Planner - Create a new bucket and copy tasks to it

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Posted on by Jugglerbry

Hi everyone

This is something I've been trying to figure out all day without much/any success so I'm hoping someone can help.

Firstly my setup;

I have an MS Form which is used for requesting new accounts for new starters to our department.

A flow in the background does all the donkey work and copies the responses to a SharePoint list. This all works.

I also have a Planner Plan with a list of tasks each new starter needs to complete when the start with us. These live in the Templates bucket.

For testing I've created a simple first name and surname form along with a flow which when a response is received creates a new bucket using the first name and surname from the form submission.

So now the problem I have;

I'd now like all the tasks in the templates bucket to be copied to the new buckets as and when responses are received from the form but I can get anywhere close.

I can see the new bucket I'd using the List Buckets field but have no idea how to transfer this or use it to copy the tasks to.

I can manually copy the tasks of course but would be really useful if I could get Power Automate to do it.

Any help etc is really appreciated.

Hopefully I've explained the problem ok but happy to answer anything if needed.

Thanks in advance

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Building flows

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tom_riha 10,185 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hello @Jugglerbry ,

so you're able to create a new bucket, but you need to copy tasks from a different bucket after creation?

First step would be to get the id of the 'template' bucket. Power Automate has only action 'List buckets' that will return all buckets, so to find only the 'template' bucket among all of them you'll need 'Filter array' action. Enter the output from 'List buckets' into 'Filter array' and filter only the 'template' bucket ([value Name] <is equal to> templateBucketName). That should give you an array with just the one 'template' bucket and its Id.

Second step is to find all tasks in the 'template' bucket and use them to create a copy of the tasks in the new bucket. Again, Power Automate can't filter Planner tasks directly, you must 'List tasks' to get all tasks in the whole plan, and filter them later using another 'Filter array' action. Here you'll use the 'template' bucket Id you got in the first step. Filter only the tasks where [value Bucket Id] <is equal to> [Id of the template bucket]. Output from this filter will be only tasks in the 'template' bucket. You can create new tasks in the new bucket for each of the tasks in that array.

Note to the screenshot: don't worry about the 'Apply to each' inside 'Apply to each', input of the first 'Apply to each' ('Apply to each 3' on the screenshot below) should contain just the single 'template' bucket = it'll run only once.

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Jugglerbry 8 on at

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Hi and thanks for the reply.
I have the bucket id for the templates but a different way I'd read. However Ive gone as far as listing all the tasks within it but the problem I'm having copying all the tasks from the templates bucket into each new bucket that's created if that.makes sense ?
I understand that planner / flow needs the bucket id but of course, as it's only just been created in an earlier step (creating the new bucket in form response), so I guess somehow I need to get the ',new' bucket id them insert it further down the flow - hope this makes sense. Would make my week I can get this working and cut times from half a day to around 5-,10 minutes. Thanks again

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tom_riha 10,185 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hello @Jugglerbry ,

if you create the bucket earlier in the flow then you have all the information about this new bucket available as an output of the 'Create a bucket' action.

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Jugglerbry 8 on at

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Yes agreed. However in my flow I don't have any arrays as you have in your screenshot (don't know anything about them or how they work or set up)
Is it just a case of copying what you have in the screenshot or is there some other magic elsewhere ?

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Jugglerbry 8 on at

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I've added in what was suggested and after a bit of playing about I'm now getting green ticks all the way down the flow. However, only getting the bucket created but no tasks are being copied from templates bucket to the new one.
Flow is below if it helps;

Thanks again in advance if anyone can help

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tom_riha 10,185 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hello @Jugglerbry ,

I tried to add the connections between the actions, I hope this explains which dynamic content to use in which action.

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swjackson 3 on at

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This solution was exactly what I needed! Thank you! One follow-up question -- I also needed to copy over the assigned users for each task, but I didn't see that addressed above. It doesn't look like the assigned User IDs were pulled when we did the "Lists tasks" function. How do we get access to the assigned users for a task so we can copy them into our new task?

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Community Power Pla... on at

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Hi @tom_riha,

Your solution worked perfectly for copying the tasks to a new bucket.
However, I am also trying to copy the subtasks (items?) that are within the tasks from the template.
I saw somewhere that this might be possible somewhere with the update task details, but so far I haven't been able to get it right.

Would it be possible?

Thanks in advance!

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kamala 4 on at

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Hello
I have similar needs. The copy of tasks worked but by missing the attachments and task details. How can the flow copy the task details like- attachments, details, description copied?

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kamala_Kams 7 on at

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Hi
I have worked on the solution where the attachments , checklist too gets coped with my solution.Hope this helps you.

TaskCopy_20230501...

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