Power Automate - Name / Task Randomiser

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Posted on by KM-19091448-0

Hi everyone,

In my team of three employees, everyday we do approvals at 08:30, 11:30 and 15:30. I'm looking to set-up a randomiser that allocates a person to a slot each day, Monday-Friday and sends at 8am to all three employees on the day.

It needs to randomly pick each of the three names and allocate them to one of the three slots. Each name should only be repeated once but every name needs to be included.

For example, employee2 should only do one slot and not two slots across a day.

Example of how it should work:

Day 1

08.30: Employee1

11.30: Employee2

15.30: Employee3

Day 2

08.30: Employee2

11.30: Employee3

15.30: Employee1

NOT CORRECT (missing employee1 and employee 2 repeats twice)

08.30: Employee2

11.30: Employee2

15.30: Employee1

I've tried to set this up using ChatGPT as a guide but it the instructions go beyond my capabilities sadly!

Is anyone able to advise on how to create this?

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Building flows

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Expiscornovus 33,195 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Albert-Jan Schot has a nice example workaround for this, a shuffle method. Maybe that is a good alternative?

You can use rand, skip, take and union functions in an expression for this.

https://www.cloudappie.nl/shuffle-array-power-automate/

Below is an example of that approach adjusted to your data.

RandomStart variable

rand(0,2)

Compose expression

union(skip(variables('EmployeeArray'), variables('RandomStart')), take(variables('EmployeeArray'), variables('RandomStart')))

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fhunth 4 on at

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Use this prompt in chat gpt or Gemini:

in a power automate , i have an array with 3 usernames, generate a random between 1 and 3, get that randomnumber and add it to a new array , then delete it from the initial array, repeat 2 more times

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Chriddle 8,443 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Add a (big) random number to the items and sort by this number:

Select 2

"Name": "@item()",

"Position": "@rand(0,100000)"

Compose

"Day": "@items('Apply_to_each')",

"Slot1": "@sort(body('Select_2'), 'Position')[0].Name",

"Slot2": "@sort(body('Select_2'), 'Position')[1].Name",

"Slot3": "@sort(body('Select_2'), 'Position')[2].Name"

Compose 2

@outputs('Compose')

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KM-19091448-0 2 on at

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@Expiscornovus Thanks for your input on this. The flow does seem to work using this - but I notice Employee3 is rarely chosen as the first in the order, which I believe comes down to being a maths issue, rather than anything actually being wrong with the flow. Is there a way to increase the likelihood that employee3 will be first in the sequence? I read the link attached and tried following instructions from Gemini and ChatGPT but both seem to start giving instructions that refer to actions that haven't been listed in the steps (referring to non-existent arrays, etc). Both AI seems to want to include SHUFFLE or expressions like rand(0, length(AvailableIndexes) - 1) that comes up as invalid or aren't available on my version of power automate.

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