When a "failure" is actually a success in the end

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Posted on by chico

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Greetings!!!

I got a flow that gets items from a Sharepoint list.

It looks at the person field
using that person's email it queries o365 users
End of story

Scenario A

If the user is valid

sharepoint list is updated to reflect - yes this is an active user
end of story

Scenario B

If the user is not valid or not found in o365 users, its considered a failure

in a failure we move to another branch set to run only after previous failure
Sharepoint list is updated to reflect - No this is Not active user
End of story

My flow runs, it runs well and all updates are properly handled.

The hang up is that if our story ends via Scenario B, its considered a wholesale failure.

Looking at my flow history, = its a failure

How can I massage the flow to treat scenario B to also be a success?

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Building flows

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AlanPs1 2,471 on at

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Re: When a "failure" is actually a success in the end

Hi @chico

It would be useful to see a picture of your complete Flow on this one, but if I am understanding correctly, the best way to mark a failure as a success, i.e, the fail is by design is to use a terminate action and mark it as "succeeded". If this suits your Flow design that is.

This may or may not fit your design though, please post your Flow and we will see.

If you have found my post helpful, please mark thumbs up.

Any other questions, just ask.

Thanks, Alan

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MattWeston365 1,701 on at

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Re: When a "failure" is actually a success in the end

Hi @chico you could always change the "run after" settings so that you can gracefully catch the error. You can do this by clicking on the ellipsis for the step following the failing action and set it to run on Error. This usually works better if you contain all of your logic in scopes. Whilst this will work, the inner developer in me is screaming no 🙂

What I would suggest for a cleaner approach would be to use "Search for Users" and search for the email address. If the length of the body returned is 0, then the user doesn't exist. If it's greater than 0, then you have a match.

The expression I have used in the condition is:
length(body('Search_for_users'))

This will at least give you a True/False test which will mean your Flow is a lot cleaner than if you're relying on an error state.

If you have found this post useful, please give it a thumbs up. If it has answered your question, please accept it as the solution so others can benefit.

@MattWeston365

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chico 638 on at

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Re: When a "failure" is actually a success in the end

@AlanPs1
awesome input, thank you!
will be exploring this today!

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chico 638 on at

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Re: When a "failure" is actually a success in the end

@MattWeston365

awesome input, thank you!
will be exploring this today!

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