Flow not always triggered - SPO

[Vieken]

Hi,

I'm rather new at this and I already found a lot of help online but for this problem I don't have a clue.

I created a flow to distribute our paper mail. It's quite easy.

The flow is triggered when a file is created or modified in a SharePoint library (only when the 'receiver' field is not empty condition: @not(empty(triggerBody()?['Receiver'])) ). The receiver field is of the type 'person or group'.

8 out of 10 times everything works fine. The user or grouop is getting the correct permission on the file and is being informed by mail. 

But sometimes nothing happens, the flow is not being triggered although the receiver field is filled in correctly.

When I check the run history I don't have anything for that specific file. What could be wrong or how can I fix this? I don't know how to troubleshoot this.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @Vieken 

Not sure whether this would be a reason as well 

Also when trigger does not works, was there any delay when updating receiver field after the file is uploaded ?

Thanks & Regards,

Nived N 🚀

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[Vieken]

Hi @Nived_Nambiar thanks for you reply.

I don't think it's being caused by the communication issue. We have this problem since we started using this flow (december 2023).

Concerning the delay, I'll have to ask the person who uploads the files and completes the fields.

For now, it's easy to correct by completing the receiver field a second time but we have to doublecheck everything.

[S-Venkadesh]

Hi @Vieken ,

The expression you provided is valid. However, you mentioned it is not working sometimes.
Consider using the following expression, which work consistently:

@not(equals(triggerBody()?['Receiver'], null))

 I hope this information is helpful. If it is, please consider giving a thumbs up 👍.

Best regards,
Venkadesh Sundaramurthy

[Vieken]

Hi @S-Venkadesh 

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll give it a try after the weekend! I'll report on this later.

[S-Venkadesh]

Hi @Vieken 
I'm curious, did the suggestion I gave solve your problem?
Sharing your experience will help others who are looking for a solution.

Best Regards,
Venkadesh Sundaramurthy

[Vieken]

HI @S-Venkadesh 

I applied the change as you suggested yesterday morning.

The problem didn't occur everytime so it's still too soon to tell if it's working better now and apparently we didn't have any mail to scan yesterday. I will update on this by the end of the week.

Best regards,

[Vieken]

HI @S-Venkadesh 

Already back 😁

The problem is still there. Now I do have logs for the problematic ones.

I have a 'sharepoint get file properties' action. In there I have empty brackets for the Receiver field ("Receiver": []).

In my sharepoint library, the receiver for that is item is entered correctly. It's also strange that the flow got triggered because it only should be triggered when 'Receiver' is not empty.

Our main user also says there's no delay when completing the fields (Receiver is the last field to complete - 5 in total)

[Vieken]

Does anyone have a clue?

I added a picture of my flow. Maybe I do something wrong.

[SamLed]

Hi @Vieken,

Give a try removing trigger condition to make flow triggered each time a file is created or modified. Set your "Receiver" check inside flow. Also add receiver value in a compose before condition to display it. Do it, at least temporarily, in order to be able to debug. At the moment, you can't know if flow is not triggered due to data or service outage as you've got no history.

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[Vieken]

Hi @SamLed Thanks for you reply.

As you can see in my previous posts, I already found out that the Receiver stays empty sometimes ("Receiver": []). Since I changed the code for the action condition, they do appear in my flow history.

So in short - SharePoint library is completed correctly - Trigger starts (when receiver is not empty) - Get File Properties says Receiver is Empty.

I don't get it.

[SamLed · Accepted solution]

Hi @Vieken,

Sorry ,Missed or misunderstood your post 😉

Ok, I guess, this mainly happens for file creation event, because when user add file, he does populate receiver field value in a second time, so flow is triggered on file creation before receiver field value change occured. The point is that I don't know if trigger will take into account the modification event when a flow instance is already running for same file triggered by creation event.

[Edit] I also observed that delay of flows triggering was not constant, sometimes it happens right after monitored event, sometimes 1 min later, it may be that the modification was taken into account before the flow was launched following creation and sometimes flow was launch before modification occured. that would explain why it is working but sometimes not. 

As you need receiver information, I would change trigger to "When an item or a file is modified" to get flow triggered only on modification (when user populate receiver value).

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[Vieken]

Thanks @SamLed 

That's actually a good idea. I just changed the trigger and I've tested it twice.

The last time I didn't complete the receiver field. Still I can see that the flow ran despite of the trigger condition. Is this normal behaviour?

The flow ended because I check a second time if Receiver is null or not. I'll think I'll add a step there to warn the person who completed the library that the receiver is missing (on the 'if yes' side).

edit: I just found out that the flow (with no receiver) runs until it gets to 'apply to each'. So the mail for the 'if yes' side is not even sent. 

