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Instant flows fail when you don't fill out all fields including Optional fields. Why?

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Posted on by SharonS

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I created an instant flow on a SharePoint list. I made some fields not mandatory. The flow failed when a user did not fill out ALL fields. What is going wrong? I intentionally did not fill out the column called "Number" that's why the data in that field doesn't exist. Its not a mandatory field.

When all fields are filled out, then the flow runs successfully.

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WillPage 2,329 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Put a question mark in your expression to make it nullable e.g triggerBody()?['number']

When a property is null it's often omitted from the JSON object so doing this will make the value null whether it exists with a null value or it's simply not there.

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SharonS 164 on at

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Here is the expression that I am using for a text field.

if(empty(triggerBody()['text'],'',triggerBody()['text']))

Its an if then statement.

Do I put the question mark here (see below)?
if(empty(triggerBody()?['text'],'',triggerBody()['text']))

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WillPage 2,329 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Yes, but you can refine the expression using the coalese() function:
coalesce(triggerBody()?['text'],'')
This will convert the null value of triggerBody()?['text'] to an empty string otherwise leave triggerBody()?['text'] as is if it's not null

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SharonS 164 on at

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@WillPage Thank you. I will try that.

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