Apply to each ignored by the flow

[ZekO]

Hello everyone !

I am currently working on a flow who is supposed to send an email to a person if she is mentioned in a person column of a Sharepoint List. I am starting to use Power automate and I need your help for this one.

My flow : 

1 - SharePoint Trigger - When an item is created or modified

2 - Condition - If empty(triggerBody()?['Assignedto']) is equal to false 

3 - If yes -> Apply to each "value" -> Send an email to "Assigned to email"

If no -> nothing is happening

My issue :

When I am testing the flow I have the following return.

I do not understand why the action is skipped. Since I want to assign an item to one person only I wanted to remove the apply to each action by configuring my column on a single selection (in the edit column section of my SharePoint list) but Power Automate is not considering this modification.

Note : An item Is assigned only after his creation. 

What am I missing here ? 

Thank you for your time.

[rzaneti]

Hi @ZekO ,

Your condition is returned as false, which is finishing your flow and "skipping" your loop, as it is allocated in the "true" block from your condition. Apparently, your goal with the conditional is to check if the string/array 'AssignedTo' from trigger is empty and, if yes, run your loop ('Appliquer a chacun').

I ran some tests here and the 'empty' expression, as you used, always return false for either actual empty strings or arrays. Here is an idea to solve your problem, which can be used for both data types (array or string):

The 'length' expression will capture the quantity of elements inside your 'AssignTo' (if it is an array) or the quantity of characters of the text (if it is a string). You can use a 'Condition' the same way as you did before, but now to check if the qty of elements/characters is equal to zero. If yes, run your loop: 

The expression for you will be basically lenght(triggerBody()?['Assignedto'])

Let me know if it works for you or if you need any additional help!

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[ZekO]

Hello @rzaneti,

Thank you for your help !

---

Your condition is returned as false, which is finishing your flow and "skipping" your loop, as it is allocated in the "true" block from your condition. Apparently, your goal with the conditional is to check if the string/array 'AssignedTo' from trigger is empty and, if yes, run your loop ('Appliquer a chacun').

---

It is the opposite, I want to run my loop if 'Assignedto' is not empty. It is why I put 'false' as the answer expected for my condition.

This is my flow after the modification :

I have tested it and I faced an error message :

Apparently he is not able to identify any data so he is reporting "null" is it ?

Thank you

[rzaneti]

Hi @ZekO ,

You are correct: if we are handling a 'null' value, the length expression is not the solution. For that case, the empty would be the alternative, as you originally tried - and for any reason it is not working.

I see that your loop inside the Condition uses a 'value' property. So just to confirm: is your 'Assigned to' property available directly on the 'body' of your trigger output, or is it inside a 'value' property which is inside the 'body'? In this last case, maybe your 'empty' expression should be using triggerBody()['value']?['Assignedto'] instead of triggerBody()?['Assignedto'].

If your 'Assigned to' is directly on the body, please share the output from your trigger, removing any sensitive data. 

[ZekO]

Hi @rzaneti 

Here is my trigger output : It is the 2nd case ('body' -> 'value' -> 'Assignedto' -> 'Email') and I only need the 'Email' value 

I have tried the expression triggerBody()['value']?['Assignedto'] and I have an other error message.

Should I specify that I want the  'Email' value ?

[rzaneti]

Hi @ZekO ,

We are almost there! Actually your email property is inside an object, which is inside the array 'AssignedTo'. So the correct expression here may be: triggerBody()['value']?['Assignedto'][0]['Email']

The '0' is used to access the first element of an array (in this case is a single element, so it is fine) and then access the 'email' property from it. 

Let me know if it works!

[ZekO]

---

@rzaneti wrote:

Hi @ZekO ,

We are almost there! Actually your email property is inside an object, which is inside the array 'AssignedTo'. So the correct expression here may be: triggerBody()['value']?['Assignedto'][0]['Email']

The '0' is used to access the first element of an array (in this case is a single element, so it is fine) and then access the 'email' property from it. 

Let me know if it works!

---

Thank you for this informations but unfortunately It doesn't work :

[rzaneti]

Hi @ZekO ,

Value is an array of objects, and I missed it. We first need to access the array element before go to 'AssignedTo'. Fixed expression: triggerBody()['value'][0]['Assignedto'][0]['Email']

[ZekO]

Hi @rzaneti ,

I have an other error message related to the object property selection :

[rzaneti]

Hi @ZekO ,

Power Automate is considering that we are trying to access an object property as it was an array. Honestly, I cannot see where is the error here, as both 'value' and 'Assignedto' seems to be arrays, based on your output. 

To try to identify in which layer of the output is the error, I would recommend you to initialize some variables as object and arrays and assign each of these properties to them, in order to identify exactly where the problem is (for instance, assign 'triggerBody()' to an object variable, 'triggerBody()['value']' to an array variable, 'triggerBody()['value'][0]' to an object variable, and so on). In one of these variables assignment, your flow may fails, so you will know which property resulted in the problem. 

[ZekO]

Hi @rzaneti ,

Here is the result of the identification :

The 'Assignedto' property cannot be selected, I don't know what means 'Integer index' in the error message.

I have deleted all the variable with the type as Array and here is the result : 

In the variable 5, I am able to identify the 'Assignedto' property has an object and the rersult is correct :

I tried to do the same for the 'Email' property inside 'Assignedto' property (variable 7) it failed

[rzaneti · Accepted solution]

Hi @ZekO ,

As everything ran fine until your 'Initialize variable 5', now it is time to try to access the email property directly from it. You can use this expression: variables('Assignedto object')['Email']

Just double check the name of the variable ('Assignedto object') to make sure that there isn't any typo. 

[ZekO]

Hi @rzaneti ,

Thank you very much for your time, it is working !

Take care