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Using Functions in Variables within Power Automate Desktop

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Posted on by JDofficial

Cheers,

I tried to dig up the internet without success for finding a solution to use (for example) text functions when assigning value to a variable.

At a 'set variable' action I have set: NewVar to 210121 (the date of the query). In the other stage I would like to set variable YearVar to something like "20" & Left(%NewVar%, 2). Unfortunately nothing like that seems to be working.

Is there a way to use functions within variables or inputs to actions in any fashion - apart from using the 'Get subtext' action? In a software where you can scrape whole tables from the web with css identification in a few clicks, I think it would be really lame to use a separate action for a simple text function.

PLEASE DO NOT COME UP WITH SOMETHING LIKE WHY I NEED THAT - bc I could use another tools or the whole thing is superfluous in the process, as I am still trying to find out what this software can do - because of the somewhat inappropriate documentation.

Thanks,
JD

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @JDofficial ,

* Convert the number to text
* Use "Get Subtext" action to get subtext
* Then add 20 infront of the subtext output

Hope this helps:)

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JDofficial 25 on at

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Thank you @Anonymous, but my question was:
"Is there a way to use functions within variables or inputs to actions in any fashion - apart from using the 'Get subtext' action?"

Since you used it, I cannot accept it as a solution. I am completely aware of the opportunity of doing this (see my original post), but I find pretty awkward to do something similar in 3 actions instead of one line of code.

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Rkmatieda 77 on at

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Hi @JDofficial ,
I totally agree with your view that if in a sophisticated programming language some logic/code can be incorporated with just 1 line of code, why it would not be possible to have it in another language/platform? As of now, in PAD it is not possible to call those ".net framework" based functions straight away. You can call it serious limitation/restriction.

An alternative to this can be activites like "Run VB Script" or "Run Python script", in which you can writedown really detailed piece of code in just 1 instruction.

Also in my opinion, having some restrictions in platform could be well though off by the developers of it. In case of PAD, I have observed one thing is that the chances error/failure of a piece of automation are significantly less compared to any other platform. Because your code is made up from only those activity allowed by software and not from user preffered library dependent functions/instructions. The more free environment it is the less error proofing done at design time or more error checking has to be done at run time. and at run time the chances of error/exception increases lot so the chances of execution break up in run time are higher.

I have been using other industry leader RPA tools since now almost 3 years. and one thing i have experienced is that you need to invest lot of time behind checking and testing of automation before deploymebt if your developmenet environment is so-called Open. in case of PAD this time could be significantly lower.

This doesn't mean that I don't want any changes or addition in platform. There are lot of improvement scope for it, which are being mentioned on the forum like this.

So the bottom line could be just find a way to actualize your code within the restriction of the software platform and then compare one platform with another platform in terms of performance.

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JDofficial 25 on at

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Hi @Rkmatieda,

Thank you for the ideas you have given - using Python or VBScript as an alternative. I find it is still not ideal, but better off having tons of actions that cannot be renamed and be put in context especially when automating more complex processes. As seemingly this is the best choice in the current framework I give you the credit for that.

Your reasoning, which I think is pretty close to the developers' official one, is fair and for now we have to live with it - I really hope only for now - as future development is going to iron out these flaws.

To reiterate: I also do think that PAD has really powerful tools like extract data from web page - but it is really dissonant that getting a subtext of a string is equally weighted as a process step to scraping a whole table. On the reliability part I find its behavior weird sometimes (like sometimes it does not run properly if an instance of a browser is not open yet) - but that is an other subject. In theory .NET is also developed by Microsoft, so I see no major challenge on the reliability here - the knowledge is within the organization. Strategically I deem there is a complete different story.

Cheers,
JD

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wszreiber 3 on at

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with date is method with math
for example, if u wanna cut day number from 210121
when day is last digits: (210121 - day from date) / 100 = 2101

/vviesio

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