Reminder Flow works, but fails at the same time - should I be worried?

[Anonymous]

Hi! 

I'm an enthusiastic Flow newbie looking for guidance! I've made a Flow to send an email reminder for a Sharepoint List item when a date is due. 

I have made a date column to the Sharepoint List called SetReminder and a Flow to activate from it. The problem is that the Flow works as intended, but a the same time fails everytime it runs. Should I be concerned about that? 

The flow goes like this:

Recurrent (once per day)

Get Items (Sharepoint List in question)

Apply to all - Condition

If UtcNow is greater to or equal than SetReminder [date]

If yes: Switch [A choice column value from the same Sharepoint List locating the office the reminder is for]

City1

Send Email (some fields from the List included)

Update Item (sets SetReminded column to null)

In the Condition if:no I have nothing. 

I can post screenshots if needed! 

EDIT: Totally forgot the error message. It's "ActionFailed. An action failed. No dependent actions succeeded." It shows up in the condition, but in the Switch everything is checked green. 

Kind regards, 

Heidi 

[Brad_Groux]

Screenshots of both the flow and error(s) would be beneficial - expanded screenshots of the flow steps would help too (while redacting private information, obviously). The switch is green, because it was able to run - the failed condition is where the issue likely is.

Also, make sure that all of the SharePoint List columns are formatted to the correct data types. 

[ScottShearer]

@Anonymous 

Please post a screen shot of your Flow - that will make it much easier to assist.

I suspect that you may have an issue comparing the dates:

If UtcNow is greater to or equal than SetReminder [date]

You probably want to use an expression when referencing UTCNow:

formatDateTime(utcNow(),'yyyy-MM-dd')

Also, you are liekly better off removing that condition and, instead, filtering in the GetItems action.  Your filter might look like this:

SetReminder ge 'expression'

The expression should be formatDateTime(utcNow(),'yyyy-MM-dd')

That said, please post a screen shot and I'm sure you get a solution to your issue.

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

thank you for the replies! 

Here are some screenshots of the Flow. My language is Finnish, I hope that doesn't cause inconvenience. For some reason it does work as it should. It sends notification when the condition is met. I haven't set the date with formatDateTime(utcNow(),'yyyy-MM-dd'). Where should I add that?  

[Anonymous]

Here's the error message: 

[Brad_Groux]

As mentioned in the Use expressions in flow actions blog post. Expressions can be used in conjunction with triggers and actions. They are under the Expressions popup fro the Add dynamic content menu:

From there you can select common expressions:

You put the utcnow() expression in any Time option or Filter Query. Here's an example in a Calendar step: 

And here's a quick mockup for steps similar to your flow: 

[Anonymous]

Thank you Brad for taking the time to help me! 

I realized that in testing it shows error messages based on Sharepoint rows (doh!). The first row succeeded, because it had a time set to it, but the rest of the rows failed with this error message: 

InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Ehto' at line '1' and column '2555': 'The template language function 'greaterOrEquals' expects two parameter of matching types. The function was invoked with values of type 'String' and 'Null' that do not match.'.

I tested this a bit further and concluded that the error is caused by the rows that don't have a date set to them. 

Also, for some reason I can not get the formatDateTime - expression to work properly. I assume it's because of language barriers? Here in Finland semicolon is used in place for comma, but even with that change formatDateTime(utcNow();'yyyy-MM-dd') does not work. I can get it to work when I put it like this: formatDateTime(utcNow('yyyy-MM-dd')). Is that right like that?

I did not understand where that should be put. I put it now in the condition. Though it seems that it wasn't the problem to start with. If I put it to the Get Items section, should I in some way express, which column I want to filter based on? 

I also tried using the Filter Query, but could not get it to work. I manually inserted the name of the column (it's in Finnish with no spaces, but I might have renamed it at some point) like this: Columnname ne null (expression). I got an error saying that the column does not exist.  

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Ha, I got rid of the error! It was the null reminder fields. 

I added a condition after Get Items (in the apply to all section) to check whether the field on Set Reminder equals null. And in the false path of that condition I added all the remaining steps of this flow. I don't know if this is the most efficient solution, but it works with no errors! 

Thank you both for your help.