Hi All,
Long time reader first time poster.
I have been learning Flow and Planner for several months and been trying to get an automated download of all Planner Tasks.
All Flow approaches using "List Tasks" are limited as they cannot access all fields.
The "Export to Excel" option from the Web Version of Microsoft Planner (which provides almost all fields) cannot seem to be automated and has to be manually triggered.
I have found a Flow alternative where it appears to be best to ignore using "Apply to Each" after "List Tasks" in Flow.
Using "List Tasks" and "Apply to Each" to write the fields back to an Excel table or similar takes up to an hour or more and the Flow times out.
However if you look at the total list of available fields (screenshot below is not all of them) ....
But then compare this list to the actual Download text generated by the prior "List Tasks" (from the results of the Flow) you find that "List Tasks" has "extra fields" that included such as total number of checklists per Task, total number of active checklists per Task, label numbers, what is selected to be shown on the card (Description, Checklists, Attachments etc) within the text.
All the prior discussion here said seems to have stated these fields are inaccessible.
So I abandoned using "Apply to Each" and instead dumped the "List Tasks" output direct to a File in Flow.
I made a loop which did this for every Plan.
This took the download time to 10-30 seconds!!!!
I then used Power Query in Excel to pull the file apart and do data transformation and get ALL the information I would have from the "Apply to Each" method ... but also all these extra fields.
To make this work I had to convert the Task ID, Bucket ID, User ID (for Created By, Assigned By, Assigned To etc) and other ID fields back in Excel Power Query from lookup tables rather than using Flow.
But the net result is my download time is down to 30 seconds for 7 Plans of more than 1000 tasks, I get more fields than I do any other way, and the Excel Power Query processing takes less than 1 minute and the end user doesn't have to do anything.
The next wall I hit was the limit of 400 for "List Tasks" per Plan .... which also effects this text download.
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Planner-List-tasks-retrieves-only-400-tasks-from-...
So lots of votes for removing that limit please.
But I was very very close to finding an automated alternative to "Export to Excel".
Has any one else tried anything like this approach ?
I can post more information.
Or alternatively has anyone found a Flow or similar method to trigger the "Export to Excel" menu even via some form of click automation?
Accepted Solutions
Here is the Flow.
To get all the details you must use BODY ... otherwise all you can get is ID or DESCRIPTION.
I have posted two example outputs and both posts have been removed but I don't know why.
Thanks 😉 for the item()?['NameOfTheHiddenProperty'] suggestion I will have a look at that too.
Edit Update 1>
The weird thing is .... when I used item() like you said (for both the checklist fields) it came as a purple expression ... then changed to a green Planner item after saving the Flow.
But if you search for that Planner item in the dynamic option - you can't find it!
< Edit Update 1
> Edit Update 2
Despite the above being shown .... the Flow didn't download these fields so tell me if you get a different result?
< Edit Update 2
Unless I can find out a way to make the "Apply to Each" iterative process much faster ....
i.e. down from more than 1 hr to my alternative automated dump the text option (30 seconds) I will stick with that for now.
Is it only Flow Update Row in Excel that is so slow or do alternative database structures help?
I can explain how I am doing this alternative "in one hit" List Tasks" OUTPUT text dump in terms of the Flow steps and Power Query if you want to know.
It doesn't ultimately matter as I could run the 'Apply to Each' at midnight when no one cares but I expect it may become a "on demand" option eventually. I will update as I get a better solution.🤔
Hi again, I think I have good news!
I managed to force PA Flow read one of the hidden properties from Planner 'Get Tasks' you pointed out by means of a Select Action Block!
As you can see in my PA Flow design, I chose to test with 'appliedCategories' ,which I cannot find on 'Dynamic Content' UI list...
...and the result is the following:
Hope this helps
I am doing similar - this is ULTRA fast (like 20-30 seconds) compared to more than 1 hour with a traditional flow.
I could use "List Plans" instead but at the moment I am using the Excel table to limit it just to 8 plans (of the eventual 30 or so) and its easy to tweak for trial.
I iterate through all the Plan IDs and use "List Tasks" and generate a CSV file eliminating writing to Excel and using 'Apply to Each'.
Apart from being majorly faster this also overwrites the old CSV file on Sharepoint without me having to delete it first so it eliminates my past practice of having to wipe the data storage Excel table first.
It becomes separate files rather than one but they are tiny and fast and can easily be combined automatically later.
