Why Does Flow add Apply to Each Automatically?

[noob4]

Thanks in advance guys!

So, I'm using "Get Items" to call data from about six SP Online Lists.  Then I use "Populate a Microsoft Word Template", I locate the file and then when I add content from one of my SP Lists in the previous steps Flow automatically embeds this "Populate a Microsoft Word Template" action into an apply to each... and it keeps on creating this loop every time I add a piece of content from an SP List.

I'd like to just add the content to the dynamic fields in my word template without using the apply to each.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[RobElliott]

@noob4 after the get items action there will always be an apply to each because you are bringing back 1 or more items from the list. It's quite logical. The only way to avoid that is to use a Select action after the get items.

Rob
Los Gallardos
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[noob4]

@RobElliott Thanks!  Yes, it makes sense... but it keeps adding apply to each every time I add content from one of the lists.  When I watch tutorials on YouTube Flow doesn't do this... but in the tutorials they're only ever using one SP List... So then I presume the issue is that I'm using multiple SP lists.  

Even when I try the Select action as soon as I add dynamic content it adds the apply to each.

In my word doc I have about 40 or 50 fields to populate so if I follow this method I'll have 40 or 50 Apply to Each actions inside of each other.  Any thoughts on how I can do this otherwise?

[noob4]

To be clear, it looks like I'll have this Apply to Each action once for each separate SP list... ok... however, this Apply to Each is generating multiple files because after I populate my word doc I use the Create File action inside of the apply to each, I can't grab the Populate action outside of it, and then my flow just keeps running.

[grantjenkins]

Is there something that links each of the lists? Or are you just returning a single item from each of the lists and just want to extract the data from each single item?

[noob4]

Hi @grantjenkins  - Thanks for chiming in.

There is a unique ID that ties all of the lists together... and in the flow that unique ID is coming across as an variable from a PowerApp.

As of now I'm testing to see if I can use OData in the Get Items action to filter by the unique ID that's passed from the PowerApp.  If I hard code the unique ID into the OData filter as "Title eq 'uniqueID'" it works... but when I try to pass the unique ID from the PowerApp it's not coming across... I can work through that separately.

So let's say I can filter by the unique ID using OData query in each of the Get Items action... at this point I'd have just the rows I need from each of the SP Lists... but now I'm still faced with how to avoid the Apply to each action from automatically appearing... I'm thinking to use join to try to make one string out of the rows, but this may not give me selectable dynamic values... just an output from the Join action that I wouldn't be able to tie out to the word doc... so, still stuck as of now.

Any help is appreciated.

[noob4 · Accepted solution]

Ok, there are two ways we can do this..

Option 1 - Get Item > Select String(Object)

This is basically the @rob6 solution with a bit more detail.

1. Use the Get Items action to get data from your SharePoint List(s).
   • Use OData filter to filter by the unique ID.
2. Use the Scope action to organize the next steps for each SharePoint List that you called.
3. Within the Scope action from the previous step, again, for each SP List, use a Select action to select each item that you want from each SP List.
   • The From field is the Value item of the SP List that you're using for each of the Select statements in this Scope container.
   • The Map field should just be an expression using the String function to call the item from your SP List, e.g, string(item()?['field_1']) .... Tip: you can just type string() and then grab the dynamic value of the item from your SP List when you are composing this... so, no need to know the details of the JSON and all that.
   • Don't just add the item in the value field as this will cause the JSON to be passed when you use the output from the Select action later in your flow.
4. Now for whatever you want to do after that you can choose the Output from each Select action and it will be passed as a string and will not invoke the Apply to Each action.

It's a bit time consuming to have to select all of the items with the Select action after they're already available with the Get Items action, but this does the trick.

Option 2 - Get Items > Initialize Variable > Apply to Each > Set Variable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiesJB8qqVw

Found this on YouTube... it's similar to my solution above but instead of using the Select action it initializes a variable without a value, then sets the variable as the item from the SP list, without the string expression, and then because of that the Apply to Each is used on the Set action only and when the variable is passed to another action later in the flow it is passed as a string and therefore does not invoke another Apply to Each.