Flow cannot update "multiple people or group" field anymore (Since last week)

[Anonymous]

I have a few flows with actions to update "Peer Reviewers" field, this is a "people and group" field allows multiple people being selected... However, since last week, it suddently stopped working, I cannot see the "Peer Reviewers" field in action "update item" or "update file properties". This is an issue can be reproduced with the below steps:

1. Create a list/library with "people and group" field , e.g. call it "Peer Reviewers", mark that field as "allow multiple select" and "people only".
2. Create a flow running on this list/library, in the flow, add an action "Update item" or "update file properties", you will notice that you can NOT see "Peer Reviewers" field. (This used to work one week ago!)
3. If you change the "Peer Reviewers" field to not allow "multiple select", then it will appear in Flow's "update item" or "update file properties" action...

I've submitted a ticket to Microsoft support team, but don't know when they can help me to resolve it...not very optimistic about it as it looks like a bug introduced with a few feature "Limit columns by view" last week, which allows us to filter columns by view in "update item" or "update file properties" action.

[Pieter_Veenstra]

I have noticed the same

I switched my multi people field to single field ( my field is still called People) and I noticed that Flow calls this field "People Claims"

[WilliamYin]

>I switched my multi people field to single field ( my field is still called People)

If you do so, your people field will only keep one people value for you, you will lose the rest people values I think..We might have to wait MS to fix it 😞

[Pieter_Veenstra]

@WilliamYinI've raised this within the Flow team. So hopefully the fix can be there soon.

[v-yuazh-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

Update a "multiple people or group" field is always not supported in microsoft and you couldn't see the multiple people or group" field in the update item action.

If you would like to see and update the multiple people or group" field in the update item action,I afraid that there is no way to achieve your needs in Microsoft Flow currently.

If you would like this feature to be added in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

Best regards,

Alice

[Pieter_Veenstra]

You could try with the REST API to do the update.

[Anonymous]

As I clearlly said in this post subject, I saw that "multiple people or group" field in "update item" and "update file properties" actions, and I used it, but I didn't get enough time to do proper testing though. When I got time to do testing, I found it's not there anymore!

[Anonymous]

Using REST API definitely can be a solution, but the main issue for us is that the change of "update item" and "update file properties" actions from Microsoft side broke all our exist flows, which were referring "multiple people or group" fields...

[vish4287]

Can you try following Steps?

1. Initiate a variable of type "Object" with initial value '{}'. Ex. 'objEmails'

2. Initiate a variable of type "Array". Ex. 'arrEmails'

3. Then add an action 'Compose'. In this action use following expression :

Spoiler

addProperty(varialbe('objEmails'),'Claims','<your_email1>')

4. Use Action 'Add variable to Array' & select the Output of Compose Action as an input tho this action.

5. Repeat step 3 & 4 for all your users to be added. (You can use 'Apply to each' action for multiple iterations)

6. Now go to your action where you want Add/update Multiple User Field.

7. Click on the the icon near the Text box(Your User Field) 'Switch to input entire array'.

Once done you will see a multiline textbox for adding array.

8. Add Array Variable to that input box.

And that is it Save Flow & try testing it.

Please let me know if this helped you.

[Beerman212]

When the person field is single person or multi-person you can update it for 1 person by just sending the person claims.  You can get that from the sharepoint resolve person action.

If you want to update a person field with multiple people you can't do that, you have to send in the whole contents of resolve person.  I just use a compose action to append each one into an array and then I can send in the array.

Using Compose to create a person object

[vecerpa]

@vish4287 You saved my day 🙂

Thank you

P.

[Anonymous]

Hey All,

if anyone is still struggling with this problem kindly find out the claims property of your employee by just getting the items from sharepoint list which includes the people picker field.

the claim propery involves email address of each particular employee. Kindly put that in the Update item action of people picker field and it should do the trick. 

[bu11frogg]

@Beerman212   Thank you for posting this!   I struggled with this for hours yesterday!

I had never used the "Resolve Person" Action before, and while looking through it I noticed a value, "SharePoint expanded user field".  Appending this value directly into an array simplified the whole Flow; I was able to skip the "Compose" step and avoid crafting a JSON statement entirely.

Here is the meat of my Flow, which takes all the existing users in a multi-person field (left side) and builds an array.  On the right side, I'm adding the user who triggered the Flow (clicked on the "pin" icon in the list item) to a hidden temp field, and then adding that user into the multi-person field along with all the previous users.

[Beerman212]

@bu11frogg That's very cool, I don't recall ever seeing that, maybe that is something that has been added since I made this post.  Flow is changing very very fast.

[davidgo]

Thanks. This looks promising. I followed your model and generated an array with the user details from the Resolve Person. When I pump that array into the multi-user Person field, it returns an error that Display Name is a read-only property.

[davidgo]

I have this working. When you write in a field of type Person, you need to provide a single email address or an array of email addresses. The input to the Person field should be in the form:

[

{

"Claims": "emailalias1(at)contoso.com"

},

{

"Claims": "emailalias2(at)contoso.com"

}

]

[hiteshn]

I had a requirement of updating a list B with Members from another List A, both list were having multiple people picker column. I also faced same issue. I tried the below thing and it worked:

1. Get the Item from list A.

2. Update item for list B

3. While updating multiple People Picker here, switch the field to input entire array:

4. Now Provide the People Picker column from Get Item function:

"Members" is the name of the Multiple People Picker column present in list A.

In this way you can pass any no. of people data, without JSON formatting.

[Joe_Fox]

@hiteshn - this is genius! Way easier that the other methods described above and works nicely. Thanks!

[bu11frogg]

Oh finally!  It was a big pain figuring out a big work around just to update a multi-person field.  Thanks for the update!

[vish4287]

Cheers🍻