Check for Date in Sharepoint Field and send an email ONLY Once

[ckotterman]

All--

I am teaching myself Microsoft Flow via the University of Google and I have hit a snag. I'm building a simple Sharepoint list to basically build a queue for our web team to keep track of requests to modify our website. I'm not remotely close to a developer. I have a degree in political science. ANYWAY, I've got the below list set up and Microsoft Forms is feeding it responses via Flow:

The blacked out fields are person fields w/ the dispaly name of my colleagues who are helping me test.

When a new item is created, the "completion date" field is blank, and it represents the date that the web developer will have the change completed. I am trying to get Flow to send an email to the submitter notifying them of the completion date when it is entered, but not each time any other column is changed (e.g. "assigned to," status, etc.)

As a bonus, I would love to send the same notification if the date is changed to a different date as well.

Essentially I am looking for a way for Flow to watch that one value, completion date, and only send the notification if it is entered or modified, but ignore any other changes to the list. I have been searching but haven't found another solution for this case yet.

Here's the condition that I have written, and works to get the email to generate, because the completion date is always going to be in the future, but becasue the trigger is modifying the list item, any change at all triggers the email. I just want to trigger on modifying the date.

And here is the email I'm trying to send (again just blacking out the name of my company out of caution): 

I sincerely appreciate you all taking pity on a n00b, and any insight you all can provide. 

Chris

[yashag2255 · Accepted solution]

Hi @ckotterman 

Currently flow does not have a trigger "When an item is modified in SharePoint" and nor does it support monitoring a specific field in the trigger "When an item is created or modfied in SharePoint". 

Now, based on the scenario, you mention that the Completion date will be blank and you want to send an email if it is filled. So what you can do is, Use the trigger "When an item is created or modfied in SharePoint" and then add a condition to check if the Completion date column has some value. If it is null then do nothing and if there is some value in that then send an email. 

Currently as the field level monitoring is not supported in Flow, the bonus will have to be done in a different way. You can use the For a selected item trigger and then in the next step add a send an email action (this is a different flow) and this will have to be run by the user who updates the completion date. Makes sense? 

Hope this Helps!

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS! 

[ckotterman]

@yashag2255 --

Thank you for taking the time to answer. That does make sense. How would one write the expression to check and see if the field is empty, or filled, as the case may be?

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @ckotterman ,

Unfortunately, the current Flow action cannot monitor whether the specified field value has changed.

If you want such a feature to be supported by MS Flow, please consider voting for a similar idea below:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Modified-trigger-should-give-previous-values-for-fiel...

In addition, some blogs mentioned that it seems that you can use HTTP Request to determine whether the specified field has changed, please check the following links and see if it helps:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Flow-Community-Blog/Check-for-a-Change-in-a-SharePoint...

http://johnliu.net/blog/2018/5/microsoft-flow-sharepoint-trigger-on-specific-fields-changed-via-sp-h...

Best Regards,