Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Detecting Duplicates

I need help, I'm having a hard time understanding how to accomplish a seemingly simple flow. The overall concept of the task is to allow people to register vehicles and receive a permit, I want to prevent 2 permits being issued to the same vehicle. No DUPLICATES
I have 2 SharePoint list “IssuedPermits” list and “PendingPermits” list, each list contains owner and vehicle information such as the vehicle vin information. The vehicle vin information is what I’m using to check for duplicates.
I have a button in my power app that will trigger a flow that will send up to 20 vehicles information to power automate to begin the flow.
Step 1 & 2
Power Apps Trigger and ParseJSON

Step 2 & 3
Filter Array & VINNumber Select (Isolate VIN’s)

Initialize variable and get IssuedPermit list VIN info

Two Selects to clean up IssuedPermit list VINs for the search

This is where my problems and confusion begin.

The first Apply to each is the Body(‘Filter_array’)
Then I set the variable, then I get the IssuedPermits VIN numbers again to use in the next Apply to each, then my condition.
From my understanding it should loop thru each VIN number and increment the variable.

Any ideas of where I’m going wrong?

I'm trying to do something similar to this.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/sharepoint/highlight-or-count-duplicates-in-a-single-sharepoint-list-column/m-p/3568145

Categories:

Business Process Flows

Hi,

The flow could have been done in simpler way as described below

1. Assume that from output of powerapps trigger and select action, you have stored the VIN numbers in an array format (from power apps) , for demo purposes, i am storing in array variable as shown below

2. Now use apply to each to loop through each element present in array variable VINNumbersfromPowerApps as shown below

Next steps would be explained will be under apply to each

3.1- use get items to get items from IssuedPermits SP List with using filter query which helps to check whether the VINNumber through which you are looping is present in Sharepoint list?

3.2- Now use condition action to check whether there is any output from get items action as shown below

Expression used-

length(outputs('Get_items')?['body/value'])
 
Now in Yes branch- if the condition is True, it implies that duplicate element exists in the IssuePermit lis
 
This is basic idea of how flow should be designed, i am thinking that you need to count total number of duplicate elements present, if not you want to do something if duplicate element is present - then under yes branch you can add respective actions.
 
Hope it helps !
Thanks & Regards,

Nived N 

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