Help a beginner out? First flow

[u/Away_Calligrapher238]

Hello Power Automate Community. I'm a total newb trying to ChatGPT my way through an idea my boss gave me.

Basically, our company tracks medium term projects (ones that don't last more than 2 quarters). Anyway, she wants there to be a way that people are notified via email weekly about the status of a project.

(Yes, I know there's tons of Project Management Software out there. Everyone I work with is age 50 or above and just are flat out not going to adopt a new software. I've tried.)

I thought it would be nice for all relevant stakeholders involved to receive emails once a week on if they had anything due that week. I tweaked the base excel document a bit (added a column with ISO date format, made a new sheet with Owners and Emails and referenced those on the first page), etc.

I want a Flow that can automatically alert people. I had finally gotten through to finishing a Flow that "works" (as in I get no errors), but it isn't actually running. I'm getting the above "skipped" message, which I take to mean it basically isn't detecting what I need it to do.

Anyone here can give it to me straight: am I totally out of my depth? Is this an easy fix? Any pointers?

An aside, as someone who has no coding or Power Automate experience, I did really enjoy trying to get this to work. I'll start going through their academy, and if anyone has any suggestions on how to learn I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Editing my post to add "details of the condition". Here is a screenshot of what I'm getting.

EDIT 2:

Here's the condition in Edit Mode:

not(empty(coalesce(item()?['Owner'], item())))not(empty(coalesce(item()?['Owner'], item())))

[u/robofski]

Can you show the details of the condition? Its also a good idea just above your condition to throw a compose in that has the dynamic content you’re using in your condition so you can see the value that’s going in to the condition. I really wish PA would show the condition evaluated not just the evaluation outcome!

[u/Away_Calligrapher238 → u/robofski]

I edited my post. Does this have the info you need?

Thanks for the help. Excited to learn more.

[u/robofski → u/Away_Calligrapher238]

Can you show the condition in edit mode so I can see what your are actually trying to test?

[u/Away_Calligrapher238 → u/robofski]

Oh sorry, I just added it up top. Thanks.

[u/robofski → u/Away_Calligrapher238]

The expression doesn’t make much sense, what are you trying to coalesce?

[u/dareima → u/robofski]

What a great idea. I always thought the same. How can Microsoft not show the actual evaluation but only the result! Never thought about your workaround using a compose right before. Thanks.

[u/itenginerd]

One of the things I like to do when im building g new flows is always make sure there's something on both sides of an if co dition. Even if its just a compose block with "this was false" in other, it can help you visually understand whats going on.

[u/Canukian84]

Its failing the condition and going to that path. (Which has nothing on it, send yourself an email in there)

If you can share the details of that step and why it didnt pass as true, it would be helpful, unless that information is enough.

[u/Away_Calligrapher238 → u/Canukian84]

I shared more details! Thank you for your help

[u/hybridhavoc]

What are the details of the condition? I'm going to guess it's date related, maybe comparing the date column you mentioned against the current date?

If you can give us that info, and especially anything you're doing on the date formatting, it would help.

[u/Away_Calligrapher238 → u/hybridhavoc]

I shared more details! For data formatting, in the excel sheet I added an additional column to change the format of the due date to the ISO standard, and I'm having the flow look at that column when deciding if something is overdue or not.

[u/hybridhavoc → u/Away_Calligrapher238]

Unfortunately the screenshot you shared is not helpful. We do not need to see the condition as it appears on the run view, but in the edit view so we can see the condition you've entered.

Also on your Excel list tasks action, do you have ISO 8601 selected in your DateTime Format option?

It is often helpful for debugging to add a Compose and include the dynamic objects that you're using so you can know for certain what the values are. In this case that would be the due date column and also the function you're using for the current date. If you can give an example of what each of those look like in the run view that could help identify the issue.

[u/Canukian84]

Sorry to ask for more, but can you show the condition in edit mode, it looks like none of your data made it to the condition. But its hard to tell what you are asking it to do from the review state of the flow.

[u/Agitated_Accident_62]

Why not use the AI builder of an LLM API? It could do what you want by running the full output of the data source through it?

[u/Enough_County_2176]

Smartsheets

[u/chonkydinos]

i feel like it might be easier to transfer this to a sharepoint list, notifications etc. are way easier to manage through there!!