Filter text for a code with unique digits

[Kubsy]

Hey there everyone. I'm trying to create a flow that updates Planner when an Outlook calendar event is created with a unique code in the title. The code has always a specific letter as first digit and a dash as sixth digit and is 10 digit long. Example: 'Lxxxx-xxxx'. If it shows up anywhere in the event title then it should go to the planner. 

So far I'm stuck with the filtering. Tried some conditioning but I'm too much of a rookie to make a neat solution to that. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks in Advance!

[David_MA]

If you can figure out how to extract your code from anywhere within the title, you can then use an expression such as this to make sure it is in the format and length you want:

if(and(not(isInt(substring(triggerBody()['text'], 0, 1))), isInt(substring(triggerBody()['text'], 1, 4)), contains(substring(triggerBody()['text'], 5, 1),'-'), isInt(substring(triggerBody()['text'], 6, 4)), equals(length(triggerBody()['text']), 10)), 'true', 'false')

The above just checks to make sure the first character is not a number, so it could be any valid character. Otherwise, it checks the format you listed.

I have an expression somewhere to check if it is A-Z or a-z, but I cannot remember where 🙂

[David_MA]

I think I have something that will work for you. You can test it with a manually triggered flow.

1. Add a string input to your flow named Title
2. Initialize an Array variable named Split and set the default value to the following expression: split(triggerBody()['text'],' ')
   1. The above expression will break your title on each space
3. Add an Apply to each and use the variable for the output
4. Add a condition to check if the current item's length equals 10 with this expression:  length(items('Apply_to_each'))
5. On the yes side of the condition, add a second condition to check if the following expression equals true: and(not(isInt(substring(items('Apply_to_each'), 0, 1))), isInt(substring(items('Apply_to_each'), 1, 4)), contains(substring(items('Apply_to_each'), 5, 1),'-'), isInt(substring(items('Apply_to_each'), 6, 4)), equals(length(items('Apply_to_each')), 10))
   1. Be sure to use true from the expression builder and do not type true.
6. Then on the yes you can update your Planner item.
7. If you want to be more efficient, you can wrap the apply to each in a Do until it finds your expression.

The flow will look like this:

[AlexEncodian]

@Kubsy 

This is super simple to do with a regex query using Encodian's Utility - Search Text (Regex) action.

Regex query:

L[^ ]{4}-[^ ]{4}

• L matches the character "L" literally.
• [^ ]{4} matches any character except a space exactly 4 times.
• - matches the character "-" literally.
• [^ ]{4} matches any character except a space exactly 4 times.

You can use ChatGPT to write regex expressions. Best to always test them using a tool like RegExr: Learn, Build, & Test RegEx

They are incredibly powerful and can match pretty much any pattern.

You can use a length() expression in a condition action to check if the Encodian action returned any results. Note, the Encodian connector returns an array therefore the length() expression counts the number of array items. If its 0, then no items were found.

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Actions prefixed "Utility" use up only 1/20th of an Encodian credit. Therefore 500 Encodian credits could use 500 x 20 = 10,000 Utility actions

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Encodian is a Standard Power Automate connector with 150+ actions to supercharge your flow builds including document conversion, merging, splitting, data manipulation, search, extraction, OCR and much more.

[David_MA]

That's a good option, but unfortunately in my environment they don't allow any non-standard actions.