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Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

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Posted on by skylitedave

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I would like to stop my flow from moving on to the next step until the user enters an value (the name of the approver) within a field in an SP list. The flow will fire every time the list item is created or modified.. I get that...

So... when I build the flow to do this a couple of questions... Note - I am using plain old English here

1 - I am thinking i would say "Do nothing until the value in the approver field is not null" So I would say.. Do Until>Approver Field >Is not equal to >"Null" So how do i specify Null in the Do Until value field and will the Do Until be OK with an argument like this?

2 - In the Designer, do i have to put the rest of the flow within the Do Until box or does it go outside and under the Do Until box?

Thx everyone... Flow looks awesome... just trying to figure out the little tricks....

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BraCra 4 on at

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Re: Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

Here's the exact same issue:
We have a flow for a SharePoint-List for a multilevel-approval. There is a column that's empty until fully approved.
In that column there will be a manual input in alphanumerical text.

So i also tried it with "Null", and "Does not contain". However that will produce an Error:

"InvalidTemplate. Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Do_until' at line '1' and column '1180': 'The template language function 'contains' expects its first argument 'collection' to be a dictionary (object), an array or a string. The provided value is of type 'Null'.'."

If i try it with "equals" or "is greater" or their variants it will simply activate.

Are there any other possibilities to trigger an action upon the manual change of only one column from an empty field to filled?
ay2 70 on at

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Re: Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

@kkurni

I'm just stumbling into this post now, but I have the exact same issue with the user above, where your initial solution of the "if" condition doesn't work for me. When the item is created, the column i'm checking is set to nothing / null. It waits for someone to update that column to "something" before moving onto the next step. This is why I was also thinking of using the do while loop.

If I implemented your solution, it would kick off when an item is added, and then IMMEDIATELY check if that item is not null -> immediately going to no instead of waiting for someone to update it.

My issue here is that for some reason, the do until condition isn't being caught. I believe my expression is correct, but it still just pretends it's not null. Here's a screenshot:
skylitedave 652 on at

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Re: Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

Thx

Will play around and post the results...
kkurni Microsoft Employee on at

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Re: Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

Yes, you can use null in when you click "Advanced mode" in do until.

for other expression, here is more documentation that you can use.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/mt643789.aspx

I am a bit worry about your approach, since it will cause infinite loop.
as if you get all items from sharepoint, the value will all be the same, if there is null value, then this looping will never ends.

@Sunay who may have documentation for this
skylitedave 652 on at

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Re: Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

Thx,

There are many ways to "Skin the Cat", but I am wanting to try and use the Do Until to understand how it works.

The questions remain
1 - Does anyone know how to declare a null value so I can say "Do until the value in a field is not null"

2 - When I use Do Until, once the workflow has met the argument ( meaning something was added in the field) does the rest of the flow need to be added within the Do Until "box" in the designer if I wan the flow to stop moving forward in the Flow until the argment is met? I tried adding steps under the Do Until in the designer and they seemed to fire regardless of what was going on in the Do Until argument...

If anyone can post a sample of using Do Until, that would be awesome... I am sure I am not the only one wondering how to use this conditional... 🙂

Thx again to the community...
kkurni Microsoft Employee on at

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Re: Do Until - I give... little help please :) ??

I am not sure whether Do until is necessary in your scenario.

Based on requirement, I think you can just use condition.
So every new item created in Sharepoint, it will trigger this flow.
If the item is approved, then you can process to the next step.

You can also use "When item is modified as well" which also be triggered, when item changed to approved.

Thanks