Sharepoint "Item created or modified" causing endless retriggering of flow.

[BattleDroid2]

Hope somebody can help as this issue is driving me nuts. I read a lot of posts about how the use of this connector can cause retriggering of a flow, and I thought I had structured my flow to compensate, but I just can't stop it retriggering.

The background is that I have a sharepoint list which contains a list of contracts. Those contracts can be one of 3 types. NHS, Private or Other. There are 3 corresponding fields that can capture the name of the contract, these are selection lists drawn from other linked lists in the same sharepoint. When adding a new item the user is shown the appropriate field depending on the Contract Type selected.

To make reporting and displaying records easier, I have a flow that copies the name from those 3 fields into a single field called Procurement Name. Doing this allows me to filter on a single column in the sharepoint list.

The flow is set up as follows

Then there is a conditional statement.

The first 4 conditions check to see if there has been a change to any of the 3 Name fields, or if the Procurement Name is null.

The final condition does a comparison of a value I capture the last time the row was modified and the time of this modification.

div(sub(ticks(triggerOutputs()?['body/Modified']),ticks(triggerOutputs()?['body/LastModified'])),600000000)

I have captured every variable before it enters the Condition.

The first 4 conditions all return False and the last Condition returns 1.

BUT, and this is the bit I can’t figure out.

The Condition still returns True as the final result.

Does anyone know why this might be?

[creativeopinion · Accepted solution]

@BattleDroid2 You should consider using trigger conditions instead. This way your flow only triggers when you want it to trigger. The way you have your flow set up is that it'll trigger every time and item is created or modified in your SharePoint list. You should add a trigger condition to check and see if the Procurement Name is null (empty)—before your flow even triggers.

Check out this YT Tutorial for more details on how to add Trigger Conditions to your flow: 4 Ways You Can Use Trigger Conditions in Your Microsoft Power Automate Flow

If you are using an Automated Cloud flow trigger in your flow—you need to consider adding trigger conditions.

Do YOU 🫵 know what a trigger condition is? Trigger conditions can be set in most flow triggers. These conditions you set must be true for the trigger to fire. In this Power Automate tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use trigger conditions in your flows to control when your Power Automate flows trigger.

If your plan has flow run limits—you can avoid triggering your flows unnecessarily by using trigger conditions.

I’ll cover four different flow examples that would benefit from trigger conditions:

⚡️ Triggering a flow when a column is changed to a specific value

⚡️ Triggering a Flow When an Event Updated or Deleted

⚡️ Triggering a Flow When a New Folder is Created

⚡️ Triggering a Flow When a Specific Email is Received I’ll also show you a trick on how to easily create the expressions needed and give you a few tips on how to troubleshoot your flow.

IN THIS VIDEO:

✅ Four different flows that would benefit from trigger conditions

✅ What is a trigger condition?

✅ How to add a trigger condition to your flow

✅ How to trigger a flow when a column is changed to a specific value

✅ How to trigger a flow when an event is updated or Deleted

✅ How to trigger a flow when a new folder is created

✅ How to trigger a flow when a specific email is received

✅ How to troubleshoot a trigger condition

✅ How to prevent case sensitivity issues with a trigger condition

✅ How to use the filter array action to easily compose an expression that can be used in a trigger condition

Hope this helps!

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[BattleDroid2]

Thanks so much, this worked brilliantly. 🙂