Only send email if condition is met - issue with conditioning

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I am not receiving an email when I run my automation, because apparently the condition is not being met:

Here is my entire flow:

Compose action is for email styling, see: https://ryanmaclean365.com/2020/01/29/power-automate-html-table-styling/

The idea is that if the start date is between today's date and 7 days from now, an email will be sent. The flow runs successfully, I just don't receive an email because the "condition is not met".

[Caspar_Rubin]

Hey,

my guess is that you have a formatting issue inside the Condition action.

It could be that you're comparing strings with a dates.

What if you format the StartDate Dynamic content from the Excel row, basically the same Expression you already use in the Create HTML table action above...

So basically format the left side values of the Condition action as the same DateTime as you did on the right side...

cheers

[Anonymous]

Thanks, @Caspar_Rubin !

I took your suggestion but now my flow won't run. Before, I wasn't getting any errors (the issue was that I wasn't receiving an email because the conditional criteria was not met), but now I am getting the following error:

Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Condition' at line '0' and column '0': 'The template language function 'formatDateTime' expects its first parameter to be of type string. The provided value is of type 'Null'. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions#formatdatetime for usage details.'.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Caspar_Rubin or @Expiscornovus  and thoughts on this?

I've since tried many variations, and to no avail. I tried filtering by array, no dice. I tried going back to the basics and only having 1 condition which was StartDate ge utcNow() and that worked, however it is not filtering properly because it is sending ALL dates, not just those that are ge today.

[David_MA]

Usually for date comparisons in Power Automate the date needs to be in ISO 8601 format (yyyy-MM-dd). I would put your Excel date fields into a compose action so you can see what it is returning. You may need to do some manipulation to get it into ISO 8601 format. Then update your add days expression on the other side of the condition so it uses  the ISO 8601 format as well.

[Anonymous]

Thanks @David_MA - when you say "update your add days expression" do you mean to change the "'MM/dd/yyyy'" to "'yyyy-MM-dd'" and that's it? Or is there more to be done?

As for the Excel date fields, it returns a string (ex. 445617) - is that what you're looking for? That is why I had to use the formatdatetime function

[David_MA]

What the Excel field is returning looks like is your problem. You will need to do some processing of the Excel data so it gets into ISO 8610 format. This isn't something I have ever done, but I found this blog post that explains the process: Power Automate: Convert Excel Number to Date - Manuel T. Gomes (manueltgomes.com)