Power Automate Cloud Flow Condition Failing

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by LS-13082301-0

Hi all,

I'm still having issues with MS Power Automate Cloud Flows glitching at the "Condition" and it fails to perform the operation even though the run report is saying it was successful. This started on August 13th close to the MS update.

Does anyone know of a workaround for conditions in Power Automate?

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Have salespeople submit sales calls to an MS Form
Power Automate
1. Gathers form submission data
2. Filters their data in an Excel Spreadsheet into specific tables based on user email and region codes (Condition)
3. Runs a script that sorts the table
Salespeople can review and edit data in their excel tables

Here's a screen shot of the flow:

Here's my original post for context if helpful:

Hi everyone,

I'm encountering a critical issue with multiple Power Automate flows (about 40 total) that are used for recording sales calls in my company. These flows previously worked perfectly and have not been modified, but they are now spontaneously skipping a key action.

🔧 Error Message:

The execution of template action 'Add_a_row_into_a_table' skipped: the branching condition for this action is not satisfied.

🔍 Flow Details:

The flow uses a Condition block with an AND operator.
It checks:
1. If the Responder's Email is equal to a work email
2. If the Branch is equal to a static branch code such as "945"
If both match, it should add a row to an Excel table.

✅ What I've Already Checked:

No changes to the flow logic or structure.
Input data is correct and matches the condition exactly.
Case sensitivity and formatting are accurate.
Field IDs and source forms are unchanged.

❓ What I Need Help With:

Why would this condition suddenly start failing across multiple flows?
Is there a known issue or backend change affecting Power Automate conditions?
How can I resolve or escalate this quickly? This is vital to our operations.

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (9)

Answers (0)

Tomac 3,966 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @LS-13082301-0

Let's try to debug this. Before your Condition action, please add two Compose actions. In one, use the dynamic content Responders Email, and in the other use the dynamic content Branch.

Test run your flow (Automatic, not Manual) using one of the recent triggers that didn't add the row as expected and when it finishes, expand those two Compose actions. That will tell you what Power Automate sees for those values at runtime. Do they look like what you're expecting in your Condition?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
LS-13082301-0 20 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @Tomac,

When I added the two Compose actions, the one for the dynamic responder's email came back as a different email address (an email for another salesperson who also uses the form, but has their own designated flow, sheet, and table in the same excel workbook). Weird that it is picking up on another person's email...? Where do I go from here?

I should also say the Branch code is the same code as this user would use.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Tomac 3,966 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

@LS-13082301-0

If you have a lot of flows for the same form and they're all doing the same actions just for different submitters, is there a reason you don't use a single flow and fill in the relevant information from the response details in your Add A Row action? Or are the different flows doing different things based on who submits them?

I strongly recommend condensing all of these flows into a single flow and using a Switch action to break out actions for different responders, that way you're not looking into many flows for a single response depending on who submitted it.

The trigger When A Response Is Submitted will trigger no matter who submits the flow, so all of your flows for this form are running every time one person submits it. This is very inefficient and will lead to a lot of confusion during debugging (like now).

The best I can recommend now is to have the user you want to test for go in and submit a test response to the form, then check the output of your flow's run to see how it went.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
LS-13082301-0 20 on at

Like (1)

Report

@Tomac,

Thanks for your help with this! I think I'm with you and getting there. I started making more, simple flows rather than fewer, more complex flows. I will try the switch method. Would I use that instead of the Condition entirely? Should I make one switch for branch code and then a second for email?

For context, I have 5 forms for five regions that correspond to five Excel workbooks. Two regions have three people, another has ten people filling out the form, and the last two have six each. With my current setup, I have a flow for each salesperson.

Thanks for your help!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Tomac 3,966 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

@LS-13082301-0

In this case, since you have one form per Region, you would have one flow per Form/Region and use a Switch action in each flow to break down by person.

So you would end up with 5 flows total, instead of the current 28. That should greatly simplify your setup and make it easier to diagnose issues as well as maintain the flows moving forward.

And depending on what you're doing for each person, you might not even need to run a Switch on the person. If you're doing the same thing for each person (inputting data to a target Excel file, for example, and it's the same Excel file regardless of the person) then you can combine them all into one and use dynamic data to update the target with the relevant person information, because you get that from your Get Response Details action.

Switch is great for situations where you're looking to break up actions based on a large number of results from one Condition. Instead of using a bunch of nested Condition actions, one Switch will accomplish the goal. Note that there are some limitations with Switch, though, in that it only evaluates numeric and text data and cannot run expressions to check against.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
LS-13082301-0 20 on at

Like (0)

Report

@Tomac

Okay, it seems like the Switch method is working mostly, but there is an issue now when two or more people are attempting to submit a form response at the same time. This can cause a bit of a deadlock on the flow, it takes many minutes to work (if it doesn't fail) and the run a script action fails often. Some regions are smaller with three people submitting and the biggest region could have as many as 11 or 12 people submitting. Each person submits about 10 or so a day.

Any suggestions for the deadlock issue during multiple submission attempts?

UPDATE: I'm also seeing flows that say they ran successfully but never actually captured the data and transferred it to the spreadsheet table.

Here's a screenshot of the bigger flow:

Here's a zoomed in version so you can identify the actions better:

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Tomac 3,966 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

If multiple instances of a flow are trying to edit the same Excel file, you're going to run into issues since Power Automate won't allow multiple edits at the same time. You can go into your trigger's settings and make sure Split On is turned on (so it doesn't pass an array of all recent submissions instead of just one submission) and set Concurrency Control to 1.

Properly, a system working with this much data would use a database (or eve a SharePoint List) rather than an Excel document, since Excel will always have this issue regardless of how many different flows are accessing the file.

For the flows that say they ran successfully with no data, please open the completed flow and look through your actions to see what was executed and what was skipped. There may be a case where none of your Switch options were triggered for some reason. It may be helpful to add a "Send An Email" action into the Default case for each Switch and have it send you an error message with the relevant details from the form that it couldn't match up.

1 people found this reply helpful.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
LS-13082301-0 20 on at

Like (0)

Report

@Tomac

Thank you for your continued help in this!

Split on was already set to on so we are good there, but I'll change the Concurrency control to the following:

Hopefully this resolves the deadlocking issue. Given what you said about Power Automate not allowing multiple edits to the same Excel file at the same time, perhaps transitioning to Power Apps may be the long-term solution (or SharePoint lists and forms).

So in summary, it may not be the Condition action or the Switch action that are causing issues and data loss, but simply the fact that I have multiple people submitting the same form that then uses Power Automate to sort that data into the appropriate tables in the same Excel spreadsheet because Power Automate won't allow multiple edits at the same time? If this is the root of the issue, changing the Concurrency control to the above settings should solve then issue, hopefully?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Tomac 3,966 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

@LS-13082301-0 You've got it. The limitation is in Excel and how it handles concurrent edits via the API. Limiting the flow to one at a time should resolve it in the short term, but moving the data into a database and working with it there would truly fix it. Switching Power Automate for Power Apps won't change that limitation.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No