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Checking for Duplicates in a SharePoint List

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Posted on by HV-08081631-0

Hello All,

I'm using the helpdesk template on SharePoint and I've created a flow here if someone emails our shared mailbox, it generates a ticket. I've extended that flow to add it where if someone emails/replies back to that same email, it doesn't generate another ticket/item on the list. I can't seem to know what I'm doing wrong as it's not showing any errors but it's not producing the results wanted as it's still generating more tickets on the same email thread.

Initially before a new item/ticket is generated in the list, it would check for the "message id" that was extracted and if the returned amount is 0, it'll proceed with a creating a new ticket/item. If not, the flow ends but I may see if it can just add it as a comment.

Below is everything I have.

For "Get Items"

For "Create item"

Categories:

Building flows

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StretchFredrik 3,395 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hello, MessageId is a new id for every email, even in the same thread. Try swapping it to Conversation ID and enable Pagination on your Get items step =)

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HV-08081631-0 21 on at

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@StretchFredrik I just noticed something, after the ConversationID is added to it's column in the SharePoint list, it keeps adding a "=" at the end of the ID. This would cause the condition to be true all the time.

Would you know why it does this?

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StretchFredrik 3,395 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hey @HV-08081631-0

Could you share an image of what you mean and how it would affect the if statement =)

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HV-08081631-0 21 on at

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@StretchFredrik Scratch that, nevermind. I fully looked at the raw data and it appears to be correct. But I'm not sure how the conditions are still appearing to be true. This is what the raw data look like for Get Items.

Below is what is shown within the SharePoint list.

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StretchFredrik 3,395 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Probably has to do with the \n that is in the conversation_ID in the flow run, but not in the SharePoint columns. We can try removing it before saving it to SharePoint by doing this in the "EmailThreadID" as a expression:

Split(CONVERSATION_ID HERE,'\n')[0]

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HV-08081631-0 21 on at

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@StretchFredrik So this is what I have for the EmailThreadID before it's created in the SharePoint List.

Also, I noticed that the output in my "Get Items" is empty. Is that normal?

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StretchFredrik 3,395 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Have you enabled pagination on the Get items step? If not, press the three dots go to settings, enable pagination and put 5000 as the number.

Does the flow work as expected after that?

If my response solved your issue, please mark it as ✅ Accepted Answer and give it a like.

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WillPage 2,307 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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The message ID is always going to be unique for each incoming email so you can't use it for grouping messages like that. The best you can do is put a ticket ID in the subject line of your response to the initial query, e.g Re: original subject [Ticket#1]

..where 1 is the list item ID of the ticket from dynamic content

Then when the person replies, you can parse out that number by doing

int(slice(triggerOutputs()?['body/subject'], add(indexOf(triggerOutputs()?['body/subject'],'[Ticket#'),8),lastIndexOf(triggerOutputs()?['body/subject'],']')))

The result of that will be your list item ID which you can then use to lookup the original ticket.

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HV-08081631-0 21 on at

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Thank you for your help you two @WillPage @StretchFredrik.

It looks like the issue was coming from my "Compose." I checked the output on that and that was where it was adding the "\n." I thought I didn't need to make it into a string value but I added the '' to my "Compose" connector and that resolved the issue. My logic was right but looks like I just missed these minor pieces.

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StretchFredrik 3,395 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Glad you got it to work.

Dont forget to put your post as answered.

Have a nice day!

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