@co-anne Have you set up your flow yet?
Manual Trigger
If not, please follow the tutorial starting from this section. Set up a Manual trigger and return a single response that you'll use for testing purposes as well as your SharePoint list.
Compose Responses
The Compose actions are optional. However, for more efficient building and testing of the flow I'd recommend Composing your responses first before trying to create a SP Item in your list.
We'll just handle the data first (we'll get to attachments later). Add one compose action for each response (Category, Date and FeedbackSuggestion). Tip: Remember to rename your actions to keep things organized!
Group Your Actions
Add a Scope action to your flow. I like using Scope actions in my flow to group actions together to keep my flow organized.
Add as many as you need in your flow. Note: You cannot nest initialize variable actions within other actions—they must be initialized in the root of the flow.
Run a test. Verify the outputs of the Compose actions.
Get SP List
Can you tell me how your SP list with the category and email address is set up? Are you using a Choice column for the Category? Also, what type of column are you storing the email address in? Are you using a person column for that? If not, would you consider using a person column for that?
Now that your SP List is set up, Add a Get Items action to your flow to get the items from your list. Add a Filter Query.
You will need to use the internal column name of your Category column. If you aren’t sure how to get this, please refer to this section of one of my YT tutorials. Please note, the internal column name may not always be a match to the name of the Column—which is why it's important to check.
Enter eq for the equals to operator. In between single quotes. Insert the output from the Compose action with the Category. This is why it's important to name your actions—otherwise it can be very confusing when you are trying to access dynamic content.
Return Item Count (optional)
Whenever I use a Filter Query in a Get Items action, I always like to return the count of items returned in a Compose action. This is helpful when building a flow and can also be used to troubleshoot your flow.
Insert a Compose action. Add an Expression. Use the length() function.
Select the Dynamic content tab and insert the value dynamic content from the Get Items action into the length() function.
Run a test. Confirming that you are expecting a single individual to be returned per category—or are there multiple individuals per category?
If you are expecting only one individual, the Compose action should return a 1 otherwise it'll return the number of individuals that have the Category (returned from the form response) assigned to them.
Condition Check
Add a Condition action. You'll use this condition to check if there are any items returned from the Get Items action. In the first value field, insert the outputs from the Compose action above. Change the operator to is not equal to and insert a zero into the second value field. If not, do nothing—if so, the rest of your actions can go into the Yes branch.
Send an Email
To send an email, you will need to add a Send an Email (V2) action to your flow. Whenever I'm building out a flow that includes a Send an Email or Post a Teams message action—I always insert my address into the recipient field.
Once your flow is ready to go you can replace it with the actual recipient.
I recommend inserting the dynamic content that you'll be using for the recipient into the body of the email or teams message so you can confirm who the email/msg will be sent to. This way you can easily troubleshoot if it's incorrect.
However, because the Get Items action returns an array of items (even if it's a single item—it'll still be in an array). When you select any dynamic content from the Get Items action. Your Send an Email action will nest itself inside an Apply to Each action.
You will need to use an expression. I cover how to avoid the Apply to Each action when trying to return dynamic content from a single item array in this YT Tutorial: 3 Mistakes YOU 🫵 are Making with the Apply to Each Action in your Microsoft Power Automate Flow
Take a look at the tutorial and lmk once you're able to get the email address from your SP list.
.....more to come!
If you'd like to level up your Power Automate skills check out this video: Power Automate Beginner Tips and Tricks | 5 Things You Need to Know – Part 1
I cover the following in this video tutorial:
✅ Power Automate Beginner Tips and Tricks
✅ Why use the Manual Trigger instead of an Automated Trigger
✅ 3 Ways a Compose Action can help you build better flows
✅ How to Manually Trigger a flow with a specific Date and Time
✅ How to return a count of items
✅ How to use the top count
✅ How to send test emails
