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Removing [" "] from a Form response to use data within an email.

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Posted on by KhaliqAhmed

Hi there,

I'm new to the world of Power Automate and have been self educating in this area (only been at this for a couple of days) but I'm now being driven demented by it and have tried to find some help online, but honestly it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack!

I work in the arts and basically I'm creating a flow to read responses made by those registering for one of our drama classes in a Form to then have those responses sent back to them in an email format as part of a confirmation of registration.

The flow basically is:
- when a new response is submitted

- get response details

- a condition is set at this point to split the responses into two groups, those who are old enough to sign up to classes themselves and those who need a parent/guardian to sign them up.

- this then feeds into email templates for each of the two groups, to notify our staff of a new participant registration and to provide the customer with a confirmation email.

It all works perfectly... BUT some responses contained in the emails dynamic content have [" "] around them, I believe because of the multiple choice function in Forms, but it's ugly, spoiling the aesthetic of the email and needs to go - but I'm struggling to get rid of it.

I've made a copy of the flow to play around with some solutions I found on here, which all are based on Sharepoint or Excel as I can't find an example where this is requested to insert data into an email, but it either fails to send or the dynamic criteria stops filtering through the the stages below.

Here are the two articles that I first tried

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Form-to-Sharepoint-template-quot-How-do-I-get-rid-of-the-square/td-p/255875

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Imported-data-from-MS-Form-shows-brackets-and-quotes-in-Excel/td-p/284428

Can anyone help?

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Building flows

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v-bacao-msft on at

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Hi @KhaliqAhmed ,

Please try the following method to achieve your requirements:

Take a try and feel free to let us know if you have any questions.

Best Regards,

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KhaliqAhmed 25 on at

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hi @v-bacao-msft

Thanks so much for that, it worked a treat.

So I now know how to deal with [" "] for multiple choice responses where more than one answer is permitted, but how do you remove [" "] from responses where only one answer is permitted?

Cheers
Khaliq

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v-bacao-msft on at

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Hi @KhaliqAhmed ,

If it is a dropdown, the response will not contain [""].

Best Regards,

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KhaliqAhmed 25 on at

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Hi @v-bacao-msft

This one isn't a dropdown list, but I could easily change it for this form as it doesn't matter - but it'd be good to know how to remove these as there are other projects I'll be working on where a dropdown list isn't suitable.

Cheers
Khaliq

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v-bacao-msft on at

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Hi @KhaliqAhmed ,

I am afraid that I am not able to understand your meaning.

It seems that my previous reply have mentioned some methods to your questions.

Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.

Best Regards,

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KhaliqAhmed 25 on at

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Hi @v-bacao-msft

Sorry - it's my bad... I never changed the code in the email to the output for that metric.

This what happens at 3am!

Thanks for all your help.

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KhaliqAhmed 25 on at

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Hi @v-bacao-msft

I'm afraid I'm back again! 😞

So I've been bulk testing this and the flow fails depending on the combination of answers selected.

Two examples of failed messages received were:
" Unable to process template language expressions in action 'JoinImageUses' inputs at line '1' and column '20858': 'Required property 'from' expects a value but got null. Path ''.'. "

" Unable to process template language expressions in action 'JoinCourse' inputs at line '1' and column '21631': 'The template language function 'json' parameter is not valid. The provided value 'Youth Theatre Junior' cannot be parsed: 'Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: Y. Path '', line 0, position 0.'. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions#json for usage details.'. "

In order to be able to use the individual metric responses within the body of my email at specific points, I had to create a 'Compose' and 'Join' for each that I could easily reference when creating the email.

And I did get it to work on the test sample I made, but then when I tried to select another answer to the same multiple choice questions, the flow failed.

I'm now at a complete loss, is it to do with the requests being in succession?

Here is what the flow looks like:

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v-bacao-msft on at

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Hi @KhaliqAhmed ,

When you submit a response, multiple-choice questions are not selected, so this question will appear. You can first check if the answer to this question is empty.

In addition, if this question is not a multiple-choice question, you do not need to use the method I provided to format the answer.

Best Regards,

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KhaliqAhmed 25 on at

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Hi @v-bacao-msft

The one's in my screen grab are all Choice questions, but they are mandatory to answer - so should produce data, which is why I was surprised that they failed when I started making fake customer responses. Some of the Choice questions allow you to only pick one answer or multiple answers, and it seems to be failing on the Choice questions where multiple answers are permitted.

However, oddly, the very fist test I did after your initial help was successful, so I'm scunnard as to why selecting a different answer is making the flow fail.

The solution for empty ones is good to know, but don't think that will solve this latest issue.

Have you got anything other suggestions?

Cheers
Khaliq

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v-bacao-msft on at

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Hi @KhaliqAhmed ,

You can create a simple flow to test these situations, and then apply these configurations to complex flow. I have actually provided you with basic methods.

To handle multiple choices, you need to convert the response of this answer to an array using the json() function, and then use the Join action to present the data in a suitable format. If the answer to the question may be empty, you can use empty() to exclude the empty value first.

And you need to pay attention to whether the value you quote in the json() function is as expected. Only multiple choices need to be handled using the json() function.

The dynamic content that needs to be applied when processing each answer is different. You can try to store the dynamic content in Compose first, and then directly refer to the output of Compose. This method is also convenient to check whether the value of each Answer is as expected.

Please use simple Flow to feel these differences so that you can build complex Flow. Based on the information you provided, I cannot analyze the problem you are experiencing currently.

Best Regards,

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