Problem by creating PDF over MS Flow for wrong users

[CanD]

Hello community,

i have a small question regarding my app. I have some screens were the user should give some input by choosing between yes and no. The inputs are collected in a collection. At the end there is a button were the user can dowload a pdf with all his selections. Over the button there will be started a flow which creates a PDF.

Flow:

'PowerApp->CreateDataCreatePDF'.Run(HtmlText1.HtmlText)

Button:

Launch("https://XX-my.sharepoint.com/....15/download.aspx?SourceUrl=/personal/..../Created PDF.pdf")

Now to my problem: The flow creates a pdf which the user can download. Because the PDF has always the same name, the PDF is replaced by a new one every time. So if for example one user needs a bit longer to download it his pdf gets replaced by an another users pdf. The first user who was to slow gets now the pdf from the second one.

What do i have to change in my flow to generate always a new pdf so that the users don't download the wrong one? In other program languages i would test the idea to create i variable were i would put the name of the user in it or an integer value...

I hope someone can help me.

Thank you.

Best regards,

CanD

[Pstork1]

One easy solution would be to pass the user's account name from their email address to the flow and use that when creating the PDF name.  That way you can have a different PDF name for each user.  Since its provided by the Power App you can easily included it in the link for the Launch command also.

[gabibalaban · Accepted solution]

Hi @CanD ,

To avoid this problem you need to create a file using PowerAutomate having a unique name and return this unique name to powerapps. The safest way to achieve this is to use time inside of your file name. 

So your flow should look like this (it's a demo so please ignore the errors)...

In the PowerApps app side, you have to call flow and save the answer to a context variable:

UpdateContext({flowAnswer:'PowerApp->CreateDataCreatePDF'.Run(HtmlText1.HtmlText)})

 and after that use: 

Launch("https://XX-my.sharepoint.com/....15/download.aspx?SourceUrl=/personal/..../"&flowanwser.filename)

Please that this solution will keep all users files created via flow. 

Hope it helps !

[CanD]

Hi @gabibalaban 

thank you so much for the answer. I needed some time to fix my app, and now i tried your solution. The flow creates for everyone a new pdf. There is only one mistake, i can't download the pdf. I think there is a formation error.

The variable ergebnisblatt_user which we create in the flow is saving this one:

If i click on the button which launch the pdf i got an error.

Launch("https://XX-my.sharepoint.com/personal/???/APP-Dateien/Ergebnisblätter/"&flowAnswer.erbnisblatt_user)

This is the link of the error page:

https://XX-my.sharepoint.com/personal/???/APP-Dateien/Ergebnisbl%C3%A4tter/Ergebnisblatt_2021.01.20_22:47:50.pdf

Do I get the error message because of the time? I'm from Germany, could there possibly be a formatting error here?

Thank you for your help.

[CanD]

@gabibalaban 

Sorry my post was not complete. Please look on the following Screenshot. Is the error because of the format of the time stamp or is it because of the german letter "ä" on Ergebnisblätter?

[Pstork1]

If you click on the Ergebnisblatt_2021.01.20_22:47:50.pdf in OneDrive what is the URL in the browser when it opens as a pdf?  That is the URL you should be using.  The special character may be an issue.  I suspect that is what it is because the error message shows the path containing '%C3%A4' in place of that character.

[CanD]

Hi @Pstork1 

thank you very much for the help.

This is the URL which PA want to open by clicking Launch:

https://XXX-my.sharepoint.com/personal/APP-Dateien/Ergebnisblaetter/Ergebnisblatt_2021.01.20_23:41:58.pdf

And this is the exact name of the pdf in my onedrive:

Ergebnisblatt_2021.01.20_23_41_58.pdf

So the problem is, when the pdf is created he get the exact creation time but the format is wrong. 

In the flow i create a variable like @gabibalaban  showed in his screenshot:

convertFromUtc(utcNow(), 'GTB Standard Time' , 'yyyy.MM.dd_HH:mm:ss')

As you can see there are ":" colons between hour, minute and seconds but after the creation there are underlines/underscores....

I have fixed it by changing the convertFromUtc-formula.

And after deleting the letter "ä" from the name it starts to work.

So thank you really much guys @Pstork1   and   @gabibalaban  it works now 🙂