GetRows x 2 in the same Logic Flow

[efialtes]

Hi all

I have defined a test workflow has with a REcurrence trigger (once a day), and the following actions:

-Excel GetRows, by accesing Table#1 from an excel sheet available in GoogleDrive

Table#1 stores a list of IMEIs (i.e. smartphone serial numbers) 

-Excel GetRows 2, by accesing Table#2 from an excel sheet available in GoogleDrive

Table#2 stores IMEI assigments (i.e. IMEI#1 was given to A two weeks ago, etc.; IMEI#2 was given to B one week ago; IMEI#1 was given back to me yesterday...)

-Condition Block, with an Output from "Excel GetRows" as Condition Object Name, and an Output from "Excel GetRows 2" as Condition Value.

My expectations were that I could compare an item from Table#1 with an item from Table#2. So I added the Condition Object Name, then tried to add the Condition Value. At that point I receive the following popup error:

Am I doing something wrong? If not, can you suggest me any workaround I can apply?

Thank you in advance!

[Samuel]

I don't think there's a reasonable workaround for this today. The error you're seeing is an artifact of the way actions which output an array are implicitly handled in the editor.

We have features on the way which should enable this scenario. The most promising of which would be explicit foreach blocks so that you could re-query the second table for each row in the original table.

Barring that, I think you'd need to get creative and write two flows. The first one could be recurring and read the first table and dump into another service. For example, send it to a service bus queue or add an item to a sharepoint list or add a file to dropbox. Then a second flow could use a trigger that listens for a new dropbox file or sharepoint item or queue message, reads the second table and compares against the single entity that came in the trigger. The last step of that second flow would likely need to do some cleanup as well to delete the triggering entity if the state was passing through dropbox or a sharepoint list.

[Anonymous]

I hope the features you mentioned are relatively close. It seems that more actions than I realized appear to output an array, effectively limiting the ability to tie those actions together.

As an example of something that I would think is exactly the kind of behavior Flows are intended to enable, I can't "Get Rows" from Excel (which, as the OP notes, outputs an array by the editor) and use data in those rows to create a calendar event in O365/Outlook becase the "Create Event" action also outputs an array. This is a pretty straightforward workflow that doesn't seem possible right now, if I understand your answer correctly.

Is there some list of actions that output as arrays so that I can know ahead of time which actions won't be able to work with each other rather than finding out by trial and error? Also, I don't suppose you could share a timeline of the features that you mentioned?

[Samuel]

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to see a list of which actions output arrays (short of calling the underlying REST APIs directly).

For the foreach feature in particular, the underlying engine already supports it; it's just a matter of support in the graphical editor. I don't believe it should be too far out, but @Stephen may be able to confirm/deny that. Without it, as you said, it's hard/impossible to use two actions that output arrays in the same flow.

[Anonymous]

I can't wait for that functionality. I see that there's an advanced editor for the conditions, but I don't see one for the entire flow where I might invoke 'foreach', but please correct me if I'm wrong. You guys are building a really interesting product; I hope you are able to implement these features quickly! Thanks.