Add Company Holidays to Your Outlook Calendar Using Power Automate

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Ian Hayse

Below are all the steps required to add your company holidays to your Outlook calendar. This is a simple approach that can easily be updated to pull the holidays and dates from other data sources like Exel, SharePoint, Dataverse…

Overview of the flow that will be created:

All of the holidays (events) will be stored in an array using a compose action.

[
{"Event":"Holiday - New Years","Date":"01/01/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - MLK Day","Date":"01/17/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Presidents Day","Date":"02/21/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Memorial Day","Date":"05/30/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Juneteenth Day","Date":"06/20/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Independence Day","Date":"07/04/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Labor Day","Date":"09/05/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Thanksgiving Day","Date":"11/24/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Day After Thanksgiving","Date":"11/25/2022"},
{"Event":"Holiday - Christmas Day","Date":"12/26/2022"}
]

After that, a parse JSON event will be used to make the events available in the apply to each action. Note: after the parse JSON action is added to the flow, click the generate from sample button and paste in the holidays JSON from the step above.

Next, add an apply to each action to the flow. In the action, the output box will hold the body of the parse JSON action.

The convert time zone action is used to standardize the date format. For the base time use the Date field from the parse JSON action.

The last item that needs to be added is the outlook create event action. Note: for the End time property a formula is used: addDays(body(‘Convert_time_zone’),1)

Save the flow and run it.

Flow Error Unable to process template language expressions for action

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Ian Hayse

Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Apply_to_each_sftp_file' at line '1' and column '30517': 'The template language expression 'body('List_files_in_folder')?['body']' cannot be evaluated because property 'body' cannot be selected. Array elements can only be selected using an integer index. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions for usage details.'.

From one day to the next one of my flows stopped working with the error above. The flow is super simple:
Get files from an SFTP folder
Loop through the files
Copy file to another location
Delete file

Looking at the apply to each step I noticed body element was referenced. This might have been related to how I set up the loop or the autogenerated action.

Action the flow was unhappy with:

Updated the flow and it started working:

Note how the ?[‘body’] element is missing from the second picture.

Fix?
Created a new Apply to each loop by first setting a variable to the name of the file I’m looping on, then added my other actions. There might be a better way to fix this, but for now, this is what works.

Flow and SharePoint Online Large Libraries

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Ian Hayse

Using Flow to get or check for files in a large SharePoint library can be a little tricky. If you are sure your library will always stay under 5,000 items the Get Files (properties only) Flow action is a quick n’ simple approach to use. When your library crosses over the mythical 5k mark or somewhere in that neighborhood, the Get Files action will fail to return results without warning. What I’m outlining below are other options when working with large libraries.

Setup:

Option 1: Get Files using an Odata filter query
downside: only use this in small libraries

Result:

Option 2: use the SharePoint API
downside: the lack of transparency from Microsoft related to how often data is crawled.

Result:

Option 3: use the SharePoint API along with a filter action on the library. This option does require that you have metadata set up on the library to filter on and there is not a wildcard / contains option. The filtered value needs to be exact.
downside: you will need to set up your metadata ahead of time or create it after the fact then backfill.

Result:

The more I learn about Flow and SharePoint Online, the more I’m starting to like Option 3 when doing a lookup type of search. SharePoint Search is an extremely powerful tool if the search index is fresh.

Use Flow to Get Files Created or Modified Today in a SharePoint Library

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Ian Hayse

Scenario:
Each day I have a couple of Azure Runbooks export SharePoint list items and upload them to a SharePoint library. If one of the Runbooks fails, I needed to send an email alert that something went wrong.

Basic logic:
If files created today in SharePoint <> X, send an email.

The easy solution would have been to loop through the files, check their created date, increment a variable, then make a condition statement.

