On Block Error

[Ragot]

Hi guys, 

I have a challenge here. I have a flow that is supposed to pick data from an Excel file per row and populate the information on a web page form. The control measure in place is that if data is missing on the Excel it does not populate the web field and the flow is supposed to jump to the end and pick the next row on the Excel for filling. My problem is after the field is left blank my flow doesn't stop except it continues with the rest of the data within the same row and tries to submit it. In short, my On block error seems not to be picking the errors within it and proceeding to the end of the on-block. 

[Agnius]

The On block error action only triggers when there is a flow error. If you have no action that depends on the value being successfully typed in, it will not throw an error. You need to include some sort of a verification that checks whether the value was typed in or not.

Please share a screenshot of your flow, so that we can understand it better and come back with a more specific suggestion.

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[Ragot]

The on-block error is supposed to be triggered when a field on my form isn't populated. The action has been activated under advanced options but it seems the flow continues even when the field is blank. below I am trying to populate the first field on the screenshot quantity. In the second screenshot if the field is blank, on block should be triggered and jump to the end of the block. It instead proceeds to the next step to populate another field.  

[Agnius]

This is likely because of a selector issue. PAD assumes it has successfully populated the field and continues. There is no error and thus the On block error action does not kick in. It's not an issue with On block error. It's an issue with the way you have captured your field.

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[Ragot]

@Agnius Thank you for this. My concern however is when I provide the information that is supposed to fill this field the selector fills it accurately. I realised this error when testing if my flow would pick up some human errors. So does it mean the sector could still be an issue if it functions appropriately on filling data?  

[Agnius]

Okay, I seem to have misunderstood your issue then. Having a blank text to fill in is not an error. That's why it isn't captured by the On block error. The Populate text field in web page action will not throw an exception if the value you pass to it is empty. You will need to have an If condition to check if the value is empty.

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[Ragot]

@Agnius I have gone ahead and checked on my selectors went to the attribute of the selector and checked the required attribute for the web field. Now the block gets the error but the new bug is it doesn't populate all other fields in the form anymore. Thank you for the insight feeling a little bit hopeful now. 

[Agnius]

Since your On block error is designed to throw an error, this means the flow will stop upon a failure to populate any of the fields, resulting in further actions not being executed.

If you want it to continue populating other fields, you should set the On block error to continue flow run and make it execute the next action.

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[Ragot]

My fault I wasn't clear enough.  The flow picks data from an Excel file. Each row of the exile file fills data on the web page using for each loop. If one row misses any data the on-block continues to flow by jumping to the end and proceeding to the next line of the Excel file.

[Agnius]

Can you share a screenshot of your On block error action?

Also what changes you've made to the selector?

[Ragot]

[Ragot]

[Ragot]

@Agnius This last image shows that at the end of the block, the flow should resume the for each loop

[Agnius]

I'm pretty sure the "Required" parameter will not work with PAD. And it also has no effect on whether or not you send an empty text. It will simply fail on all cases, because it cannot find an element like that. That is why nothing gets populated - you get errors on every single case. I would suggest removing that from the selector and simply having an If statement that checks if your value is empty. If it is - skip the rest of the actions.

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[Ragot]

@Agnius thank-you I will try it with an if function. Though it beats logic if I want to test almost every field in that form to have an if statement to check each. I thought  on block is supposed to handle such scenarios. 

[Agnius]

No, the On block error handles system exceptions. An empty value to be populated to a field is not a system exception - it's a business exception. You need to handle that appropriately.

You can have a single If condition checking all of those values, though. Do this:

IF (CurrentItem['Quantity'] = '' OR CurrentItem['Minimum Lending Range'] = '') = True THEN
  # throw an error here
END

and add all of the values you want to check in this same fashion, using an OR operand. If any of them will be empty, this condition will be true.

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[Ragot]

@AgniusThank you so much.  I did the if statement as below but now the flow quickly brushes over it and doesn't jump to the assigned label yet there is an empty cell in the Excel.

[Ragot]

[Agnius]

This is not what I suggested that you do.

You should do the following (can copy and paste this to PAD):

IF (IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Trading Account']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['User Reference']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Currency']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Security']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Quantity']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Minimum Lending Rate']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Max Duration']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Allow Multiple Borrowers']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Expiry Date']) OR IsEmpty(CurrentItem['Change Reason'])) = True THEN
  # Do something here
END

The way you did it is not the correct syntax at all. When you join those variables like this, they will be interpreted as a single long string and it will never be empty. You need to check each item separately, but that can be done as shown above. Then you compare if the entire large boolean is equal to True.

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[Ragot · Accepted solution]

@Agniusr  Thank you so much for your input I didn't know where to insert the above logic in PAD everywhere I tried it PAD kept treating it as a string. However, I was able to come up with another way to identify the empty cells in the Excel file by using the get subtext . Through this I get the cell value and assign it to a variable. On the same get subtext function I trigger error by allowing the function to check the length of the string  from 0 to end of text. With this if it is empty the function wont be able to count thus an error pops up. Images below.