Do until doesn’t come out of loop

[godala_vamshi]

Hello, 

I'm trying to implement simple process on MS Flow, I have a flow which gets all records with status 'Open' and should send email until status changes to 'Summitted', but loop doesn't end even status changed to 'Summitted'(flow keep sending emails for Summitted records), I tried multiple ways but no luck( below is current design) could you help me with this? 

Thank you

[ccc333ab]

If I read this correctly, it appears like you are actually looping on the status first, and then looping again for the email. In other word: 

• Your Apply_to_each_4 loops through all items and sets the Status variable to the Status Value upon each loop...so that the very last status in the loop will get stored in the variable (lets assume "Not Submitted")
• Then you loop until Status = Submitted. But in this loop, it'll never be Submitted because you never change the variable again.  

It also appears like your Status field can accept multiple values (Thus the name Status Value) unless you named it this way. I'll assume multipe values...

So I would have one loop (apply to each) that loops through all open records, and then have a nested loop to loop through all staus valuesand then use a condition instead to check if submitted. If yes, then send email, if not, do nothing. So something like:

Note: I am using the field "Choice" in this example to replicate your "Status" field. If I am wrong and you don't have multivalue Status field, that actually makes things easier, and you can skip the second loop and just do the condition on the Status Value field.  

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab  Thanks for your time on this. Yes, I'm using Choice field, what is the expression your using on condition? and where can I add Do-until ? 

Thank you.

[ccc333ab]

I think I may be misunderstanding the purpose of this flow a bit. A couple of questions: 

1. What is the trigger of this? 
2. Is this a one time job, or will you be running this with some regularity? 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab  I'm trying to manually run a flow on SharePoint list, flow should send emails to user until they click submit which changes status to 'Summitted' from 'Open' on list and then flow should stop sending emails for those records. 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab Is this something you can help with? I tried multiple ways but still cant figure out what's wrong.  

[ccc333ab]

I apologize for not answering your question, it got lost in all the notifications I was getting. 

So I do have a concern (which may not apply but I do worry about this). My concern is that you will be running a do-until loop on a manual run flow, that you may be running more than once. Which then may generate multiple emails, for example:   

• Say you run this and you send email to Person_A, and it continually sends an email every day (assuming your delay is daily)
• After many days, you re-run this same flow because there are more people that have been added to the list. So now you are emailing Person_B, but since Person_A also hasn't responded, they will also get an email
• BUT Person_A will still be getting the email from the first flow you ran as well

If that isn't a concern, then I'll show you a do-until type loop with my suggestion HOWEVER....

On a completely different approach, which will save you a lot of extra nested loops, can you do the following instead? (Again, I don't know the functional requirements so this could be totally wrong on what you want to do).  

1. Use a "Schedule Trigger" and run the job once every day (or however timeframe your delay is set for). 

2. Check through list for open and non-submitted rows. 

3. Send email. 

Done. No loops necessary...the job will just kick off every day and redo this again. 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab You mean I should just build a new reoccurring Flow which checks status and sends emails to not submitted records? Yes, I can do that but I was just trying to add Do-until to a continuation of other steps(screen below ), which is configured for specific interval, if user don't take action by the target date then this do-until should send emails every day by checking the status, I'm also fine if there is a way to call other reoccurring Flow from this manual run flow. 

Thank you very much for your time on this. 

[ccc333ab]

So what I recommended above was just to simplify things, I'm not saying you can't use a do-until loop as part of your solution. And I was unaware you had other actions beyond what you had originally asked. So I'll give you one idea that would allow you to use a do-until loop (with Power Automate, therer are many ways to do things). Still I do have concerns that you will send multiple emails to the users if you are running this manually. 

Couple of things to be aware of:

1. When running things in a do-loop, by default it is set to only run for an hour. You'll need to change the default settings to run for however long you want the do-loop to execute for.
2. Flows in general can only run for 30 days maximum (and 5000 loops maximum). Be aware of this if your loops will be longer than this.

Bit more background as well:

• Values from a GetItems action are static. That is, once you get the values, even if your list changes your flow won't konw anything about it unless you execute another GetItems request. (So my solution brings in another GetItem call so we can check the status)
• Variables in a flow are "global". That is if you execute several loops in parallel, the variable is only for the whole flow, not for each loop, so you can't use a variable to check for the completion in the do-until loop. So I have added a field in the list to check instead. 

Solution:

1. The List

Here is the list I am using to start with. TO begin with, Person 1 has submitted, but 2, 3 and 4 have not. Also, you can see the added column "Finalized" which has been set to yes for Person 1. 

2. The Flow

Get Items will get all the items from the list, then I use an Apply to each to loop through each row of that list:

For this Apply to each loop, I also set concurrency so that each loop run in parallel (otherwise, you'd just run through each row in seriel, so that you'd only have one email going out until the status changes to "Submitted" for that user). To do that you click on the ellipses and then settings...

And then turn Concurrency on. 

Now within this Apply to Each loop, I start by creating the Do-Until Loop, and will loop until Finalized has been set to 1 (i.e., yes value). 

First step in the Do Loop I get a Get Item of the current row. 

I'm actually going to use a Filter Array step here instead of looping through the status values. 

Then I am checking to see if the filter array brings anything back (if the status has a submitted, you'll get results, otherwise you'll end up with a blank array). 

Now if the filter array is blank, you'll go and send the email, and delay for the length of time you want to delay for (I think you said a day). 

If the  filter is no longer blank (i.e. now has status of Submitted), then you want to go to the list and update item (based upon the ID/Title from the Apply to each loop) 

The Test Run:

After each minute, I updated one person in the list to have a submitted status. The emails that came out showed 3 emails for the 3 initial people without submitted, and each minute after that one less person was emailed. 

And flow was successful...

[ccc333ab]

Also forgot to provide you instructions on how to update your timeout values on the Do loop. To do this, just click the Change Limits at the bottom. You would use ISO 8601 format, but simply put in P30D for example if you want 30 days, and update the count to the number of loops the do loop should run. 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab Really appreciate your time on this. I'm seeing below error when I test. 

[ccc333ab]

Can you show me what your GetItems, GetItem and your FilterCondition are. And if you can also explain what expressions/dynamic content you used in them as well. 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab  Here is the screens of info you asked, Thanks again.

[ccc333ab]

Can't really see anything of issue. In the Filter Array, can you hover over the Status and Status Value and show me what it says. 

As well as hovering over the ID in the Get Item step as well and showing me what that says. 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab  I tried re-creating flow and tried other ways but still do-until won't work for me. for now I just created child flow and calling from my main flow which works fine. 

[ccc333ab]

Since you have this working a different way, do you want me to try to continue to troubleshoot this? 

[godala_vamshi]

@ccc333ab Its ok, I will proceed with this workaround. Thank you for your time on this.