[SamLed]

Hi @Vieken,

Here's how I would do:

Conditions (And):

• outputs('Get_changes_for_an_item_or_a_file_(properties_only)')?['body/ColumnHasChanged/Receiver'] equals true
• empty(triggerOutputs()?['body/Receiver']) equals false

I would also remove any trigger condition as it seems we can't rely on it for this use case.

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[Vieken · Accepted solution]

Hi again @SamLed .

Your help is much appreciated. I tried now as you suggested. I tweaked it a little bit (The receiver field can have multiple receivers). The flow looks like this now.

I'll give this some time now to see if any more problems occur. I think that you may be correct about the trigger. 

[SamLed]

Hi @Vieken,

you're tweak is useless, empty() works the same with string or collection and "HasChanged" works on overall field value, it won't detect if you add or remove someone. So it has nothing to do inside apply to each. Actually you're looping when it has change or not, that's not suitable. 

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[Vieken]

You're right. I changed it back as you suggested.

Thanks a lot for the help. I hope the initial problem will be gone now.

[SamLed]

Hi @Vieken,

Bonus steps you may be interested in, I asked myself how I would have liked this process to go:

• Send email to only added people
• Delete permissions to only removed people 

So did the following:

• Get previous item version
• Select emails from previous and current version
• Compare both to get removed, added and preserved emails (last one is useless, just for fun)

Uri: 

_api/web/lists/getByTitle('Documents')/items(@{triggerOutputs()?['body/ID']})/versions(@{sub(mul(int(triggerOutputs()?['body/{VersionNumber}']),512),512)})

Version ID is calculated with that expression: 

sub(mul(int(triggerOutputs()?['body/{VersionNumber}']),512),512)

Which means:

([Current version number] * 512) - 512

The 2 following are "Select" actions:

"Previous version receiver email" From: 

body('Get_previous_version')?['d/Receiver/results']

Email Map: 

item()['Email']

"Current version receiver email" From: 

triggerOutputs()?['body/Receiver']

Email Map: 

item()['Email']

The 3 following are "Filter" actions: 

 

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[Vieken]

Thanks @SamLed 

I think that's a little overkill for our usecase but you did show me some new stuff that I didn't know was possible. It could come in handy for other cases.

PowerAutomate really amazes me. The possibilities are unbelievable. Too bad, I have to find out everything all by myself. 

[Vieken]

Hi @SamLed 

I'm sorry to get back to this. I have a new problem with this flow. Everything was running fine for a few months. Now since a week this flow stopped working correctly. I did some investigation and I think that the problem comes from the action "Get changes for an item or a file (properties only)". The value for the receiver field is 'no' although the 'receiver' column has been completed. Did something change or do you have an idea how to correct this?

update: I think there's a problem with the versions. It only seems to check the latest version. Every time a column gets completed, sharepoint seems to create a new version.

I have this for the body output now: 

{

  "SinceVersionExisted": true,

  "SinceVersionId": 2560,

  "SinceVersionLabel": "5.0",

  "UntilVersionIsCurrent": true,

  "UntilVersionId": 2560,

  "UntilVersionLabel": "5.0",

  "ColumnHasChanged": {

    "ID": false,

    "Title": false,

    "RefIN": false,

    "Date": false,

    "Sender": false,

    "Subject": false,

    "Receiver": false,

    "OData__ColorTag": false,

    "ComplianceAssetId": false,

    "OData__ExtendedDescription": false,

    "SharedWithUsers": false,

    "SharedWithDetails": false,

    "MediaServiceImageTags": false,

    "MediaServiceOCR": false,

    "Created": false,

    "Author": false,

    "Modified": false,

    "Editor": false,

    "CheckoutUser": false,

    "OData__DisplayName": false

  }

}

When it was still working. I had this as an output:

{

  "SinceVersionExisted": false,

  "SinceVersionId": 512,

  "SinceVersionLabel": "1.0",

  "UntilVersionIsCurrent": true,

  "UntilVersionId": 2560,

  "UntilVersionLabel": "5.0",

  "ColumnHasChanged": {

    "ID": false,

    "Title": false,

    "RefIN": true,

    "Date": false,

    "Sender": true,

    "Subject": true,

    "Receiver": true,

    "OData__ColorTag": false,

    "ComplianceAssetId": false,

    "OData__ExtendedDescription": false,

    "SharedWithUsers": false,

    "SharedWithDetails": false,

    "MediaServiceImageTags": false,

    "MediaServiceOCR": false,

    "Created": false,

    "Author": false,

    "Modified": true,

    "Editor": false,

    "CheckoutUser": false,

    "OData__DisplayName": false

  }

}