Cloud FlowData OperationsAdvanced

Dropbox Backup to Azure Blob

Each night the flow exports new and changed files from a Dropbox folder to an Azure Blob container organized by date, writes a manifest with content hashes for integrity, and reports counts and failures to Teams. Provides a verifiable off-platform backup of Dropbox content.

DropboxAzure Blob StorageMicrosoft Teams

Unique name

FlowLibsDropboxBackupToAzureBlob

Publisher

FlowLibs (flowlibs)

Version

1.0.0.0

Components

6 env vars + 1 cloud flow

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Provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. Review and test each pattern in a non-production environment before deploying it to live automations. See our Terms.

What it does

Overview

This flow provides a verifiable, off-platform backup of Dropbox content into Azure Blob Storage. Each night it lists files in a configured Dropbox folder, copies the new and changed files into a Blob container organized by date (yyyy/MM/dd), writes an integrity manifest (per-file name, size, last-modified, and Dropbox content hash) alongside them, and posts a run summary to a Microsoft Teams channel.

Why it matters: a single-platform copy is a risk. A hashed, dated Blob backup gives recoverable, verifiable off-site protection of Dropbox data, and the Teams report makes nightly success/failure visible without anyone logging in to check.

Ships Off (demo). Enable Blob versioning / immutability (WORM) for ransomware resilience.

Why you'd use it

Use Case

IT/DevOps wants a nightly, verifiable backup of critical Dropbox folders to Azure, with an audit manifest for integrity checks and a restore path, plus a daily heads-up in Teams.

Step-by-step

Flow Architecture

Nightly 00:30 Recurrence

Recurrence

Nightly backup window (00:30).

Initialize Trace, Config & Counters

Initialize variable

Mints a correlation id, binds the backup folder, container, storage account, and lookback; computes the dated partition (yyyy/MM/dd) and the delta cutoff; seeds the manifest array and the backed-up / failed counters.

List Dropbox Files

Dropbox - ListFolderV2

Lists items in the backup folder.

For Each File

Apply to each (concurrency 1)

For files (not folders) changed within the lookback window, a try Scope downloads the content (GetFileContentByPath), uploads it to container/yyyy/MM/dd/<name> (Azure Blob CreateFile_V2), appends a manifest entry (name, size, last-modified, integrity hash), and increments the backed-up counter; failures increment the failed counter.

Compose & Write Manifest

Compose + Azure Blob CreateFile_V2

Assembles the run manifest (correlation, counts, file entries) and writes manifest-<timestamp>.json to the same dated partition.

Notify Teams

Teams - PostMessageToConversation

Posts counts, failures, destination, and correlation id to the channel.

Solution config

Environment Variables

Schema name	Type	Default	Description
flowlibs_DropboxBackupFolder	String	/FlowLibs Backup Source	Dropbox folder path to back up.
flowlibs_BackupLookbackHours	String	24	Delta window (hours) - only files changed within this window are backed up.
flowlibs_BackupContainer	String	/nightly-backups	Azure Blob container path.
flowlibs_BackupStorageAccountUrl	String	https://yourstorageaccount.blob.core.windows.net	Storage account / blob endpoint (Blob dataset).
flowlibs_TeamsGroupId	String	<your-team-id>	Teams team/group id for the report.
flowlibs_TeamsChannelId	String	<your-channel-id>	Teams channel id for the report.

Auth dependencies

Connectors & Connections

Connector	API name	Actions used
Dropbox	shared_dropbox	ListFolderV2 GetFileContentByPath
Azure Blob Storage	shared_azureblob	CreateFile_V2
Microsoft Teams	shared_teams	PostMessageToConversation

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Tweaks & variations

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Recursion into subfolders: ListFolderV2 lists the root only (the recursive useFlatListing flag is internal). Add an inner loop over subfolders, or trigger per-subfolder, to back up a whole tree.
True cursor-based delta: Store the Dropbox list cursor in a Dataverse row between runs and pass it via nextPageMarker for exact since-last-run semantics.
Canonical content hash: The manifest uses the Dropbox ETag (revision). For the canonical content_hash, fetch it via GetFileMetadataByPath or the /2/files/get_metadata API.
Immutability / WORM: Enable an immutability policy on the backup container.
Restore flow: Build a companion flow that reads a manifest and restores files from Blob back to Dropbox.

Helpers & literals

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

EXPR.01Date partition

Dated Blob partition.

workflow definition language

formatDateTime(utcNow(),'yyyy/MM/dd')

EXPR.02Delta cutoff

Earliest LastModified to include.

workflow definition language

addHours(utcNow(), mul(-1, int(variables('varLookbackHours'))))

EXPR.03Blob folder path

Destination path for the night's files.

workflow definition language

concat(variables('varBackupContainer'),'/',variables('varDatePrefix'))

EXPR.04Manifest blob name

Per-run manifest file name.

workflow definition language

concat('manifest-',formatDateTime(utcNow(),'yyyyMMddTHHmmssZ'),'.json')

Overview

Use Case

Flow Architecture

Nightly 00:30 Recurrence

Initialize Trace, Config & Counters

List Dropbox Files

For Each File

Compose & Write Manifest

Notify Teams

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Customization Guide

Key Expressions

EXPR.01Date partition

EXPR.02Delta cutoff

EXPR.03Blob folder path

EXPR.04Manifest blob name

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