Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

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Posted on 14 Feb 2021 11:18:25 by jvdlinden

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Hello everybody,

Before going into the details of my issue, I have looked into other posts on this community but I could not find the answer there.

I have a quite simple flow.

When a new news post has been created on a specific SharePoint site, the flow should trigger.

In the end, the flow should post a message into a Teams channel and it should mention all the team members for visibility.

How I do that?

It triggers when a new item has been created.

A trigger condition is specified to only start when the PromotedState value equals 2.

@equals(triggerBody()?['PromotedState'],2)

So far so good. The trigger works fine.

Next step, retrieving the Microsoft 365 group members of the team where I will post a message, and putting these members in a string type variable:

Still working as expected.

Last step, posting the message.

This steps results in an error.

Error details

Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path '', line 0, position 0.
 at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.ParseValue()
 at Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.Load(JsonReader reader, JsonLoadSettings settings)
 at Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.Parse(String json, JsonLoadSettings settings)

Please find the body of the Post a Message (Teams) action card below.

I checked the body of the message and put it in jsonlint, no validation errors.

I hope that someone could help me understand what's going on here!

Thanks a lot.

Joost

Body

{
 "recipient": {
 "groupId": "0481xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx3a7d055a",
 "channelId": "19:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxf4a6d944xxxx@thread.tacv2"
 },
 "messageBody": "<p>\n<b>Er staat directienieuws voor je klaar!</b><br>\n<a href=\"https://orgname.sharepoint.com/sites/Directienieuws/SitePages/Directienieuws-week-6---2021.aspx\">Klik hier</a> om het nieuwsbericht te openen.</p>\n<at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at><at>username@org.nl</at>"
}

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Marissa_A 8 on 13 Feb 2024 at 19:49:10

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

That's fair, thank you

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Pstork1 67,961 Most Valuable Professional on 13 Feb 2024 at 05:36:25

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Please post this as a new question. You'll get more responses and others will be able to find the answer more easily later.

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Marissa_A 8 on 12 Feb 2024 at 22:38:59

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

I have an issue with Parse JSON processing \n in the body content. I tried to use split to make the \n a comma, and I tried using replace as you suggested, but I can't even update the function because it's invalid. The ai says that my flow doesn't support split or replace, and when I ask it to help it gives me another blank compose action and throws a send email onto the end of my flow. Not helpful, and I haven't seen anyone else with quite the same problem.

Here is my compose function:

Here is an excerpt of the output content the Parse JSON needs to process:
"content": "BEGIN:VCALENDAR\nVERSION:2.0\nPRODID:-//Racarie Software//ApplicantStack//EN\nCALSCALE:GREGORIAN\nMETHOD:PUBLISH\nBEGIN:VEVENT\nSUMMARY:Interview- Teams\nX-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY\nURL:https://allweathersealofwestmichigan.applicantstack.com/events/view/aneinqs9hr4p\nLOCATION:Teams Call\nDESCRIPTION:Candidate....."

The builder ai said the unexpected character we were running into is the /n, so these are the functions I thought I could use:
Compose being the original Compose action I mentioned at the beginning

When the function tool told me those were invalid, the ai kept insisting that the problem was the whole flow not supporting it, so here's a picture of that:

If it makes a difference, the data I'm decoding is a .ics email attachment that was in binary. It opened a link, but was technically a JSON format rather than html like the example above. This is my method of accepting a .ics attachment into my calendar.

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jvdlinden 329 on 16 Sep 2021 at 07:04:29

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi @twlarrywu unfortunately not for mentioning multiple users individually.
I basically worked around my issue by mentioning the channel instead.
Hope someone else can help us out with that.

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twlarrywu 4 on 16 Sep 2021 at 02:59:54

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi,

I have the same issue.(worked fine on 4 or 5 recipients, it will be failed easily if we have <at>xxx </at> more than 10 email.
Do you or anyone find the workaround or solution?

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jvdlinden 329 on 26 Aug 2021 at 15:35:08

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi @simorav if you break your flow down by trying to mention several users manually. Does it work for some users? That might indicate a provisioning issue.

I notice that your input for action "Get @mention token for a user" contains a variable. What is the value of that variable? Because here I see that the email address of a user is used as input: Tag a User in a Microsoft Teams post made using Power Automate | D365 Demystified

Maybe first you can get all group members and then for each user and get the token for each member:

This would be the output:

Of course you can filter out users from within the apply to each action.
Hope this helps

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simorav 6 on 26 Aug 2021 at 12:25:28

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi @jvdlinden,
I receive in input the list of users to be mentioned, then I get the mention token and then I use these token in the message (see the screen below).

For some users (e.g. guests) I'm not able to retrieve the token, then I added the try catch block to avoid flow failure. In this way I suppose that remaining mentions should be ok. Unfortunately, when I try to set mentions in the message, the task fail with this error:

{
  "error": {
    "code": 500,
    "message": "Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path '', line 0, position 0.\r\n   at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.ParseValue()\r\n   at Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.Load(JsonReader reader, JsonLoadSettings settings)\r\n   at Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.Parse(String json, JsonLoadSettings settings)",
    "source": "flow-apim-europe-001-northeurope-01.azure-apim.net",
    "path": "choose[19]\\when[1]\\choose\\when[1]",
    "policyId": "",
    "clientRequestId": "xxxxx"
  }
}

I think that some of the users mentioned haven't access to the teams/channel, then the task fails. Any other idea?
Thanks, regards

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jvdlinden 329 on 26 Aug 2021 at 07:33:05

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi @simorav can you share some additional details (print screen) of what you are using in your flow right now?

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simorav 6 on 25 Aug 2021 at 16:06:33

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi @jvdlinden ,
thanks for the quick response 🙂
I cannot mention the channel, but I need to mention a list of users. Unfortunately I'm not sure that all the users are mentionable, in fact I cannot find some of these users with a manual mention too. Can I check in some way these situation and remove broken mentions?

Thansk, regards

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jvdlinden 329 on 25 Aug 2021 at 15:44:44

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Re: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: E. Path

Hi @simorav ,
I was able to find a solution. Sorry for not updating this post.
Currently you cannot mention the team. You can mention a channel or an individual user with Power Automate / Logic apps. Please take a look here: Mention a channel with Flow – Expiscornovus

In my case I mention the "General" channel of the team (this includes all team members).
PS: you can use the v1.0 endpoint from Microsoft Graph instead of the beta endpoint.

If you need additional info just reply 🙂

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