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Stop a flow re-triggering itself on sharepoint item created/modified trigger - modified

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Posted on by Community Power Pla...

If anyone can help i'd much appreciate it.

I have a flow which copies one sharepoint field in a list to another in that list. (It copies a start date + duration date to a 'finish date' field to enable gantt chart view in the SP list).

This flow seems to re-trigger tiself and run over and over. To stop this i thought about putting in a condition of last modified < now(- 1 minute). This would stop it running if the item was modified in the last minute.

I got as far as this... but its not workign. Any suggestions?

@less(triggerBody()?['Modified'], addMinutes(utcNow(), -1))

Thanks again,

Shaun

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Building flows

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PieterVeenstra 13 on at

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HI @Anonymous,

You are looking for option 3 in this post: https://veenstra.me.uk/2018/02/21/microsoft-flow-are-you-running-out-of-runs-with-microsoft-flow/

Or maybe even a 5th option ( not in the post) where you create a state machine using a switch and at the beginning of each branch you update the item with an 'in progress' status and at the end of each branch a 'completed'. Flows will still retrigger but at least you can then condition the reruns out.

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v-yuazh-msft on at

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Hi @ Shauniekent,

Could you please share a screenshot of the configuration of your sharepoint list?

I would offer you a workaround to prevent the retrigger of the flow and you could take a try to add a “Yes/No” type column in the list to record whether the update of an item is caused by flow.
I have created a sharepoint list as below:
Note:
The “start date” column ,”duration date” column and “finish date” column are all date type column, the “modified by flow” column is a “Yes/No” type column and the defaults value of this column is “No”.
If someone update the item, he should keep the “modified by flow” be “No”, and each time the flow runs, the “Update item” action of the flow would always update this column to “Yes”.
You could create a flow as below:
You could fill in the expression in the condition as below:
@equals(triggerBody()?['modified_x0020_by_x0020_flow'], false)
Note: The workaround would help you prevent the retrigger of the flow make sure you have set the “modified by flow” column to “Yes”, and you could fill in the “finish date” as you needs.

When an item is created or modified in the list and the “modified by flow” column is “No”, the flow would run successfully as below:

Regards,
Alice Zhang

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Thanks fro your response, i do not understand how tracking a status during the flow helps prevent a re-triggering?
The list item is modified, the flow updates the end date field, the list iem has been modified, the flow updates.
I think your example may be to prevent a flow re-triggering before it has been completed.

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Thanks fro your response - however it's not appropriate for users to complete a separate field reporting whether it was they or aflow that last updated the item.

Is there no way to ask a flow to NOT trigger if the last modified date/time of a list item is within the last minute (this is what i was attempting)?

thanks,
Shaun

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PieterVeenstra 13 on at

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Hi @Anonymous,

this wouldn't be a field for users to fill in. It would only be updated by the Flow itself.

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tolppa 14 on at

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This is a bug.

Self triggering flow may be obvious for programmer but end users should never accept this behaviour. End-user do see things like this: 1) Flow should start when item is added or modified. 2) Flow should update a field value based on where condition x. 3) Flow should end.

Certainly you understand the ??? moment when infinite loop happens. Yes. Currently condition is needed but this make flows much harder to create. Flow should never trigger itself and this should done using something like "trigger self" -method.

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Dorul 340 on at

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And what to do when ppl actually do want the flow to retrigger itself, when an item is modified?
Whatever you do, remember that the flow just does what you set it to do, not what you want it to do.

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rohitP 2 on at

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Hi,
I did a workaround by creating new List 'My flow history' and adding item when flow triggers for first time.
In the last step of my flow, i delet the newly created item in flow history, so for the next valid run, the flow should work as expected.

Let me know if it works.

Step 1 check item in the flow list

Step 2 Create item if not exists
Step 3 Delete item from flow history list to allow running of flow for the next time

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automaton 69 on at

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Not sure if you ever got to the bottom of this but I'm using the following method to check whether the last update to a document was made by the flow and if so, exit without re-running. It's still a shame that the flow runs twice but at least it won't execute more than this in the absence of something more suitable from microsoft.

It requires using the SharePoint REST API to check out / check in the document or list item and provide a check in comment on check in. This comment is then used to verify that the last modification (version) was made by the flow and not by a user.

I found it reliable and it removes the need to use timeframes which may not be dependable. Let me know if you would like more information on this approach and I can provide more detail.

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Charles-v-D 280 on at

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@automaton
Hi, I'm still struggling with similar problem. My flow triggers on "created or modified" and then does an update of hte SharePoint list item... which is a "modification" hence the same flow is triggered again.. and again.. and again....

Would you please share details on the REST API solution you refer to?

Thank you in advance

Regards
Charles

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