How to Automate Recurring Tasks - Microsoft Lists

[kschoepfer]

We use Microsoft Lists as somewhat of a project management tool. People enter requests, but typically these requests are recurring on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Currently, once a request is complete, we have to go in and manually change the due date to the following week/month/quarter. Is there a way to automate this so that once a task is marked as "complete," the due date automatically updates based on its frequency?

[stefwanders]

Hello kschoepfer,

Trying to better understand what you are trying to accomplish; after a task is completed, you want the task due date to extend by a week / month / year, from the moment the task has been completed. So; the row in your list has just been completed and then you want to extend the date of that particular list item?

You do not want to create a new list item when a request has been complete that duplicates the list entry and then set a new due date?

My guess would be that we atleast need an 'indicator' for your date. Is the request a quarterly, monthly, weekly request. Is this present in your columns?

[kschoepfer]

Hi stefwanders,

Duplicating the list entry with an updated due date would also work. I do have a column that indicates the frequency of request (weekly, quarterly, etc.) but wasn't sure if there was a way to set each item to repeat monthly on the 3rd, for example, or weekly on Wednesdays.

[stefwanders]

Hello @kschoepfer ,

I've been fiddling about a little bit for you and came up with the following. Keep in mind, I'm not an expert on Power Automate. These forums make a great learning school for myself, therefor, there might be better or more elegant solutions to your 'problem'.

The SharePoint List
I've started with creating a basic simple list:

The Status column has three options:

Not started, Started and Completed.

The Recurrence has three options:

weekly, monthly, quarterly (I see I made a typo in my actual list)

Power Automate

1) Trigger

We start on a trigger: When an item is created or modified:

Important here is that we want the Flow to trigger on a specific condition in your list!

Go to the three dots and select settings.

In the bottom of the settings screen, go to the Trigger Conditions section and hit + Add. 

Based on my list, the trigger is as follow: @equals(triggerBody()?['Status']?['Value'],'Completed')

Press done. The FLOW will now trigger when the condition of your list item is set to completed.

More information about trigger condition by Reza here (Great Vlog!): https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Webinars-and-Video-Gallery/Microsoft-Flow-Trigger-Conditions/m-p...

2) Switch

In your scenario I'm using a simple switch. In the On field in the Switch command, use Dynamic content you get from the first step: the Column: Recurrence Value. (the weekly, monthly or quarterly value)

I then build 3 cases, where in the equals I put in the values of the Recurrence column: weekly, monthly, quarterly.

3) Update item in switch case

In each of the cases, put in an Update item (SharePoint).

Now we want to update the Due date to update based on the case.

In the Due date field, we use an Expression: 

To expand a week: addDays(utcNow(),7)

To expand a month: addDays(utcNow(),30)

etc. etc.

Mind you, I'm always struggling with dates. A week is 7 days, but a month can be 30 or 31. thus a quarter can change as well, in this I just used '30' for a month. I'm sure there is a better solution to calculate the date.

[stefwanders]

I couldn't place more screenshots, thus a screenshot of the Update item Step:

Additionally: I've set the Status Value back to: Not started

Results:

Changing the status column of the first two rows

Then after a minute or so, the columns have been updated with their new respective values:

Hope this helps you get on your way!