Why can't I delete the first condition?

[Anonymous]

Hi All, so with the screenshot above I'm trying to show the following: I've copied an existing workflow that triggered on "new item created" and now want to make some small changes to fire it on "when existing item modified." The new Flow is basically done except for the frustration of not being able to delete the original first condition because "an acition depends on its outputs."

I can't reorder anything above the original condition with dragging and dropping. Adding to the confusion is the fact that there really are no outputs. It's just the initial condition...why can't a valid child condition simply inherit that initial position on delete anyway?

[Anonymous]

It should be as simple as just creating a flow from scratch. If you do that you can set your initial condition as when an item is modified instead of when a new item is created.  Your flow isnt long so its a pretty easy fix.

[Anonymous]

Hey @Anonymous - so basically it looks like that's what I'm going to have to do, but that's not really a "fix" to my mind to say...if this situation every comes up the fix is simply...you need to build the entire workflow again from scratch.

What I'm trying to say is what if this hadn't been a very simple flow? What if this was something someone had spent hours customizing after copying a convienet starting point from another flows?

Is Flow really so inflexible right now that any workflow you copy and try to work from literally cannot have its first condition changed? That's really what I'm trying to establish.

[Anonymous]

I have noticed a similar problem @Anonymous.  I've been working with flow a lot for my new job recently and it really isn't all that flexible from what I have seen.  I've ran into a lot of trouble because flow can not handle simple actions that it should be able to in a logical standpoint.  I think microsoft still has a lot of bugs and updating that it really needs to do.

[Mike2500]

Check the properties for your email action. Most likely, in the To, subject, or body, you using a field from the New Item trigger. You'll need to delete those references, at which point you'll be able to delete the "On Create" trigger. Unfortunately, you still won't be able to move your "item modified" trigger up. You'll just have to add a new "item modified" trigger and delete the other one you added. Once you've added the "item modfied" trigger, you'll need to reconfigure your email to use fields from that new trigger. 

So, you shouldn't have to completely rebuild the flow, but yes, it is a pain in the neck.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply @Mike2500 - I have been in similar situations where there was in fact a reference later in the Flow that was the holdup, but in this case the workflow was so short and straightforward that I was able to rule this out. I'm really baffled by Flow's behaviour here. I have at this point had to delete my copied flow and start over from scratch to build an "on item modified" Flow.

[slittle]

I am having this issue as well, and as predicted, not with a particularly simple flow. I have been able to delete the trigger action before--it just forces me to pick a new one. NBD. But I can't get rid of the Manually Trigger a Flow trigger, and I know I'm not using any inputs from it. Has anyone come up with a solution besides starting over in the meantime?

[daviddraper2]

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@slittle wrote:
I am having this issue as well, and as predicted, not with a particularly simple flow. I have been able to delete the trigger action before--it just forces me to pick a new one. NBD. But I can't get rid of the Manually Trigger a Flow trigger, and I know I'm not using any inputs from it. Has anyone come up with a solution besides starting over in the meantime?

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Yes, I actually just did.

Sometimes, if you use item() it will refer to the Trigger Item (will have a blue icon with the manual push button hand icon) instead of the item at the moment (pink item()).

I made a copy of my flow and slowly deleted sections until delete was enabled.  Then, I dug in to see what could have been causing it.

You can delete the reference to the Trigger (anything with that blue icon would be OR anything with the exact Trigger icon and referring to Trigger data, whether it exists or not).