More-better way:
Run flow daily at 6:00 PM
Send an HTTP request to SharePoint to get files
Parse the response
Condition statement
— if true, send an email

Uri text from the HTTP call:

_api/search/query?querytext='Path%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsharepointed.sharepoint.com%2Fsites%2Fsitename%2Fsubsite%2Fexports%2F*%20LastModifiedTime%3Dtoday'

Parse JSON schema

{
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
        "odata.metadata": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "ElapsedTime": {
            "type": "integer"
        },
        "PrimaryQueryResult": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "RelevantResults": {
                    "type": "object",
                    "properties": {
                        "TotalRows": {
                            "type": "integer"
                        },
                        "TotalRowsIncludingDuplicates": {
                            "type": "integer"
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Get and Set SharePoint Yes No Field Using Flow

Posted on March 1, 2021 by Ian Hayse

Simple question: Using a Flow condition, how do you check the value of a SharePoint Yes No field?

My first attempt was to set a variable equal to the SharePoint list value, then check the condition like this:

And, for good reason, this did not work.
My next attempt was to try replacing the condition value with true or false.

And, again, this did not work!
Sooo, what if I convert the true or false to a string?

It worked!

How do you set or update a SharePoint Yes No field using a Flow variable?

Create a string variable, then set the value to true or false.
SharePoint display values:
Yes = true
No = false

Flow Trigger On SharePoint Item Version

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Ian Hayse

How do you run a Flow on a specific version SharePoint item version?

Create a Flow, then navigate into the Settings of the first step. Scroll down to Trigger Conditions and enter the following:

@equals(float(triggerBody()?['{VersionNumber}']),1.0)

Save the Flow and run a test.
The Flow should only process items / documents where the version is equal to 1.0.

Flow Variables Not Displaying In The Dynamic Content Menu

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Ian Hayse

I was trying to dynamically set a SharePoint list item ID to a variable but the variable was not displaying in the Dynamic Content menu.

The solution was to use an expression to set the value, save the flow, exit the edit screen, then re-enter the edit screen.

variables('varRefID')

Notice the variable is not available for selection

Use the expression window to enter the variable name

The variable has been added but looks weird. This is not an issue but continue reading if you want to clean display value.

Save your flow and exit the edit screen.

The variable is now displayed correctly!

PowerAutomate SharePoint Server relative urls must start with SPWeb.ServerRelativeUrl

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Ian Hayse

{
    "inputs": {
        "variables": [
            {
                "name": "varURI-String",
                "type": "string",
                "value": "/_api/web/GetFolderByServerRelativeUrl('@{triggerBody()?['FolderPath']}')/ListItemAllFields/breakroleinheritance(copyRoleAssignments=false, clearSubscopes=true)"
            }
        ]
    }
}

Using a Power Automate Flow to break inheritance on a folder and this error was being returned. The issue turned out to be the path I was trying to use for the folder.

This did not work: LibraryName/Folder
This DID work: /sites/ParentSite/SubSite/LibraryName/Folder’

Power Automate Bad Gateway Error

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Ian Hayse

I was trying to use a SQL Insert Row action to insert a new row in a SQL Server table and received a Bad Gateway error. First, I thought it was a permissions issue, then I thought my Flow stopped working…

Turned out to be an issue with the amount of data being inserted into a field. One SQL column was set to varchar(X) and the Flow was trying to insert more characters than X.

Flow Power Automate and SharePoint Required Fields

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Ian Hayse

On the surface, this request sounded super simple and straightforward. “we need to copy files from a SharePoint library to Blob storage.” Simple enough? Well, yes, but the SharePoint library has a couple of required fields and a Flow is triggered by an action.

Consider what I’m outlining below to be version ONE of the process. In the near future, I will update this post with a slightly more resilient solution.

My SharePoint library has a required field titled DesinationFolder

Context of what I’m doing in the Flow:
Trigger: When files is created in a folder
When a file is added to a library the flow is triggered
Get file metadata
File Identifier: Use File identifier from the step above
Get file properties
Id: Use the ItemId from the previous step
Initialize variable
Name: vCheckedOut
Type: Boolean
Value: Checked out (field from Get properties)
Initialize variable
Name: vFolderPath
Type: String
Value:
Condition
vCheckedOut is equal to true
Yes:
Do until
vCheckout is equal to False
GetFileProperties
Set variable
Name: vCheckedOut
Value: Checked out (value from the Get file properties above)
No:
Set variable
Name: vFolderPath
Value: FolderPath (SharePoint field)

Compose
/blobfolder/vFolderPath (variable)
Create blob

SharePointed

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Category Archives: Flow Power Automate