’ve created use validation set to "anyone," and I simply control access by restricting who can access the URL that loads the page. It would be great if you could consider demonstrating how to limit this more effectively at the next Power Automate user group meeting—I'd really appreciate it! ?