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Birthday Teams Message from Sharepoint List

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Posted on by Lparadis23

Hello, I am trying to create a flow that looks at a sharepoint list daily of employees and their birthday and post a birthday message if there is one that matches. I am getting this error message: "Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Condition' at line '0' and column '0': 'The template language function 'formatDateTime' expects its first parameter to be of type string. The provided value is of type 'Null'."

Here is the flow and hoping someone can pinpoint my mistake.

Sharepoint List:

Categories:

Building flows

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creativeopinion 10,508 Moderator on at

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@Lparadis23 I have a YT Tutorial that covers this exact scenario. However, in my tutorial I am using a Send an Email action. You can simply replace the Send an Email action with the Post a Message in a Chat or Channel action.

The tutorial will show you how to send a reminder email to the individual who's birthday it is but also a reminder email to their supervisor.

You will need to switch to the Classic Designer to follow along.

In the tutorial I cover:
✅ How to Send an Email based on a Date Column in SharePoint
✅ Using the Recurrence Trigger in Power Automate
✅ How to Use the Filter Array Action with multiple conditions
✅ How to Get Dynamic Content from a Filter Array Action
✅ How to Get a Date Three Days from Today
✅ How to Create a Dynamic Date Based on utcNow()
✅ How to Return a Count of Items
✅ How to initialize and set a variable
✅ How to use the Send an Email (V2) action
✅ How to send test emails

Hope this helps!
If I helped you solve your problem—please mark my post as a solution ✅.
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👉 Watch my tutorials on YouTube
👉 Tips and Tricks on TikTok

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v-yetonggu-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @Lparadis23 ,
I suspect that there are blank cells in your 'Date' column, so an error will be reported that the data type you provided is 'Null'.
I did a test for your reference.
In my scenario:
Please try this formula to the right of the 'condition' control:

if( empty(items('Apply_to_each')?['Date']), null, formatDateTime(items('Apply_to_each')?['Date'],'yyyy-MM-dd') )

Best Regards,
Sunshine Gu

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Lparadis23 40 on at

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Thank you! This is exactly what I needed and learned a few tricks on the way. Loved the compose step to check results and the switch the classic view has been a game changer!

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Lparadis23 40 on at

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Thank you for the response! I ended up rewriting my whole code from above but this will be a great fix if I run into something similar in the future.

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Lparadis23 40 on at

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@creativeopinion I ran into an issue with your flow I was hoping you could help troubleshoot. When I deleted the filter query in the "get items" action to run the full flow it only looked at the top 100 sharepoint list items. I then tried using the "top Count" filter to manually have it look at the top 150 (currently there are about 130 items). This caused the flow to post a message for every person on the list. The Filter array and item count only found the one test birthday correctly. Any recommendations?

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creativeopinion 10,508 Moderator on at

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@Lparadis23 You need to turn on Pagination. Please refer to this section of another YT Tutorial on how to do this.
Hope this helps!

If I helped you solve your problem—please mark my post as a solution ✅.
Consider giving me a 👍 if you liked my response!

👉 Watch my tutorials on YouTube
👉 Tips and Tricks on TikTok

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Lparadis23 40 on at

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Thank you for your continued support! That did help pull all the items in the list. I am still having the issue of the flow posting a message for every person on my list instead of just the people that match a birthday. The filter array is finding the right test person and the item count is showing 1.

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creativeopinion 10,508 Moderator on at

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@Lparadis23 I need a full screenshot of your entire flow. It's hard to tell. From what you shared above. However, if you are using the Filter Array action in your flow, you need to access the dynamic content from the Filter Array action.

You are using a couple of Apply to Each actions to loop through the items returned from the Get Items action. This is incorrect. If you use a Filter Array action, you must access the dynamic content returned from THAT action. Refer to this section of the YT tutorial that covers how to return the dynamic content from the Filter Array action.

Also, you should try to avoid multiple Apply to Each actions in your flow especially if you are looping through the same items. This will make your flow very inefficient.

Check out a recent YT Tutorial that covers 3 ways you may be using the Apply to Each action wrong.

Hope this helps!

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Lparadis23 40 on at

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@creativeopinionThat was it! You are really helpful and your videos are amazing! Thank you for all your assistance!

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