SharePoint "Changes" are constantly triggering flows

[Anonymous]

I have a couple flows that trigger from a change to a sharepoint list. Lately, these flows are triggering constantly without any input or change to the list. Looking at the version history of the triggering item, it seems to be constantly "pinging" that item as a change? 

Even though there is no change to the item, Sharepoint is thinking that its constantly changing. I have no idea what is going on here.

Any and all help would be welcome!

[Alex-W]

@Anonymous  try creating a condition that must be true before the flow runs.  For example, if Column A is equal to ABC, run the flow or else do nothing.

[Anonymous]

I'm afraid that because one of my flows acts as a report of items changed, and it needs to trigger on almost all changes, this won't work well for me. 

[Anonymous]

Even if I come up with a good condition to trigger from, sharepoint is causing the flows to trigger so often that they will eventually get throttled. 

I turned on this flow for a few seconds and it trigger a dozen times.

[Anonymous]

Looking through these triggers more closely, the only field that shows as changed is the "Modified" column.

From the output of a Get Changes action:

[Alex-W]

@Anonymous can you share a screenshot of the flow that is linked to this list?

SharePoint can do whatever it wants, but if the change does not pass the condition test it will not run.  

[RobElliott]

You seem to be in the infinite trigger loop problem. You need to look at your flow and see whether you have an action that runs whenever the item is modified.

[Anonymous]

Here is most of the flow. I have a condition already but to evaluate that condition the flow needs to trigger and get those changes. The meat of the flows does not run, but the problem is that it's running off of nothing.

[Anonymous]

Could you please explain a bit more about this problem? The flow does trigger when an item is modified, but the flow does not modify any list items itself.

[ekarim2020]

Please share a screenshot of the "Get changes for an item or a file (properties only)".

Ellis
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[Alex-W]

@Anonymous the flow is triggering when an item is created or modified.  I try to not to use this type of trigger because of the potential infinite looping issues.  I recently had such an issue that created over 20K items on SharePoint over a four day period.  For me, the issue was flows were in the queue and kept running.  So, go to your flow log and change the view from All runs to Running.  If you see any flows there, try canceling all of them to see if that stops the loop.

If your flow log is good and you do not have a long list of flows running and you are not able to create a condition, try create two new flows... one for when an item is created and the other for when an item is modified.  

[Oelshamy]

I have recently faced this issue, the flow is running constantly although there are no changes in the item. 

Any solution for this?

[Alex-W]

@Oelshamy I recently found a solution that works for me when using the when created or modified trigger.  I had to create a multiple line of text column and turn on the append changes.  On the flow, I set this condition on the trigger (FlowFlag is the name I am using for the multi line column).

@equals(triggerOutputs()?['body/FlowFlag'], null)

 The condition is checking to see if the FlowFlag column is empty.  If yes, the flow runs.  

Add an update item action (If you do not already have one) and have it enter something in the FlowFlag column.  It does not matter what you put here.  Just make sure it is not blank.

So the way all this works, when you edit an item and do not enter any value in the append column, SharePoint will add a blank value.  So when you do edit an item and submit it, the flow will see that the append column is blank and it will perform all the actions you setup.  When the update item action runs, it will add some text to the append column, and when the flow tries to run again, it will see that the append column is not blank and the flow will not run.  

Try it and see if it works for you.  

[kenyu1424]

I also get the same issue. The column named "Modified" changes even if there is no activity in the list. Any idea why this column changes without doing anything?

[Alex-W]

@kenyu1424  go into the version history for the item on the SharePoint list and see what change is taking place and by who.  You can also go into the flow history for the flow that is tied to that list and see if it is stuck in a loop.  If there is a loop, that means the flow is being triggered again when it updates the list.  You will need to add a condition to stop this.