Update a Sharepoint list to contain digits for the current year

[TechWriter89]

I'm new to Flows and working on a way to automate a manual process. We have a list of document numbers. Each year, we want the middle digits to increment for the year and also pull the final digits from the old list.

So at the start of 2023, for example, we had someone manually look at the list and update from DOC-22-1732 to DOC-23-1732 (and so on, made a list in Excel of numbers counting up from there) so that people needing new numbers get one with the correct year.

I figured out the yearly Jan 1 trigger and the flow is going to the right list containing those numbers, but then I need to do a few things:

• Have the flow read the current first-available item on the list (say, DOC-23-1975)
• Purge the current DOC-23 numbers
• Reset the list to start with DOC-24-1975 and continue the old sequence

Here's what I have so far. I've figured out to update all items in the list, but they're all incrementing to just DOC-24-xxxx in my tests and I think I'm missing some variables based on reading the list item. Can someone point me in the right direction?

[wskinnermctc]

If you only want to change the middle number and the first part "DOC" stays the same while the only piece that is changing is the last numbers, you can use an expression last() and split().

Where split() will separate the text on the '-' dash mark, and last() will get the last item that is split.

It will be like last(split(ColumnName,'-')) that is saying split the text where ever there is a '-' and get the last split.

I made a column "PIL Number" in my SharePoint list and put in the text "DOC-23-1975". After running this flow below it changed it to "DOC-24-1975". It will do it for each item in the sharepoint list. If you have a large list be sure to go into the Get Items settings and turn on pagination and set the threshold at like 10000.

Last Split Expression

Below is the expression that is put in the field.

last(split(items('Apply_to_each')?['PILNumber'],'-'))

Let me know if this works for you.

[TechWriter89]

This works, thank you! Sorry I missed replying at the time-- I had to drop this for a while. That split was exactly what I need. 

I modified a few things to use environment variables after talking with a teammate: here's the preview of that for anyone else running into a similar question.