Work Day Delay

[sophieclark]

Hi all, 

Is it possible to set the 'Delay' function to working days (mon-fri) only? I can see the option for days, but there's also a custom field, so hoping there might be something i can add here to set the days function to work days only. 

Any help will be appreciated! 

Thanks

Sophie

[edgonzales]

@sophieclark 

Hi there - So, the "Enter Custom Value" is kind of standard on most dropdowns.  I don't think there is an option for weekdays only...BUT, that doesn't mean you can't do it.    What you may want to consider is to have a "Compose" step before that calculates out the delayed date, and then using the "Delay Until" action to reference that calculated date.  

You can absolutely combine those steps, but I just thought that might be easier.

How long of a delay did you want?

-Ed

[sophieclark]

Thanks @edgonzales 

I'm looking to have a 4 day delay. I want to give a particular team 4 days to action something, but exclude Saturday and Sunday from the calculation. 

Does the 'Delay until' have to run on a specific date or does that allow a certain number of days?

Thanks

Sophie

[David_MA]

Do you want the following if the current day is:

• Sunday, delay until Thursday (4 days)
• Monday, delay until Friday (4 days)
• Tuesday, delay until the following Monday (6 days)
• Wednesday, delay until the following Tuesday (6 days)
• Thursday, delay until the following Wednesday (6 days)
• Friday, delay until the following Thursday (6 days)
• Saturday, delay until the following Friday (6 days)

If so, you can do this by:

1. Initialize an integer variable to store the delay amount
2. Get the day of the week from the date field you want to base the delay on.
3. Use a condition to see if the day is either Sunday or Monday.
4. If it is, set the delay variable to 4.
5. If it is not, set the delay variable to 6.
6. Use the variable for the delay count.

Your flow will look like this:

[sophieclark]

Thanks @David_MA 

This definitely looks like it'll work exactly how i need it too. I haven't started building the flow yet, i just needed to know it was possible before i made a start on it, so this has really helped! 

In the condition, does the 0 and the 1 represent Sunday and Monday then? I've not used numbers to represent the days of the week in a flow before.  

Thanks

[David_MA]

Yes, when you use the dayOfWeek expression it returns a number with 0 being Sunday, 1 being Monday, etc.

[David_MA]

If you want to simplify this, you could just use the following expression in your delay action:

if(greater(1,dayOfWeek(triggerBody()['date'])),'4','6')

 You would replace (triggerBody()['date']) with your date field.

[sophieclark]

@David_MAwhat would this look like in the flow please?

[David_MA]

I think you are asking what the expressions would be, correct? If not, I show the flow in my original response below. If you are asking for the expressions, you can greatly simplify things by just putting this expression in your delay action:

if(greater(1,dayOfWeek(triggerBody()['date'])),'4','6')

You would replace triggerBody()['date'] with the date field used to determine the delay from.

I showed the long way at first as that is a better way of learning how to use Power Automate and build flows so you learn some of the concepts. It also better illustrates the logic.

[sophieclark]

hi @David_MA 

You helped with this a while back and i'm finally at this stage of the flow and need a little more support if that's ok?

I've tried to replicate the flow in your image above but i'm getting the error 'string must match ISO 8601 format' 

Could you tell me how you've set up the expressions/formulas (not sure of correct terminology!) in the sections i've circled in your image below please?

The data i have coming in from excel is in the format '15/03/2023 15:56:16' as an example

Many thanks, 

Sophie 

[David_MA]

You need to format the data from your Excel string of '15/03/2023 15:56:16' to return the day of the week; is that correct? ISO dates need be in the format of yyyy-MM-dd so you will need to manipulate the Excel data to the correct date format. This should not be too hard by using a couple of expressions.

The first expression will take your Excel string and extract just the date portion and split it by the slash. That formula would be (note, replace triggerBody()['text'] with the dynamic data from Excel):

split(slice(triggerBody()['text'],0,10),'/')

 The second expression will then take the output, format it as an ISO date and return the day of the week (note: the above expression is in a Compose action that is named Compose_Get_Date_Components. If you name your compose actions something different, you will need to adjust the expression accordingly):

dayOfWeek(concat(outputs('Compose_Get_Date_Components')[2],'-',outputs('Compose_Get_Date_Components')[1],'-',outputs('Compose_Get_Date_Components')[0]))

 This is the flow I used to illustrate the above:

Which returns: