Wait for latest changes in OneDrive file

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I believe I am not capturing the latest changes to a OneDrive file within one of my flows. I need to copy over a OneDrive file (.xlsx) to a network drive, but once it lands on the network drive, I notice it is missing the latest changes. Meanwhile, the OneDrive version of the file seems perfectly updated.

With the OneDrive connector I first modify the .xlsx via the OneDrive connector and immediately after I get the file's content. Then with the file system connector I create a new file on the network drive. However, the resulting file on this drive does not reflect the latest changes to the OneDrive file.

I believe I am getting the OneDrive file's content too soon, before any of those changes really have synced up. In the past, I have created a loop right before I get the content, which watches the file's last modified property. That is, before getting the file contents, the bot makes sure there aren't any more pending changes. However, although it seems to more or less do the trick, at times it still wouldn't grab the latest changes so I'm looking for the most reliable / best-practice way of doing this.

Of course, I can simply add a large delay before getting the file contents, but that seems arbitrary. Alternatively, though in the same vein as my proposed solution above, I could repeatedly get the files contents and wait until a certain number of successive reads provide the same file contents. But it's a similar idea to checking the last modified property.

Ideally, OneDrive would provide a property such as a 'queue of pending changes' so that the bot can wait for that queue to be consumed and know that the file is up to date.

Are there any better options?

Thanks

[ianwuk]

@Anonymous Did you ever figure this out? I'm looking to do the same thing, besides having to add a delay.

[wskinnermctc]

I had looked at a similar issue and could not find a way to guarantee the correct information will be copied other than a delay. 

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Excel-email-attachment-pulls-previous-Form-submis...

I tried to submit a issue, but microsoft makes that so difficult and routes to the chat bot that I couldn't post the issue.

They try to treat the problem as part of general issues with the connector, but I don't think it is the same. If the excel file is being updated from one flow, then it should be completed and fully updated by the time that connector completes the step.

• An Excel file may be locked for an update or delete up to 6 minutes since the last use of the connector.
• Simultaneous file modifications made by other connectors, or manual edits are not supported. Users should avoid writing data to a single Excel file from multiple clients concurrently (Excel Desktop, Excel Web, Power Automate, LogicApps or Power Apps). This can cause possible merge conflicts and data inconsistency.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/excelonlinebusiness/#general-known-issues-and-limitatio... 

The best I could do was submit an Idea on the feedback/idea page. You can upvote it here at the link below.

https://ideas.powerautomate.com/d365community/idea/1b3ddb66-4aad-ed11-a81b-000d3ae6931a 

[ianwuk]

Thank you @wskinnermctc - how long did you put the delay at?

My flow looks like this, with 30 second delays between each OneDrive step to get a file thumbnail and then the file metadata.

But putting in all the delays makes it slow - any suggestions?

Thanks so much!

[wskinnermctc]

I don't know exactly what you are trying to achieve, but with the example I recently worked on that dealt with adding excel attachments to an email; I got consistent results with allowing 3 minutes after the excel was updated to the time it was attached to an email.

(This only worked if the flow was not expected to run within the next 3 minutes or else there would be data overlap. For example if a form was submitted and triggered the flow, and then another form was submitted within 3 minutes, the attachment for the first flow would end up having the information of the second form.)

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Excel-email-attachment-pulls-previous-Form-submis... 

[ianwuk]

Thank you @wskinnermctc for taking the time to reply.  I guess data overlap would result in my flow failing, saying that the resource was not found (OneDrive file thumbnail) when it is clearly there - would I be correct?

I've had to rebuild my flow so many times because of this.

My flow takes a picture of a website, then posts it to a Teams channel, then restarts and does the same thing again.  Therefore data overlap would occur.