Update Sharepoint item - skip if blank

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Posted on by lukas.schauffele

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Hi guys

I am updating a SharePoint list item, including updating a Person field. See Subject Matter Expert and Business Approver in screenshot below.

The issue is that sometimes there is no Subject Matter Expert or Business Approver. If that happens the flow will fail and complain that the blank user could not be found.

{
 "status": 400,
 "message": "The specified user could not be found"
}

I can check if the value for SME or Business Approver is empty but I don't know how to stop it from updating it with an empty string.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you

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Building flows

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sudharsan1985 1,325 on at

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Hi @LKS
Try to use the condition action to check for empty value for the Subject Matter Expert and Business Approver field, if it is not null, try to use 'Send Http Request for SharePoint' action to update the item via SharePoint REST API and you can update only the columns you need. Maybe on the 'Yes' branch update other columns other 'Subject Matter Expert and Business Approver' and in the 'No' branch update the columns including 'Subject Matter Expert and Business Approver'.

Hope it helps, please like it or mark it as a solution if it resolves ur clarification or issue
-Sudharsan K...

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JohnAageAnderse 1,986 on at

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Hello @LKS

One way to do it is to first get the item that you want to update. That will ensure you have the original values.

Then in your update item, add a condition in your two people columns, that if the new value is empty, use the original value, else use the new.

Kind regards, John

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lukas.schauffele 186 on at

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Hey @JohnAageAnderse

I thought we were onto a winner here but it's still not playing ball. For some reason the Claims field does not like the condition. If I use the output of the Get item action, flow writes a null value in the Update item action and everything is fine.
returns:

As soon as I wrap the output of the Get item action inside a condition and the returned value being the same output from the Get Item action, it puts in an empty string rather than the null value and fails. I've also tried just putting null in there rather than trying to get the output but that also doesn't work. It must be something to do with how flow evaluates the conditional expression and it just falls over.

or
returns:

Any other ideas other than making individual requests based on what values we have in our payload?

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lukas.schauffele 186 on at

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Following this guide has solved the issue for me. There is a SharePoint action called Resolve Person.

Enter the names to check in the Email or name field. You also need to set Limit Columns by View field for some reason. After which you can select your Column.

Ensure to set the run after condition to success and failure. This ensures that if there is no match, the flow continues to run.

Finally, in the update list item action, use the outputs from the Resolve person action.

You can see in the final screenshot, the first resolve person action did not find anything but the update still worked.

Thanks for your help guys!

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JohnAageAnderse 1,986 on at

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Hello @LKS
Good that you found a solution! I had completely forgotten about Resolve person action 😄 Happy for you!
Kind regards, John

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