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Can you use power automate to get all form question text and values from response

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Posted on by markdavies

I have created a simple flow based on MS Form. The flow checks for new responses in the form and then creates an email with various values from the form. There are 4 questions on the form. The email simply use the dynamic content returned by the forms "get response details" action,

The user who requested this said that they may regularly change the content of the form but they do not want to have to change the power automate flow each time they change the form. When I have written code in the past I would have expected to get a collection and just iterate through the items to return the key\values. I was hoping it would be possible to get all the form questions and text and be able to put them into the email in a simple table. I couldn't see a way of doing this though.

There is only one form action available, "get response details". I looked at the output after it runs and it returns data similar to that shown below:

{

"responder": "mes@somewhere.com",

"submitDate": "10/29/2020 2:35:55 PM",

"3Hq0sLPDAAhyH9mSUc5Hf3WtN9zVgVKw8": "Michael Mouse",

"idFKTaBZYelztp7yaCDyxRAMWKQKVCJXH": "Smily",

"EGxSjnwxA1kuVR70jHvSQhNxqQHI0BOO5": "2012-11-05",

"IYqYyPahceDMDi2zwyERNTxf1PPOytRwP": "No"

}

The values are there but the question text they relate to seems to be a unique id rather than the question text. If anyone knows if it is possible to do this somehow it would be appreciated.

Many Thanks

Mark,

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Building flows

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Brad_Groux 4,556 on at

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Get Response Details calls all of the dynamic content that you need to call for your simple table in a Send an Email (V2) Outlook Email action. As an example, here is a Get Response Details that allows me to add response details to a SharePoint Update Item action:

Anytime you have a "Get" action, you are doing so to prepare your flow for calling that dynamic content from a subsequent action. In your case, you'd have a Send an Email (V2), and just pipe in the dynamic content into the email body of that item. Example:

If you could provide an expanded screenshot of your Flow and steps, your Flow run history, and of any detailed error messages you're receiving we could likely better assist you. Also, for the best results, you may want to review How to write a good forum post.

If this reply answers your question or solves your issue, please ACCEPT AS SOLUTION ☑️. If you find this reply helpful, please consider giving it a LIKE.

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REDLEADER 2 on at

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Mark,
Did anyone ever advise a method to retrieve the non-dynamic content of the form, i.e. the form questions? I see a response, but it didn't answer your question.

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markdavies 22 on at

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The request from our customer to automate a process was not dropped so we didn't need to provide the functionality.

Having looked back on this I don't think there is anyway you could automate this kind of thing. If a form is changed then columns may be added and dropped so any changes would have to be manually applied to power automation jobs. It is impossible to expect it to automagically have the process do it for you.

The availability of forms and power automation to citizen developers is both a boon and curse to ICT professionals. It should, and has, freed up our time so we are not having to develop and maintain forms and power automations. However, what I have found is that citizen developers do not have the the skills, knowledge, and sometimes the time to maintain their processes. I've had calls with members of our business to discuss why their current process is not working as they expect or is limited it what it can do. I then try and suggest what they would need to do to get it to achieve what they need.

When the developer of these process leaves a team or the organisation is when you see the problems. The business may not know what has been setup and starts reporting issues to ICT. ICT don't know anything about processes that have been setup so then have to try and understand what a process is (assuming we agree to help). Sometimes these are key steps in a business process, which can create time pressures. I usually find there is little to no documentation around the processes. In some cases they haven't shared forms and they've been deleted when then person leaves. There is usually no one within that persons team willing and/or able to pick up the support of the process in their place.

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