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List of all direct reports and subordinates

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Posted on by JimSutt

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I'm trying to build a Power Automate flow that will output a list of all every user that reports (both directly and indirectly) to a manager user ID (input). I have tried to use the "Office 365 Users.Get direct reports" action, save the output to an array variable, and then loop through that array with the same "Get direct reports" action to return the next layer of users. When finished, I would append all these lists together for a single complete list of all direct and indirect reports.

My issue is there could be 5+ layers of management in the organization, so I would like the flow to keep digging into each user until the "Get direct reports" returns nothing. There has to be a simpler method than essentially an infinite number of embedded loops!

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ChristianAbata 8,953 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @JimSutt you can use do ultil.
In my example I look into json response many time unless the answer is empty

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v-bacao-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @JimSutt ,

Maybe you could consider using Do until to meet your needs.

Please consider sharing the current Flow configuration so that we can try to apply Do until to your Flow.

Best Regards,

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JimSutt 203 on at

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Hi @ChristianAbata and @v-bacao-msft ,
I used your feedback and reconsidered my approach. Below is what my process looks like thus far.

My approach is as follows:
Prompt for manager's email
Get manager's profile (email, name, job title)
Initialize an array and add the manager's profile to first line of array
Loop through the array, appending the manager's direct reports to the array. As the array grows, the intent is the loop will keep evaluating the direct reports of each user, and continue to append the full-time users to the end of the array.
Currently, the main loop does not continue to process newly added users to the array, only the original. Is there a way to continue to loop through the array as it grows?

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JimSutt 203 on at

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Note that I did not use the "Do Until" loop as I don't want the loop to stop when it hit the first user with no direct reports. I want to keep building the list of direct reports and checking each one for additional reports. I hope that makes sense. I wonder if I need to use a different style of loop in order to loop through an array that is expanding.

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tootuff 16 on at

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I am also trying to accomplish this. Is there any update from Microsoft on a possible solution?

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JimSutt 203 on at

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Successfully implemented the logic using the Do Until function (see screenshots) and a counter. It appears the Apply To Each loop only processes the rows of the array present at the START of the loop and ignores rows appended to the array during the loop.
The Do Until loop does not use the array as an input, but rather compares a simple counter to the size of the array. Since the array is initialized with 1 row and the counter is initialized at 0, the loop will continue to process the array until the counter catches up to the size of the array, which is re-evaluated each iteration of the loop.
*Note: The Get Direct Reports function returns inactive users, so my next course of action (not shown here) will be to ignore those records.

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mikeyroth 13 on at

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I would really appreciate some help. I cannot figure out the variables used in the JSON Parse Content field in your screen shots. I know I want the data from the items we stored in the array, I am just not sure how to get them. Any advice?

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JimSutt 203 on at

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Hello @mikeyroth, the following is the code in the "Content" field of the Parse JSON step:

variables('FinalArray')[variables('ArrayCounter')]

The output of this step will give us the components of the object array for the current row, which we can then reference the "mail" element to pass into "Get direct reports (V2)". If you need it, the following is the Schema used in the Parse JSON step:

{ "type": "object", "properties": { "Mail": { "type": "string" }, "DisplayName": { "type": "string" }, "JobTitle": { "type": "string" }, "AccountEnabled": { "type": "boolean" } } }

Hopefully this addresses your question. If you need more help, please let me know.

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mikeyroth 13 on at

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@JimSutt Thanks I got it to run! I found I had to change the limit of the do until to get all of the reports, but it did work. Did you ever get where you could filter those accounts that were not enabled?

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JimSutt 203 on at

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Hi @mikeyroth , I'm glad you were able to get the flow to run. Good catch with the loop limiter. In order to filter out the disabled accounts, you will need to include "accountEnabled" field from the "Get direct reports (V2)" step. After the "Get direct reports (V2)" step, add the "Filter array" step to only keep the records where accountEnabled = true. You can also update the Select statement within your Do Until loop to save the value of the accountEnabled field (useful for testing to ensure you're only returning the correct values!) The following is my updated steps immediately after "Get direct reports (V2)":

The "Filter array" in advanced mode will look like:
@equals(item()?['accountEnabled'], true)

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