Get Item from Sharepoint Issue

[ErinCannon]

I have a flow that I have built to create approvals in a SharePoint list.  In order to build the next one, I need to get the status of the previous approval.  I have a Get Item block that is doing that, but when I try to reference the items it returns, they are always null.  Any ideas?

 

 

[Pstork1]

1) Are you sure the ApprovalID is the ID of the item being approved rather than the Approval action ID?If you are using the ApprovalID from when the Approval was created you need to retrieve that from CDS, not SharePoint.

2) Is the Status column one you update in the approval process?  That is not the name of the column automatically created when you require approvals in a SharePoint list.

3) If the status column is one that you created are you populating it after the Approval is received using an Update Item action?  The Approval doesn't update anything in SharePoint automatically.

[ErinCannon]

I should have clarified that this is not using the built in approvals from flow, but strictly a SharePoint list where approvals are tracked.  The list itself has an ID, approver, previous approval ID, Status and Comments.  The status is a choice column, which is why it's using the Status Value.  I've built a couple of other approval lists like this that have worked, so I'm especially confused at the moment.

The crazy thing is that I can see that when it gets the approval it has a status value, but then it does not contain anything when I reference it.  I'm wondering if this is just one of those weird hiccups that occur occasionally and it will fix itself within 24 hours...

[Pstork1]

Are you updating the status inside the flow?  If you are do you make sure you do a fresh get item to pick up the updated status.  Also be sure to put a pause in there before the get item to make sure the change is committed before you pull it.

[ErinCannon]

No, the status is being changed in a form in PowerApps and submitted to Sharepoint.  Then there is a temporary table that has an item created in it to kick off this flow.  A delay might be helpful but isn't the issue here since I keep resubmitting this same trigger to work through this issue and it keeps happening.

[Pstork1]

Are  you using the test functionality in Flow? " I keep resubmitting this same trigger" If so, try running it from scratch.  The test functionality can throw in strange errors if you change the connectors or the schema of the data source.  

[ErinCannon]

Good thought!  Yes, I was using the test functionality.  Unfortunately triggering a fresh one did the same thing.

Also, thank you for helping me work through this.  I've been staring at this for a while now and it's great to have a fresh set of eyes.

[ErinCannon · Accepted solution]

I did some more testing and isolated it to being related to the approval id I was feeding it.  Turns out, I wasn't.  I thought I was because it was showing it to me in the schema, but since my table only had one record it was just showing me all the records, rather than the one I wanted.  

Apparently I missed a step on my patch function.  Thanks again for helping me think through this issue!

[Pstork1]

No problem.  Glad you found it.  Troubleshooting can be really difficult at times without a fresh set of eyes.