Integrating Planner with Excel in Flow

[ViniciusAE]

Hello all

I'm testing Flow to create tables in Excel with the tasks my team creates in Planner. I have two problems:
1. There isn't option to send the job description to the table, only the "Has Descripition" option, which returns the information whether it has description or not.
2. If I choose the "Created By User Display Name" option to appear in one of the table columns, it has no content. The only one that works is the "Created By User Id", but it gives me a code and not the person's name.
Thank you

[v-yuazh-msft]

Hi @ ViniciusAE,

Could you please share a screenshot of the configuration of your flow?

For your first problem:

Do you want to get the description of the task in Planner?

You could add a "Get task details" action on your flow, and then you could choose the "Description" dynamic content of the "Get task details"action,please refer to screenshot below:

For your second problem:

I have made a test on my side, and the issue that you mentioned is confirmed on my side.

The "Created By Display Name" dynamic content of the "Create a task" action would be null when the flow run, I would post this issue to my product team, if the issue is solved, I will reply here.

As an alternative way,you could add a "Get user profile" action on your flow, and you could fill in the input field of the "Get user profile" action with the "Created By User Id",and then you could get the user's display name by choosing the "Display Name" dynamic content of the "Get user profile" action, you could refer to screenshot below to create the flow:

Regards,
Alice Zhang

[ViniciusAE]

Hi Alice,

thank you for your attention!

from what I understood from your answer, is the reverse of what I'm trying to do. What I want is: if I create a task in Planner, a table in Excel is automatically updated with the task details.

In the image, some words are in Portuguese

Regards,

Vinicius.

[Anonymous]

Hi ViniciusAE, i'm having the same problem.

Did you solved your problem to get the task description or to parse the information from tasks?

Thanks,

Higor  Grilo

[ViniciusAE]

Hey Higor, how are you?

About the first problem, I couldn't solve.

About the second problem, as there weren't many people on the team assigned the task, I manually identified the codes for each one and created a PROCV (VLOOKUP) in Excel.

[Anonymous]

I've manage to folow in the same direction.

I'm using the excel vba to parse the description and get the tags that i'm looking for, and to extract the bucket namei've created a vlookup to get the bucket name, that i've stored in another worksheet.

[Anonymous]

Hello @ViniciusAE @Anonymous @v-yuazh-msft ,

I beleive I am having the same problem and wondered if you had anyway you could help me figureit out. For my team (6 people total) I need to extract the task and task descriptions from Planner and put them into an excel spreadsheet. I currently have a flow that can extract the titles (start and end dates and bucket ids - which i've used vlookup to simplify) but my supervisor wants descriptions spit out as well but I can't figue out how to do that in flow. 

If any of you could please help I would greatly appreciate it. 

Thank you,

Taylor

[ViniciusAE]

Hey Taylor,

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to resolve this issue yet. The Flow still can't recognize the task descriptions. This is something that Microsoft developers need to work on to help us and improve this service.

[Anonymous]

Hi Taylor,

This is my flow, 

where i list the tasks and for each task i list the details

And here is the detail about task detail

where i say wich fields i want to store and where to store it

i hope that this can help you

[Anonymous]

Hi,

how it works?

In the excel table do u see the bucket name and every activy in this bucket?

[Anonymous]

That's my flow, it works but there is a problem

Look excel output

For every bucket in my plan it clones the activity, how can i list all the activity for every bucket with no repeat? Thanks

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous @ViniciusAE @Anonymous @v-yuazh-msftDo you know hot do that?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous I just copied what @Anonymous did and it worked for me.

[Anonymous]

In Planner i have 4 bucket: 1 2 3 4

For every bucket i have 3 task.

Excel output:

Bucket name                    Task

1                                         1

1                                         2

1                                         3

2                                         1

2                                         1

2                                         1

Con you share with me your flow or screen every content?

Thanks @Anonymous 

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous , your problem seems to be the logic applied on this flow.

You are getting the list of activities in a cicle, for each bucket, so you will repeat the activities per bucket.
You should have an parallel activitie to get all the buckets id and name, and cross it with with the bucket id in the activities.

[Anonymous]

By this way can i put all in the same line?

Bucket name e task details on the same row in Excel table?

Thanks, i will try this

[Anonymous]

It doesn't work

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous  i think that you won't get the task and the bucket name on the same line (excel) with the flow.

I did in a different way, i list all the activities in one worksheet, and the bucket name and id on another worksheet, and i use one vlookup formula to get the name of the bucket, but i use this formula on excel, not at the flow.

Your flow seems to work in a different way, you are adding the new activity once that it is created, right? this action will bring only the new activities created since the last time that the flow was executed?

Explain better what you want to do, what you did and the problem that you're having.

[Anonymous]

Yes i'm  adding the new activity once that it is created.

When i add a new activity on planner, flow starts.

I want a file excel with this fields:

Bucket name, activity name,assigned to,start date,due date,completed date,description

I'm trying different ways to do this and i managed to fill this fields:

activity name,assigned to,start date,due date,completed date,description

I don't know hot to fill "Bucket name", i only managed to fill it with the ID like dgvjTqZT3UW34gMinvX1i5YAANQz

Vlook up is the only way?

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous,

I managed my problem the way that i've described previosly. On the worksheet that i have the activities, i cant get the bucket name.

I couldn't solve it on the flow, i do it on the excel, with a vlookup, looking to the bucket list to get the name of the bucket. If you look at my flow, on the activities extraction, i have a column that i dont fill on the flow, i copy a formula (vlookup) to get the name.

I think that no one on this topic managed to solve this problem, if you solve it, please share with us your solution