Using initialize variable to get email from column value

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Posted on by YM-29012021-0

Hi there,

I have a flow using initialize variable String with the following expression:

if (equals(item()?['field_8'], 'Name1'), 'Name1_email@address.com',
if (equals(item()?['field_8'], 'Name2'), 'Name2_email@address.com',
if (equals(item()?['field_8'], 'Name3'), 'Name3_email@address.com',
if (equals(item()?['field_8'], 'Name4'), 'Name4_email@address.com',
if (equals(item()?['field_8'], 'Name5'), 'Name5_email@address.com','')))))

I want to use the variable output for the Send an email action but the output is showing null even though the field has Name1.

Any help appreciated

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Building flows

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Two things. 1) the comparison you are doing is case sensitive so that may be why the match isn't being made. Usually its a good idea to convert everything to upper or lower case when doing a comparison. 2) You have all the nested IF's, but you don't really have what to do if they are true or false. They just daisy chain to another if either way and the final if doesn't include any values for true or false.

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YM-29012021-0 24 on at

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Pstork1 Thanks for your reply. What is best practice to not have the Ifs daisy chained? I'll give the case conversion a go and see if that works.

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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One way to avoid nested ifs is to use a switch. Since you are testing the same value at each level you can use a switch and just add a case for each different matching value.

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w.p 8,339 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@YM-29012021-0

the function item()?['field_8'] => null, it doesn't work with Get Items.

replace with select with filter actions.

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YM-29012021-0 24 on at

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w.p Thanks for your response, can you suggest an alternative here?

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w.p 8,339 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@YM-29012021-0

Not sure about the condition, and it looks like you are trying to send an email one by one instead of all at once.
Can you share screenshots of your list and explain a bit more of what you are trying to achieve?

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YM-29012021-0 24 on at

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w.p

Sure, here's a bit more of explanation, the idea of the flow is to send them an email if the task is overdue and not complete. Field 8 contains an employee Name that is assigned that task. If the Due Date of that task is past today, they are notified by email. I had used a similar expression when using Get Responses from a form but this the first time with a list.

Get items:

The condition is as below:

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w.p 8,339 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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I'm guessing the field_8 is a single line of text column type, that's why you are using nested IF statements to get the static email and decided not to use person column type for some reasons.

@Pstork1 suggested one way to avoid nested ifs is to use a switch, have you tried it?

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Chriddle 8,436 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Don't use if statements at all. Use a map like this:

My Compose "Get items" mimics your Get items action.

{ "body": [ {"Name": "Name1", "DueDate": "2024-12-01"}, {"Name": "Name2", "DueDate": "2025-12-01"}, {"Name": "Name3", "DueDate": "2025-03-31"} ] }

"Email" is a Compose with the map.

{ "Name1": "Name1_email@address.com", "Name2": "Name2_email@address.com", "Name3": "Name3_email@address.com", "Name4": "Name4_email@address.com", "Name5": "Name5_email@address.com" }

"Select" adds the emails to the values of Get items.

From:

body('Get_items')

Map:

addProperty( item(), 'Email', outputs('Email')[item()['Name']] )

The result is a collection of values containing the email addresses that you can filter (if you haven't already done so in the "Get Items") and then send the corresponding emails to.

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w.p 8,339 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Full Name: item()?['FullName']

Email: outputs('StaticEmailList')?[toLower(item()?['FullName'])]

ID: item()?['ID']

To: item()?['Email']

Full Name: item()?['Full Name']
ID: item()?['ID']

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