How to get out of this loop?

[Filistyn]

Hey! My powerautomate flow is looped. In sharepoint list after I create an item, it creates 2 more, so the flow is triggering the whole time and gets loop.

My flow looks like this: 

How do I make it that it just goes ONCE but also works everytime an new item is created?

[eric-cheng]

Hi @Filistyn ,

Could you elaborate on the purpose of your flow as I am curious to understand the scenario when you would have a SharePoint item created triggered flow that would then create items in the same list?

Are you intending to create the item again or are you looking to update the item?

If you 'have' to create the item again, you can add an additional column as a flag and default it to true as an example.  Add a flow trigger condition for flag = true.  In you create item at the bottom, set flag = false.

Thanks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I have answered your question, please mark my post as a solution
If you have found my response helpful, please give it a thumbs up

Connect on LinkedIn

[Filistyn]

Hello Eric!

In summary, I'm working on Time off app. For example employee sends a request for a time off. If I as a manager accept, it will move to a new sharepoint list, where I store done requests. This is the part, where this flow comes in. 

This "Done" request is created here.

What my flow does is that if the request is coming from one month to another, it splits it so it stays in that one month. For example I send a request from 2021/5/30 to 2021/6/2. It is coming from one month to another. So this flow splits it in two rows where one is from 2021/5/30 to 2021/5/31 and second one 2021/6/1 to 2021/6/2.

The code in conditions is:

formatDateTime(triggerBody()['StartDate'],'MM') is not equal to 

formatDateTime(triggerBody()['EndDate'],'MM')

First create item: 

function for enddate: 

adddays(startOfMonth(triggerBody()['EndDate']),-1)

second one:

startdate: 

startOfMonth(triggerBody()['EndDate'])

The logic behind it works, but since its creating 2 more items, the flow itself is in the infinite loop.

[eric-cheng]

Hi @Filistyn ,

There are a few options to prevent infinite loops which involve trigger conditions.  Please have a look here, here and here for some options details.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I have answered your question, please mark my post as a solution
If you have found my response helpful, please give it a thumbs up

Connect on LinkedIn

[Filistyn]

Hi @eric-cheng!

Could you help me more? Since I'm super new in automate, I can't really figure it out with those URLs you posted 😞

[eric-cheng]

Hi @Filistyn ,

Create an additional column with a Yes/No and default to Yes

If you create a flow with a When an item is created trigger, by default it will trigger with every new item.  This is how your flow is currently behaving.

To confirm this, the flow will trigger for both items (yes value in Trigger column and no value in Trigger column)

We will set a trigger condition so that only new list items with 'Yes' in the trigger column will will trigger the flow.  The expression will return true when the column is Yes.

@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/Trigger'], true)

Creating a new item with No in the trigger column should no longer trigger a flow. 

Creating an item with Yes in the trigger column should still trigger a flow.

If you add a Create an Item task in your flow and set No in the Trigger column, it will create the item without causing an infinite loop (causing your flow to trigger again and again).  Just make sure it is set to No

You just need to make sure that the items created by your employees have 'Yes' in the trigger column.  You can hide the column in SharePoint if you want.

Flow runs once

We now have our new list item

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I have answered your question, please mark my post as a solution
If you have found my response helpful, please give it a thumbs up

Connect on LinkedIn