Adding Working days to Scheduled Flow

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Posted on by North_001

Hi,

Very new to Power Automate here and looking include working days on a scheduled flow.

I have set up a basic flow to run once per day which triggers a teams post if a SharePoint list item has a StartDate two days prior. Couple of other values from the list have been added to the Filter Query section of ‘Get Items’, which are working fine.

Does anyone know how to ensure only working days are considered? I.e. if I have a StartDate on a Thursday, I would want the teams post to happen on Monday as opposed to Saturday as it stands.

Unable to post a screenshot at present so have bullet pointed the initial steps of the flow:

• Recurrence - once per day (9am)

• Date Time (Get past time) - 2 days

• Substring - Past time, Starting Postion 0, length 10

• Get items - SharePoint list

Thanks 🙂

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Building flows

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leo85 609 on at

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Hi @North_001 ,
instead of using the trigger to run daily, use it to run weekly. On the weekly trigger you can enter, which days of the week the flow should run. So it only runs Monday through Friday (see screenshot).

Happy Christmas,
Leo

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mahoneypat 1,720 on at

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You can use a nested if like below to check the current day of week at refresh and generate the right comparison date based on that to be used to filter your SharePoint list items.

if(equals(dayOfWeek(utcNow()),0), addDays(utcNow(), -3), if(equals(dayOfWeek(utcNow()),6), addDays(utcNow(), -4), addDays(utcNow(), -2)))

Pat

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Use the recurrence trigger set to run once a day, but use the following as a trigger condition in settings. It will then be prevented from triggering on Sat or Sunday.

@less(dayOfWeek(utcNow()), 6)

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Pstork1 68,707 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@leo85 I don't think that will work. It will keep the flow from triggering on the weekend, but it will only run once per week on whichever weekday it triggers on.

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leo85 609 on at

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Hi @Pstork1,
No, I tested this myself and it works exactly as I described. It triggers on every day that is set in the trigger. So if you set only weekdays within the weekly trigger, the flow will trigger only on weekdays.
Note, this is a scheduled trigger, not an automatic trigger.

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North_001 21 on at

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Hi @leo85 , @Pstork1 & @mahoneypat,

Hope you all enjoyed the holiday period (if you celebrate that is)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond to my query, it’s very much appreciated.

I hadn’t considered only running on Weekdays. Thanks @leo85 & @Pstork1 for your suggestions of this. I will try this out.

My main issue is ensuring the flow does not consider Saturdays & Sundays as days. For example, if an item has a StartDate of Thursday, I want the teams post to happen on a Monday. 2 ‘working days’ following the start date.

If the flow runs as is, on a Monday it would check for any start dates for 2 days prior (Saturday) however, I need it to ignore the weekend and check for start dates 2 working days prior (Thursday). Hope that makes sense.

@mahoneypat I have tried your suggestion but I’m unsure where to put this ‘nested if’? Apologies, very new to Power Automate. I've put a screenshot of the flow below.

Thanks again for your help 🙂

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mahoneypat 1,720 on at

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Here is one way to do it. The note at each step shows the used expression(s). A daily Recurrence trigger is used with a Trigger Condition (hit the ellipsis and choose Settings of the Recurrence step, and add one) of

@contains(createArray(1,2,3,4,5), dayOfWeek(utcNow()))

This will make it so the flow only triggers on Weekdays. Then a compose is used to provide the # of days to subtract based on the day of the week (subtract 4 if M or T, and 2 for the other 3 weekdays). This could have been done with a nested if as well, but I thought this would be easier to adapt.

A filter is used to select the right value based on the dayOfWeek() of the current day (utcNow()). A 2nd Compose gets the first (and only) record and the value in the 'Subtract Days' field. You can then use that value in your Get Items filter with addDays() to dynamically go back the right # of days.

Pat

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RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@leo85 and @Pstork1 that's how we do weekdays-only flows as well with the 1 week trigger set to run each weekday. Works beautifully.

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North_001 21 on at

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Hi @mahoneypat,

Thanks so much for your help. I tried adding those expressions however, I got the below error. Any ideas why?

Thanks

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mahoneypat 1,720 on at

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In your pic, it looks like you just have item() in the Filter action, not item()?['DayOfWeek']

Is that the case?

Pat

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