Power Automate: People Picker in Teams Adaptive Cards Using Microsoft Graph API

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 Scenario

In real-time automations, collecting user information such as names or email addresses is a common requirement. Relying on plain text inputs in Adaptive Cards forces users to manually enter these values, often resulting in typos or invalid data, which can negatively impact downstream automation logic.

Adaptive Cards do not natively support people picker functionality, which becomes a key limitation when posting cards to Microsoft Teams via Power Automate and requiring accurate user input.

Solution

To overcome this limitation, we can leverage Microsoft Graph API within Power Automate to retrieve user data dynamically and present it as a dropdown (ChoiceSet) in an Adaptive Card. This approach ensures controlled user selection and significantly reduces manual input errors.

Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Create an Instant Cloud Flow

Create an Instant cloud flow with a manual trigger (or any suitable trigger based on your automation needs).

Instant cloud flow


Step 2: Retrieve Users from Microsoft Graph

Add Send an HTTP request action from the Office 365 Users connector and configure it as shown below

  • Method: GET

  • URI: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users?$select=id,displayName,mail&$top=20

  • Content-Type: application/json

HTTP request


Step 3: Transform the Graph Response

Add a Select action from the Data Operations connector to transform the Graph response into a format supported by Adaptive Cards.

From
body('Send_an_HTTP_request:_Get_Users')['value']
Map
{
"title": item()?['displayName'],
"value": item()?['mail']
}

This creates a list of user options for the dropdown.

Select Properties


Step 4: Build the Adaptive Card with Dropdown

Add a Compose action and insert your Adaptive Card JSON.
Use an Input.ChoiceSet control and bind the choices property to the output of the Select action.

This dynamically populates the dropdown with users retrieved from Microsoft Graph.

Compose Adaptive Card

JSON:

{

  "$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",

  "type": "AdaptiveCard",

  "version": "1.5",

  "body": [

    {

      "type": "TextBlock",

      "text": "Select a user",

      "weight": "Bolder"

    },

    {

      "type": "Input.ChoiceSet",

      "id": "selectedUser",

      "style": "compact",

      "placeholder": "Choose a user",

      "choices": @{body('Select:_User_properties')}

    }

  ],

  "actions": [

    {

      "type": "Action.Submit",

      "title": "Submit"

    }

  ]

}

Step 5: Post Adaptive Card to Microsoft Teams

Add Post adaptive card and wait for a response action from the Microsoft Teams connector.

  • Post as: Flow bot

  • Post in: Channel

  • Message: @outputs('Compose:_Adaptive_Card')

  • Team: Select the desired team

  • Channel: Select the desired channel

Post adaptive card

Step 6: Capture the Selected User

Add a final Compose action to read the user selection from the card response.

Expression

body('Post_adaptive_card_and_wait_for_a_response')?['data']?['selectedUser']


Output




Best Practices

  • Limit the number of users in the dropdown to improve usability

  • Prefer user IDs over email addresses when possible

  • Apply filters (department, role, group) when retrieving users

  • Use this approach for Teams-based workflows where accuracy matters

Conclusion

Although Adaptive Cards in Microsoft Teams do not provide native people picker support, combining Power Automate with Microsoft Graph API offers a reliable and supported workaround. By dynamically populating a dropdown with user data, you can improve data accuracy, enhance user experience, and build more resilient automations.

This pattern is especially useful for approvals, task assignments, and request routing scenarios in Microsoft Teams.

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