How to duplicate folders and send the duplicate to a variable location?

[Jhonny_Nassif]

Hello everyone! This is my first post so I'm sorry if I don't follow all the guidelines while writting this. I already did a quick search on the forum and found nothing. I will break down my situation in small topics hoping to make it as clear as possible.

I work at a law firm. In order to file motions/petitions in digital lawsuits, we have a shared "Pending Filing" folder on Sharepoint, where everyone uploads subfolders containing the main motion file and any attachments alongside it. We have a dedicated employee that is responsible to access each of these subfolders, file these motions online and then move each subfolder from the "Pending Filing" folder to the "Already Filed" folder, as the motions are filed.

We also have a "Clients" folder on Sharepoint. Inside this folder, we have subfolders organized in the following structure:

"Clients>Client Name>Opposing Part Name>Lawsuit Number" 

Periodically, the dedicated employee that is in charge of filing these motions will clear out the "Already Filed" folder, by manually moving the subfolders to its corresponding "Clients>Client Name>Opposing Part Name>Lawsuit number" folder. This takes a massive ammount of time to be done manually, and once I heard about Power Automate and what it can do, i'm pretty sure that it can help us do this task automatically, even if it requires us to adapt a thing or two in our workflow.

I am a programming enthusiast and got as far as to send an automatic email to the dedicated employee everytime a subfolder is uploaded to the "Pending Filing" folder, so he doesnt need to refresh it all the time to check if anything new needs filing. But, in order to automate the organization process, the catch is how to give Power Automate the information it needs in order to choose the correct "Clients>Client Name>Opposing Part Name>Lawsuit number" folder for each of the "Already Filed" subfolders. I just have absolutely zero ideas on how this could be done, considering that it must be a somewhat user friendly solution.

I thought about creating a naming convention to the subfolders and extracting the required information from there, but considering that this requires everyone in the firm to name folders according to this convention with zero margin for typos, I feel like this will be tough to implement.

Do you guys see any simpler way to automate this sorting process, even if it requires us to adapt our workflow in anyway neccessary?

Thank you so much in advance!

[sudharsan1985 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jhonny_Nassif 

You are right in order to automate using Power Automate, the parameters have to be passed. If you think that it is difficult for the users to name the folder, how about adding some extra metadata information while creating the folder. You can modify the Folder content type in the library and include the client name and other metadata that you would like to validate in the Power Automate. Make those fields mandatory, so that whenever a folder is created the users have to give that information mandatorily. 

[Jhonny_Nassif]

Hello @sudharsan1985 , thank you so much for your reply!

If you wouldnt mind elaborating a little more on your suggestion, you are saying that it is possible on Sharepoint to force prompt some question fields and add the answers to the created folder's metadata, everytime a subfolder is uploaded to a specific mainfolder (in my case, everytime a subfolder is uploaded to the "Pending Filing" folder)?

If thats correct, could you please point me to some guide or tutorial on how to do it? I tried to web search it and found nothing, maybe because I didnt quite understood 100% of what you were suggesting.

Thanks again!

[sudharsan1985]

Hi @Jhonny_Nassif 

Please refer to the below link.

4 ways to tag folders with metadata in SharePoint - SharePoint Maven