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Power Platform Community / Forums / Power Automate / Adding date and time s...
Power Automate
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Adding date and time stamp to a pdf file name

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Posted on by 61

Apologies for the beginner question, I'm new to Flow and don't have much coding experience.

 

I have a Flow that extracts pdf's from an email and adds a date and time stamp. 

 

This is the code I'm using, I've used this before successfully.

 

concat(formatdatetime(triggerBody()?['DateTimeReceived'],'yyyy-MM-dd-hhmmss - '),item()?['Name'])

 

This is the error message I'm getting:

 

InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions in action 'Compose' inputs at line '1' and column '2665': 'The template language function 'formatdatetime' expects its first parameter to be of type string. The provided value is of type 'Null'. Please see https://aka.ms/logicexpressions#formatdatetime for usage details.'.

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

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  • Gristy Profile Picture
    2,429 on at

    Hey there,

     

    If you inspect your flow trigger, what is showing up under the DateTimeReceived variable? It looks as if it is blank and therefore this is why the flow is erroring.

     

    You could use utcNow() expression and a "Convert timezone" action to convert into you rlocal timezone if you just need the time the flow action is  run.

  • gm355 Profile Picture
    61 on at

    Hi @Gristy ,

     

    Sorry, how do I do this? I'm new to Flow.

     

    "If you inspect your flow trigger, what is showing up under the DateTimeReceived variable?"

  • Gristy Profile Picture
    2,429 on at

    hi,

     

    Open your failed flow where you copied the error from, and click on the top box i.e. the trigger.

     

    this will show you the values passed to your flow.

  • gm355 Profile Picture
    61 on at

    I see this under Outputs>Body

     

    "receivedDateTime": "2019-09-20T22:34:12+00:00",
  • Gristy Profile Picture
    2,429 on at

    Hey, 

     

    please post a screenshot.

  • gm355 Profile Picture
    61 on at

    datetime.PNG

  • Gristy Profile Picture
    2,429 on at

    Thanks,

     

    If you add a compose action and paste: @{triggerBody()?['DateTimeReceived']}

     

    Inspect the compose action after a test to see ift he varaible is displaying OK

  • Verified answer
    gm355 Profile Picture
    61 on at

    Thanks, got the variable, now just need to concat it into the file name.

  • Verified answer
    v-bacao-msft Profile Picture
    Microsoft Employee on at

     

    Hi @gm355 ,

     

    Please try to use this expression:

    concat(formatDateTime(triggerBody()?['receivedDateTime'],'yyyy-MM-dd-hhmmss-'),item()?['Name'])

     

    Best Regards,

  • gm355 Profile Picture
    61 on at

    Thanks, this worked as well. Not sure why my code above didn't work, it was very similar.

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