Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hello,

Sharepoint is retiring alerts, and has suggested power automate as an alternative. However, I cannot figure out how to duplicate the same behavior using power automate. Full disclosure, I am new to learning power automate and have spent about the last couple weeks wrestling with this and learned quite a bit with the help of some AI.

My target scenario:

When a document in a folder/subfolders is created or modified,

I want a notification to be sent to a group chat for awareness.

The issue:

Opening a Sharepoint doc in web triggers the file to increment to a new version. This occurs even if no change is actually made to the document, so lots of false positives.

What I've tried:

Creating a FileVersionTracker in sharepoint that lists the FileID/LastVersion/LastDriveItemID/LastContentHash for use in a flow condition.

Attempt 1 — Version number comparison
Compared {VersionNumber} stored in the tracker against the current trigger value. Failed because SharePoint increments the version number on every web open in the environment.

Attempt 2 — DriveItemId comparison
Compared {DriveItemId} as a change indicator. Failed because SharePoint returns the same DriveItemId across all versions — it identifies the file itself, not a specific version.

Attempt 3 — Modified timestamp comparison
Added ModifiedDate as a secondary check alongside version number. Failed because SharePoint updates the modified timestamp on every web open, same as the version number.

Attempt 4 — Content hash (quickXorHash) comparison
Retrieved the file's quickXorHash via the SharePoint Graph API, storing it in a new LastContentHash column. Failed because SharePoint recalculates and updates the hash on every web open in the environment, indicating Office Online is writing data back to the file on every open.

Really hoping there is a solution out there!

Last resort work around: I change sharepoint to Checkout method, but this is not ideal.

Thank you in advance!

Categories:

Building flows

Using connectors

General topics