Create item in secondary SP List from another SP List with LookUp column Type

[Anonymous]

Hello teams,

I have 2 SP lists, parent list is Ideas with 2 columns SSRP and Name. The child list is Status with 3 columns Title (column type: Single line of text), Status_SSRP and Status_Name (both are Lookup column type, which look up from Ideas list above).

When a new item is created in Ideas list, I want to have that item is added to Status list as well.

But, I see that only Title has Dynamic content to find value from Parent list, the Lookup column type Status_SSRP shows up but not have Dynamic content.

The flow works, but it only adds the Title in the child list, other columns have no data.

Is there any ways to use Flow to create Child List item with lookup column type ? thanks so much

[Anonymous]

Or is there any Expression syntaxes that I can bring the SSRP value from Parent list to child list

[Gristy]

Hey Buddy,

I do not have a example right now but what you can do is, add a item in your list manually and then use Get Item and pass the ID to retrieve it in flow, you will then see the format of the content it is expecting. It will likely be some JSON with the ID included!.

[Anonymous]

@Gristy 

Could you please get into a it details?

Here, after Creating   item -> then use Compose to store only ID from newly created -> next, I Get Items

It works, I can extract the ID. However, in the Create Item section, Title and Test_ID are single line of text type columns, so I can have the ID for it in the Child List.

But look at the SSRP_ID in the dashed box (it's Lookup Column Type), I can add the output of Compose  inside  , but it   does n't show in the Child List.

My main concern is that Can we use Flow to create item with Column Type in SharePoint List is Lookup? or Flow only works with Single Line of Text column type?

Thanks

[Gristy]

Hey

Sorry for the confusion.

In the field Test ID you can just pass the ID of a item from the test list and it will work. I have tested this for you. However your fields are showing differently, this is how a lookup field shows up in a flow: 

[Anonymous]

@Gristy  Thanks for your response. My Lookup section doesn't allow me to add anything except the Outputs from Compose and value.

If I add the Output, nothing shows in the Child List.

If I add the values, it pulls all values from the Parent List to this field, and these values don't include the newly added item. I don't know what happen to my Lookup field, but doesn't give me the option to choose ID.

I only want to pull the data for the Lookup field. Do you have any thoughts.

[Gristy]

the value should be ID not SSRP_ID, it needs to be ID of the value you are linking to in the lookup list so you need to get that value first

[eliotcole]

Hi, @Anonymous , looks like you're getting some solid help here, I thought I'd offer an alternative line of thought on this.

It's an extreme coincidence, but this is actually the exact thing (with multiple values on the lookup input) that I've been working on, lately, as it's a common scenario, and I wanted to have an easy (hahahaha) way to manage it in the future.

Now I'm not going to go into too much detail here (I'll be writing a community blog on it in the next couple of days), but essentially you  need to perform a little JSON building to add the appropriate data to both lists, and a little management of data.

Putting it into words, though (and this isn't a full explanation) to enter a few entries into the lookup field of list1 with entries from list2: you can do this relatively simply, but this doesn't account for entering values into both lists where the lookup columns are correlated, this is simply for adding values to list1:

1. You need 2 array variables (or data source + array var), where array1 is initialised as empty with "[]" and array2 is the items that you wish to enter into the lookup field. You will also need to have integer 'Id' variables for items from both lists, we'll call that list2SpIdVAR here.
2. On array2, you'll run an Apply to each to see if they already exist in list2 or not.
3. The first step in the Apply to each is to get items from list2.
4. The second step is to run a condition to check if there's no entries matching the current item that you wish to add to the lookup field.
5. If there's no results, you need to Create new item in list2 before you can choose it in list1. Then you need to set list2SpIdVAR to the ID of the item that you just created in list2. One condition branch complete.
6. In the other condition branch the item exists in list2, so we simply set list2SpIdVAR as the ID that you got from the first step within the Apply to each.
7. After the condition you'll need to Append to array for array1 with the following replacing "[list2SpIdVAR]" with the dynamic value: { "Id": [list2SpIdVAR] }
8. Then the final step, outside of your main Apply to each, you either Create item (or update item) in list1 with the contents of array1 as a dynamic content in the lookup entry field. (making sure that you've switched it to the "T" text input)

If you've done it right, array1 should look something like this, before it's attempted to be added in a lookup column:

[
  {
    "Id": 31
  },
  {
    "Id": 200
  },
  {
    "Id": 7
  }
]

I know that might all be hard to follow in text (believe me, I'd not be able to, I'm so visual), but also believe me when I say that I'll have a full flow for you within a day or so.

I currently have a more complicated version of this entering data into two lists, so that they can be cross reference easily.

I know that SharePoint does have built in functionality for referencing information like this, but it's always been a complication for me, and if I can eliminate the need to get in to it at data input, then I'm happy to! 🙂