Recurring Loop

[Alex-W]

I have a flow that was created by the previous developer.  The flow has an error that I am trying to fix, but I am having trouble understanding what the last guy did.

The flow was written to create recurring events on a SharePoint list.  The flow does create the recurring entries on the correct date, but the time if wrong.  For example, there is an event every Friday from 8am to 9am.  The first entry for this event is correct on SharePoint, but the entry for next Friday will have something like 9am to 3am for the time.  

This is the flow:

The function for the StartDate addToTime is 

addToTime(variables('StartDate'), mul(variables('RecurInterval'),variables('Recur')),'Day')

The function for the EndDate addToTime is 

addToTime(variables('EndDate'), mul(variables('RecurInterval'),variables('Recur')),'Day')

Below the EndTime Compose there is a Create Item action that uses the output from the StartDate and EndDate Compose.  Because of this, I am assuming there is a problem with the addToTime code, but I can't figure it out. 

Please help me fix this flow.

[annajhaveri]

@Alex-W  the flow is manually creating recurring items in SharePoint list? You can use recurrence feature of SharePoint Calendar for recurrence, here is a blog that can get you started on how to create recurring calendar item in SharePoint https://www.expiscornovus.com/2022/02/28/how-to-create-a-recurrent-event/

[Alex-W]

@annajhaveri I 100% agree with you.  The SharePoint calendar has the recurrence feature that works, but for unknow reasons at this time, the guy before did not use a calendar.  The flow I posted above is attached to a SharePoint list that is creating the recurring items.

I did make some progress on this issue.  I added a time zone conversion actions for the start and stop date and that sort of works.  Future start/ends time match the actual time until November 4 when the clocks change due to daylight saving time.  The time conversion is going from local (source time zone) to UTC (destination time zone).  I thought the source and destination time zones would be the other way around, but that did not work.  I also thought Power Automate would account for the daylight saving time, but it does not appear that way.  Starting 5 November, all the recurring event entries are one hour behind and then goes back to actual time in March when the clocks change again.  

Going forward, I will try to convince the company to switch to the classic calendar. 

[Alex-W]

So I have a new problem now.  Instead of attempting to convince the company to switch to the SharePoint calendar, I decided to try to make the flow work while accounting for daylight saving time.  This did not work out as planned and the flow went into an infinite loop which caused a throttling warning.  I spent about 10 minutes deleting the recurring entries, but they kept coming.  I reverted the flow back to the way it was and that did not stop the recurring entries.  Turning off the flow did not stop them either.  I ended up adding a trigger condition.  That stopped the flow from running, but the recurring entries are still being created. 

This is my first experience with throttling.  I am assuming SharePoint is not allowing all the recurring entries to be created in a short period of time, but its been almost 13 hours now and recurring entries are still being created on the SharePoint list.  

If this problem does not stop soon, is there another way to stop the recurring entries from being created? 

I do not have tenant admin permissions and there isn't a duplicate flow.  

[annajhaveri]

@Alex-W  is there any flow run, that is  in progress?

[Alex-W]

@annajhaveri I think you are on to something.  That is a great question and one I did not think about.  I am looking at the run history now and there are flows still running.  It does not allow me to do a select all and cancel flow runs.  So I will have to do a few at time.  I will reply again once I cancel all of them.  

[Alex-W]

@annajhaveri Problem solved!!  I had quite a few flows running and it took me a long time to stop them all.  It seems like each time the looping flow ran, it created another looping flow.  Since Monday when this problem start, over 20,000 items were created on the SharePoint list.  This is the craziest thing I've seen with Power Automate, but I now know what to do if this happens again.  Thank you for all your help!!!

[Alex-W · Accepted solution]

I am going to mark this response as the solution, but it is not.  I have a better understanding of the problem, but it is still on going.  So, the purpose of this post is to summarize this topic.

The flow that I posted does work to create multiple items on a certain date based on the recurrence type of weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, but it does not create these items with the current time.  Adding a time zone converter using UTC for the start and end times did correct this problem but it does not account for Daylight Saving Time.  So, the flow only worked from March through November.  The start and stop times are one hour behind when DST is not in effect.  I then added another set of time zone converters using UTC -01:00 which would have worked if I knew how to write the flow to switch from the UTC time zone converters to the UTC -01:00 converters at the end of DST.  This is where things went crazy.  I tried to add a condition that checked the start date of an item to determine which time zone converter to use.  If the date was between 12 March and 4 November, the flow would use UTC.  If not, it would use UTC -01:00.  Sounds like a simple condition that should have worked, but something caused an infinite loop and it kept going for two and half days before @annajhaveri told me to look for flows that are still running.  Once I cancelled all the running flows, SharePoint still created about 300 items on the list.  I am assuming this was the last of the incoming Power Automate requests in the queue.  Approximately 20,810 items were created on the SharePoint list because of this looping issue.      

I am done trying to make this flow work.  Even if I was able to make it work for 2023, it would not work in 2024 because DST start and end dates are different.  Right now I am trying to convince the company to use a SharePoint calendar instead of this.        

** I did not post screenshots of the bi-weekly and monthly parts of the flow.  If someone wants to see it, tag me in a reply.