Answered

Desktop Flow loop

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Will_H

Is there a way to set a loop to stop at a certain time?
At the moment, I have two loops that has pauses and loop index X times which then equals 12 hours, but I was wondering if there's an easier way to set it to stop at certain time.

Problem I'm facing is I have two flows "enable" and "disable". Because they run on fixed hours (pauses and loop index) to complete the flow, if it fails and I restart the flow, it won't care if "enable' flow was meant to start at 9am because the disable flow was still in loop. or vice versa.
I did look at scheduling but because I need it to run on a machine rather than from cloud flow that's why I need to use desktop flow.

What i'm waiting to acheive is enable flow runs at 8:53am UTC, runs loop to open web browser, click around (So web browser doesn't close due to inactivity) every 10mins, TILL the disable flow starts at 5pm, runs loop to open web browser, click around (So web browser doesn't close due to inactivity) every 10mins, repeat enable flow runs at 8:53am next morning and so on.

Thank you in advanced!

Categories:

Power Automate Desktop

I have the same question (0)

All responses (3)

Answers (1)

Sort by

Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Do you have a Power Automate Premium license? If you do, you could use cloud flows or Windows Task Scheduler to schedule your flows. If you do not, then there is no scheduling available.

There is no way to stop a flow at a certain time. What you have built is essentially what it is. You would just need to keep checking what time it is (using the Get current date and time action) and stop when it reaches a certain time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I have answered your question, please mark it as the preferred solution. If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

I also provide paid consultancy and development services using Power Automate. If you're interested, DM me and we can discuss it.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Will_H 6 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi Agnius,

Thank you for your reply.
I do have Automate Premium license, I have tried with cloud flow scheduling, but it just queues and waits till the existing flow is finished.

Ok, I can look at get current date and time action and stop when it reaches certain time.
Could you please give an example of using get current date and time to stop at 5pm?
I've tried researching but most don't mention how to apply the action to a specific time.

Thank you in advanced

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

When you use the Get current date and time action, the result is usually a date time variable stored in %CurrentDateTime%. It has various properties, using which allows you to retrieve parts of the date, such as the month, the day, the hour, etc. So, you can do an If statement to check if %CurrentDateTime.Hour% is greater than or equal to 17 (5PM) and then use Exit loop to stop looping when that's true.

It would look somewhat like this:

Make sure your Get current date and time action is inside the loop, so that you actually get an updated timestamp, and not just keep checking the same value over and over again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I have answered your question, please mark it as the preferred solution. If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

I also provide paid consultancy and development services using Power Automate. If you're interested, DM me and we can discuss it.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No