Updating excel from task planner

[rbalza]

Hi everyone, 

I am newb using Flow and I am trying to create a flow where my tasks on planner were throwing the data to excel.

Question is, how can I add these values for this column on my excel (AssignedTo, CreatedBy, CreatedDate, StartDate, DueDate, CompletedDate)? Like every time I am trying to place these on my 'add a row into a table' condition, it is doing weird stuff like creating another condition. See flows below. Thanks in advance 🙂

[Tascin]

Hi @rbalza ,

are you trying to add information from the list bucket and list task actions in those rows? Are you also passing information from that specific iteration in the new row?

Then it will create multiple Apply to each loops for each of those scenarios.

What is often overlooked that dynamic content depends on previous actions. So it might be that the value id is from list tasks and the value bucket from list buckets. Which would mean two apply to each loops since those are two different actions with multiple results.

[ccc333ab · Accepted solution]

In Planner, you can actually assign multiple people to a specific task. Therefore, this is stored as a collection (along with all the "Assigned" properties). This is the case even if you only have a single person assigned to the task. 

In your list, all the other fields you say you cannot add without the Apply to Each actually should be able to be added as they are individual fields (CreatedBy, CreatedDate, StartDate, DueDate, CompletedDate). Probably you just added them after you already added your assigned to field. If you assign all these before you put in Assigned to, it won't be in a loop. 

One approach for AssignedTo is to just collect up the assigned to in a string variable, and use that to insert into your Excel file. For example: 

1. Initialize a variable to store the Assigned to Display Name

2. I am using a List Tasks, not sure what you are doing. If this is going to be an ongoing flow vs. a one time run, I would suggest maybe using a trigger for when tasks are updated or created instead. But anyway...from my List Tasks, I am then looping through each task.

3. And my first step in this loop is to now loop through the Assignment collection to get the person assigned to. 

4. Now the only thing captured in the assignments collection is the Assigned To ID. Which is an internal ID which will be useless for you. So now I'll make a call out to the Office 365 "Get user provile (v2)" so we can grab better data. From this action, I append the "Display Name" to the string variable I initialized. 

Note: I am using Display Name |   Just so that if there are multiple names there will be a separator. If you know for sure this plan will NEVER have more than one person assigned, you can leave that | off. 

EG. It'll look like   Bart Simpson | Lisa Simpson | Maggie Simpson |

5. So now OUTSIDE of this loop, I will now add the fields into the excel table using the string of display names as the assigned to. I am using a dummy excel file here so the column names won't  match, but I am adding in a lot of the fields you want. (The red highlighted one is the Assigned To names I collected up).

6. And finally, as we loop to the next task, I then blank the variable to be used again. 

Note: This was weird. I initially left value as blank but it gave me an error. I then added the expression string('') in and it saved and ran fine. Now I go back into edit the flow and its blank...and now no error (go figure). 

To see this all in one picture so you can see how the loops are embedded....

[Asbjørn]

Hello @ccc333ab 

I tried out your flow, but i'm having some few troubles. My flow fails after some time, and when i look into to run-report i can see, that it fails when the Get user profile (V2) action cant find the employee or in some few instances it actually finds an employee, but still incounters an error. 

The biggest problem here is not that it cant find a name, but that it leaves out this task. 

Do you have any suggestions to, how i can fix this?

[ccc333ab]

Can you post a flow screen shot, specifically showing: 

• The details of the Get User Profile step 
• If this is in a loop (which I assume it will be) all the details of the steps in the loop (including the Apply to Each action). 

And can you also post the exact error messages you are receiving. 

[Asbjørn · Accepted solution]

Hi again @ccc333ab 

I set up my flow exactly is shown in this thread to test it out. I have another flow running today, but i've never been able to include names yet. The only difference is I chose nickname instead of name (but i have tried both with same result)

The errors i get is the following:

[ccc333ab · Accepted solution]

@Asbjørn - Based on where this error message pops up, I am going to guess the issue is that this task that is throwing the error has been assigned to a user that is no longer has a profile. I'd say if you look at the plan, there will be at least one task that looks like:

So you can do a couple of things. 

1. Correct the data to ensure the user is assigned properly. But I'm sure if the plan has been in use a long time that may be the wrong thing to do.
2. Put some error checking into the flow. Now I don't have the flow and don't want to rebuild the whole thing so will mock this up (so this won't be tested).

1.  After the Get User Profile, add in a parallel branch

2.   Create a step to capture this error, and you can flag this error in some way if you care. I'm just going to add to the string "Former Member". You can do whatever you want....the options are endless on how you handle this.   

3.    Now click the ellipses of this task, and click on Configure Run After

4   Change the options to "has failed"

5   NOW, you also need to change your "Configure after run" on the step following this loop (since it actually does throw an error). So on the "Add a row into a table" configure that step to also run on BOTH "is successful" and "has failed". 

Hope that helps.

[Asbjørn]

Thank you so much @ccc333ab 

I will try that out ASAP, and no matter if it works or not i've allready learned something new from this. I didnt know about the "Configure af run" function, which i can see will be really helpfull in fureture flows.

EDIT:

I think it worked! It definitely looks like it. Thank you once more 😁