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Populate Lookup with Null

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Posted on by Henki

Hi,

I'm building a flow that should populate some Lookup fields on a record in CDS. However, it is possible that some of these lookups are empty and therefor should be empty. I'm having trouble with this as Flow always expects a valid ID in the lookup. I tried the following expression and replaced null with blank, '' , etc. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas on how to do this?

if(equals(<Record ID>, null), null , <Record ID>)

Thanks!!!

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efialttes 14,756 on at

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Hi!

Did you try with

concat('')

already?

If it does not work, my suggestion is to create a dummy record to represent null scenarios, and add its corresponding ID.

Hope this helps

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Henki 16 on at

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Thanks for the reply!

Concat doesn't work, it still expects an ID:
"message": "The supplied reference link -- -- is invalid. Expecting a reference link of the form /entityset(key).",

Creating a dummy record might be a workaround, I prefer the field to be empty though... Hope that's possible!

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v-bacao-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @jouke ,

Could you provide a screenshot of the Flow configuration?

I have made a test on my side, if I enter null in the lookup column, the flow runs successfully.

Besides, you could use condition to check if record id is empty, if yes, leave the lookup column blank.

Best Regards,

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Henki 16 on at

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The flow creates a Contact record from a JSON, see below. It is possible for some lookups, Nationality for example, to be empty. When I try to fill the lookup with the JSON, it throws an error when its null. I tried with expressions as well, but i still get this error:

An error occurred while validating input parameters: Microsoft.OData.ODataException: The 'odata.bind' instance or property annotation has a null value. In OData, the 'odata.bind' instance or property annotation must have a non-null string value.

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v-bacao-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @jouke ,

As mentioned in my previous reply, if it is not a required field, you could check if the Id parsed in the above step is empty first.

If it is null, you could leave this lookup column blank.

Image reference:

Please take a try.

Best Regards,

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Paul Baarn on at

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Hi,

I realise this is an older reply, but can you tell me which connector you are using? I think this works in the old connector and not in the new Current Environment connector.

Best, Paul

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Henki 16 on at

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Hi Paul,

I'm using the CDS Current environment connector.
Seems the only way i get this to work is using @v-bacao-msftsuggestion... But when updating multiple lookups on a record, this is not workable.. Still hoping there's another way 🙂

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MichaelFP 1,946 Moderator on at

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Hi!
Today I have talked with Microsoft Support and appear to be fixed. But in my environment still happens. This is something for a low-code platform unacceptable. I have to increase the complexity of my flow because of this. In addition, my flow is getting slow in the designer.

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FU Microsoft 112 on at

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Same problem still exists in either scenario (including Current Env).

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reedma4 6 on at

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Spoke with Microsoft in a current ticket (120080424004016) and we received an update that this is not fixed and won't be made available until February - March timeframe. Very challenging when updating multiple lookups!

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