Help Needed with Extracting Task Details from Planner Board using power automate for Power BI Report

[TejaJuloori]

Hi Community,

I am working on a project to extract task details from a Planner board for a specific Plan ID and create a Power BI report. However, I am facing a few issues and would appreciate any guidance or suggestions.

• Objective: Extract task details from a Planner board for a specific Plan ID and create a Power BI report.
• Tools: Using Power Automate to get data from Planner and push it to Power BI.

Issues

1. Linking Applied Categories to Category Descriptions

   • Get Plan Details: This action provides the category descriptions.
   • Get Task Details: This action shows which categories are applied to each task.
   • Challenge: How can I link the applied categories from Get Task Details to their descriptions from Get Plan Details?

2. Completed By User ID

   • List Tasks Action: The completedBy field is available for some tasks in the response body.
   • Challenge: How can I reliably extract the completedBy user ID from the tasks?

3. Recurring Tasks

   • Planner Board: There is a repeat dropdown for tasks, but the isRecurring field does not exist in the API response.
   • Challenge: How can I identify recurring tasks from the Planner board?

[FLMike]

Hi @TejaJuloori 

Great write up. If you have any flow pictures it can help

Ok let me try to answer you where I can.

1. Linking Applied Categories to Category Descriptions

   • Get Plan Details: This action provides the category descriptions.
   • Get Task Details: This action shows which categories are applied to each task.
   • Challenge: How can I link the applied categories from Get Task Details to their descriptions from Get Plan Details?
   • So the way it was before and I'd have to check again is like this
     • There is a set number of possible tags, 25.
     • Plan Details as you said gives the possible Category Descriptions, and you should think of them as the array they are and their ordinal position
     • In the Task, it has the array "Category Applied" will be true or false.
     • To link them, for instance in the Task it says true for index 5 of that Task Categories Applied
     • Take that number and use that in the Plan Categories, to get the String value of that category.
     • Thats how you link them.
     • Plan
     •     {Category1: "Test"}
     • Task
     • "category1": true
     • This means that the FIRST index of the Tasks Category Applied array, is applied
     • So in the Plan Category1 = Test
     • So your string is Text for the Task

2. Completed By User ID

   • List Tasks Action: The completedBy field is available for some tasks in the response body.
   • Challenge: How can I reliably extract the completedBy user ID from the tasks?
     • I would have to see where you don't see it, but its completed. I have written loads of Planner code, I've never not seen it. can you please provide an example of where it should be there but isn't?

3. Recurring Tasks

   • Planner Board: There is a repeat dropdown for tasks, but the isRecurring field does not exist in the API response.
     • Hi, you can create them via Power Automate, by using the HTTP Action and Graph Api's for Planner
   • Challenge: How can I identify recurring tasks from the Planner board?
     • You would need to use the HTTP Action from Graph API, to query tasks for a plan instead of using the Power Automate Action for Planner. You would also have to use the beta end point though to get it as the normal End Point does not support it

Those answers explain how and what you asked.

If I have helped you, I would really appreciate if you please Mark my answer as Resolved/Answered, and give it a thumbs up, so it can help others

Cheers

Thank You
Michael Gernaey MCT | MCSE | MCP | Self-Contractor| Ex-Microsoft
https://gernaeysoftware.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgernaey

[TejaJuloori]

Thank you for the feedback!

I’ve attached two pictures to provide more context:

1. Get Plan Details and Append to Array:

   • This step fetches the category descriptions from the plan and appends them to an array variable. Each entry in the array includes corresponding category descriptions for each task.

2. Get Task Details and Compose Applied Category:

   • This step retrieves the task details, and within this, a Compose action is used to identify the applied category which returns true for each task.

Challenge:

I am trying to compare the applied categories from the task details with the category descriptions from the plan details to retrieve the corresponding category description.

Current Approach:

In the "Apply to each" loop for the tasks, I have a Compose action where I am attempting to extract the category description using the following expression:

first( filter( variables('CategoryDescriptions'), equals(item()?['planId'], items('Apply_to_each')?['planId']) ) )['categoryDescriptions'][items('Apply_to_each')?['key']]

[TejaJuloori]