Updating excel with planner tasks

[Anonymous]

Hey all,

Currently trying to design a flow that updates an excel table with existing tasks in planner for presentation to executives. I know you can export from planner to excel, but we are hoping to leverage this as a way of project management (50 planner boards to one excel sheet).

I am able to get the excel table to add rows in the table, but I want a validation for if the row already exists to just update it as opposed to writing the same task multiple times.

Here is a screen shot of my existing flow:

https://imgur.com/a/RiQtgoj

Has anyone been able to create a recipe for this successfully?

Thanks in advance for taking a look!

[edgonzales]

@Anonymous 

Hi there!  Everything looks good except for one bit.  I think I may be missing something, so apologies if I did:

If the row exists already (matching the Task ID to the ID), then you go down the update a row path.  But in that update, you are updating the Task ID.

Conversely, on the Add a Row step, you are not adding the ID value to the Task ID, so (in my head, at least) it won't ever find a match because Task ID will always be null, right?

I think if you take the ID part away from the update side, and add it to the Add a row side, that should fix the issue.

Keep us posted.

-Ed-

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[Anonymous]

Hey Ed!

Thanks for your help!

It seems like that solved my original issue - you rock!

I am now running into an issue where the flow fails/skips if the task is not already present in the excel sheet (haha!)

Any ideas why it wouldn't be able to add a row? Seems like if the task ID is null, it doesnt proceed to the "No" (add a row) section of my flow.

[edgonzales]

Awesome, great to hear!

Update - Looking at your original, there are two different condition loops.  They are too tiny for me to see what's going on, but I wonder if the first one needs to be there?

Did you go back and update previous rows manually?  All of the ones that have null values will match any other record that has a null, so it will go the update path because of that match.

Make sure all of the rows have an ID value in the spreadsheet and try again.

If that doesn't do it, post a screenshot.

Keep us posted.

-Ed-

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[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

The first loop iterates through the tasks in the plan, then the second through the buckets.

It was the only way i could get the add a row function to work.

I am now trying adding a bunch of "null" rows to the table in the "Task ID" field... will keep you posted if this solves it!

Thanks again for your time - it is greatly appreciated!

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately that didnt fix it.

Here are some full photos of the flow if you dont mind taking one more peak:

I think this one is the culprit, it fails cause it cant find an ID in key value (Cause this row doesnt exist yet)

[edgonzales]

Ok, I'll see if I can build something to do the same thing.  

As an aside, I know how much executives love Excel, but if the intent is to aggregate their tasks in a single place, have we considered showing them in Microsoft To-do?  That can be done automatically, here's a video.

Just a thought.

-Ed-

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[edgonzales]

@Anonymous - I just thought of something else, too, I think:

Let's say you've got 10 rows in your spreadsheet....If we use a condition to 'sync' things, it will play out like this, right:

When the Flow runs, it looks at the first task and asks "Is this in the spreadsheet?"

If it is in there, but let's say 4 rows down, it's going to get a "No" response 3 times before it hits the yes.  And in each of those 3, it will add a new row.  Then, it will find the match, but keep going.  Each time, not finding a match, and each time adding a new row. 

When it hits the 11th row, it will match again, and update that row, and then carry on until row 19.  Each run will add more and more rows (exponentially?) and this will get ugly fast.

I don't know what the fix is (To-Do?) but I'm sure one of the experts have already thought this through.  Let me know if that's something you've already addressed...but I didn't even think of it until I started building my own. 

-Ed-

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[edgonzales]

I had an idea if To-Do isn't the fix:

Set blank variables at the beginning, and go through the Apply to Each where it looks for a match.  If it finds a match, it updates the first variable with the row id and the other with the project details (array?), if it doesn't then the variables stay blank.

Outside of the Apply to each loop, if the variables are blank, then it adds a new row using the info from the second (array?) variable.  If there is data in there, then use the info from the first one to find the row, and the second to update it.

What do you think?  

-Ed-

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[v-bacao-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

You could consider using Flow template--Create a daily summary of Planner Tasks by Bucket to configure Flow.

Also, if you can, please consider renaming Task ID field to TaskID so that we can filter the rows using Filter Query.

• Delete the variables, Html table and Send an email related actions in in the template and use Button to be the trigger before Flow is configured.
• After deleting the related action, you only need to configure the required action in If yes branch.
• Use Get task details action to get the Description, and use List rows present in table to get the rows.
• Configure Filter Query to filter out rows with the specified Task id. If it does not exist, create a new row; if it exists, update the row.
• It should be noted here that all value Id in the if yes branch comes from List tasks action.

Expression reference:

length(body('List_rows_present_in_a_table')?['value'])

Image reference:

Please take a try.

Best Regards,

[Miguel_E]

Hi, I have been playing with this solution for a while and could not get it to work. It will always give me a FALSE for the first the first condition.  Then I tried setting the first condition values as Iterate bucket ID equals Bucket ID, and started to work right away.  I also set the trigger to recurr every minute at the onset, so it is always updating to matter, as long as a task is edited or created.

[Miguel_E]

Hi folks, check out a video I made about this solution.

Automatically update EXCEL from PLANNER using FLOW 

[Mertg]

Thank for the video its very helpful.

i couldn't pass the condition2 stage. i followed your steps on repeat but it doesn't for some reason.

i`m not sure if there is something wrong with the expression but i checked it and its correct. 

[Miguel_E]

Hi Mertg,

As you can see all items on the YES branch failed (the grey "X") next to each.  It also shows the FIRST condition, evaluated to false.

As such if the condition evaluated to FALSE, the flow will continue in the NO option, but since you have nothing in there, it puts the error in the YES option. (I think this is the reason).

Thus the message is saying:  "We are not going to bother doing condition 2, since the prior action did not work", the prior action being that of listing the rows in excel.

Why did the first condition failed?  Most likely your values are incorrect.  Refer to my prior post below where I put a pic of where I troubleshooted that.  Also notice that you have 1 out 15 tasks to evaluate in the first condition.  Look at the top right corner previous and next arrows.  Click on next and go thru all of them and see if any of them evaluated to TRUE.  If any of them did, then the problem is somewhere else.  If all of them are false, then check the values of your first condition.  HINT:  reduce the number of tasks to 3-4 so that you can troubleshoot faster.

[Mertg]

HI Miguel,

thanks for the reply. you were correct after sending the post I modified the fields once more again and suddenly it started working. i believe it was related with first condition. So I have achieved the first step. now I want to push further

do you mind helping me on this?

i have 4 different plans in my group and want to combine them all in same fashion. is there a way to combine them all? if not I think I need to create 4 parallel branch with same actions unless there is a copy function 🙂 

also is there a way to get details of checklist and labels? i searched a lot but I couldn't find a way yet ...

[Miguel_E]

There is a save as option for flows which basically allows you to copy a flow.  Then just modify the parameters for each of the plans.  This option is found on the My Flows page.  I have not found a way to get the su tasks or labels using flows.  The only way to get them is to export the plan.  You could create a recurring export with Flows, maybe?

[berechet]

Hello, i used the same flow, but with a different Triger.  

It's not working . The excel table is not updating . 

Can you help me with this ? 

[Miguel_E]

Hi Berechet,

You have not provided enough information on your post to determine what might be the cause. What is in the condition and there after?  Where does the flow stop?  I built a similar flow with the trigger of when a new task is created and it works fine, to create a new row in the table, but I do not have the branch to update existing rows in the table.  I use the Get task details to pull the ID of planner  triggerOutputs()?['body/id']

[berechet]

well, that looks good. thank you ! 

I think mine was to complicated. 

@Miguel_E  thanks!