I will change the Flow from Manual trigger to Scheduled later.
There are several tricks to making this work in the 'Create CSV table'
First trick .... just paste the entire 'Value' set.
Don't be selective. I am not doing them individually,
If you try to customize and use individual fields you won't be able to get them all without an expression as you discussed above.
Second trick ..... ignore the 'Value Assignments' set because this requires iteration like 'Apply to Each' to read them .... and you cant seem to do that in the middle of writing a CSV file.
The 'Value Assignments' array just gets saved in a single column in the CSV and I deal with this later to get all the info.
Then I end up with 8 CSV files (or whatever number you desire).
But once in a CSV file there appears no method of reading direct back into Flow again (but I don't anyway).
As discussed before this is limited by the 'List Tasks' 400 max limit but so is 'Apply to Each' method. Today I moved more than 600+ tasks out of one Plan into 2 other Plans working to get us under the limit.
In Power Query (either Power Bi or Excel - I am using Excel so I can email the entire resulting file with Pivot Tables and other summaries available for Users) I stitch these back into one data set and then do all the data manipulation.
In the manipulation I then split the 'Assignments' downloaded column back into Individual Rows (separating all the multiple assignments if present) and then separate each new row into its new component column (i.e. Assigned By, Assigned Date, Assigned to etc).
I have lookup tables to convert all the Bucket IDs, Plan IDs back to descriptive text as these are unchangeable in our configuration for the next year or more.
I have lookup tables to convert the User IDs for Created By, Assigned By, Assigned To, Completed by back to a Name (this seems way way faster than using 'Get User Details (V2)' each time). As I am the only Administrator people can't add members to the team so no unknown User IDs should sneak in.
I don't bother splitting the Categories array (potential 6 Labels) apart as in our configuration we only want one Label at a time and if there is multiple that is an error.
I can post a screen shot of my data mashup logic if that helps.
Total time today to download more than 1400 tasks from 8 plans (20 seconds), read from Sharepoint, do the data manipulation and present output in Excel .... less than 2 minutes and it can be full auto. I have a checking routine which highlights user errors with a link back to each Planner task and then I can easily fix them either manually or potentially with a mass update flow.
Using Flow and 'Apply to Each' with my previous slow time performance I wouldn't have even written 50 tasks to the download in that time.
And I can do the CSV download in the background multiple times a day at that speed and then Users can just press refresh on the Excel sheet and it will read the last Sharepoint files.
I am still going to try the UI option too ... but it will take me a week or so to get through internal company IT processes.
Here is the Flow.
To get all the details you must use BODY ... otherwise all you can get is ID or DESCRIPTION.
I have posted two example outputs and both posts have been removed but I don't know why.
Screenshot examples showing data from Flow after data transformation in Power Query
Linked back to id of the Task :
Checklist Details (still have to play around to work out the sort order as per Planner view)
Reference Details
Description
I will convert the UserID to an actual Name but the names would not mean anything to anyone outside of my company
Below is the final flow to iterate through the 8 plans and 1400 tasks and get the details of Description, Checklists and Attachments.
I had to add in a variable reset to clear the array at the start of each loop.
I will keep this separate from the LIST TASKS version at that takes 30 seconds and this one, with an Apply to Each, takes over an hour.
Therefore if I want 80% of the main data I will run the short 30 second flow and if I want the last 20% I will run this more detailed flow.
Hi @Tjj88 ,
I have improved the method described here a lot since it was posted.
The key difference in this approach is I am deliberately NOT using "Get a Task" as it is too slow especially when using an "Apply to Each" loop and you cannot get all the fields.
I am using "List Tasks" so I am passing in the "Group ID" and the various "Plan ID".
I then take the "Value" from this output and split out each individual item I want to read.
This is very important as ... if using use standard Flow some of the individual fields you want are inaccessible and won't be displayed as options.
So you have to specifically refer to them with the item()?[<field name>] method as shown
It is also important as some of the outputs are essentially arrays ... and unreadable as separate components in Flow .... so I break these apart later in the file.
I then write it back to a CSV file.
I will also say that this method was really useful ... until my plans all started exceeding 400 tasks. This is the current limit of Flow and I haven't found any way around it.
So currently I am getting a similar custom written routine using Microsoft Graph API ... which is more complicated but will do all of the above automatically to Sharepoint ... but without the limitation of 400.
Happy to explain more if required as I have got lots of help on here.
Helpful resources
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