Flow to get a date from email body to to be used as due date in planner task

[Anonymous]

Hello

I'm trying to create a flow in power automate to get a date from email body and use this date as due date in a planner task. The date in the email body is always between the words "Date required" and "Date Created" For example:

Date Required 7/10/2020 Date Created

So my intention is to get the 7/10/2020 and set this due date in the planner task that I´m creating.

This is a screenshot of the flow that I'm using:

In the due date field I'm using any of this expressions:

first(split(last(split(body('HTML_to_text'),'Date Required')),'Date Created'))

last(split(first(split(body('HTML_to_text'),'Date Created')),'Date Required'))

The flow was OK before trying to add this due date to the task (I ran the flow several times successfully), but now that I'm adding this part to set the due date I'm getting this error message:

"The template validation failed: 'The inputs of template action 'Create_a_task' at line '1 and column '2407' cannot reference action 'HTML_to_text'. Action 'HTML_to_text' must either be in 'runAfter' path or within a scope action on the 'runAfter' path of action 'Create_a_task', or be a Trigger.'."

I'm kind of new on power automate, Can anyone help me?
I appreciate your help in advanced.

[iAm_ManCat]

Heya!

It looks like you put a new 'HTML_to_text' and it renamed it to 'Html_to_text_2' - but then the editor did not alter it in your expressions, this can happen sometimes.

I would rename the 'Html to text 2' to 'HTML to text' and this should fix the issue with your expressions, as they are still referencing the 'HTML to text' name 🙂 (also note the uppercase HTML in the name!)

Cheers,

Sancho

[Anonymous]

Thanks @iAm_ManCat , that removes the error message that I had and I was able to save the flow.

But now when I run the flow Im getting this new message in the run history (failed):

Cannot convert the literal '7/10/2020' to the expected type 'Edm.DateTimeOffset'

I think this is a format issue
Do I need to convert somehow the date to be able to use it in the due date field of the planner task?

Thanks again!

[iAm_ManCat · Accepted solution]

Yes, it looks from the image you provided that it is looking for a formatted datetime rather than a string, so like:

2018-04-13T00:42:19.284Z

Could you try using the formatDateTime function around your expression that you are using for the Due Date, I can see it starts with last( but not the rest of it - this should hopefully format it so that you can use it 🙂

formatDateTime( WHOLE_EXPRESSION_FROM_DUE_DATE )

Cheers,

Sancho

[Anonymous]

Thanks.

That worked for me!

This is how the entire expression looks like:

formatDateTime(last(split(first(split(Body('HTML_to_text_2'),'Date Created')),'Date Required')),'yyyy-MM-dd')

Regards!

[PMM]

Hello,

i have sentence  "employment details have changes as of 01/07/2021 as follows:" 

i use: first(split(last(split(body('HTML_to_text'),'employment details have changes as of')),'as follows:')), but i can't extract date. could you please advise, in input output i receive "employment details have changes as
of 01/07/2021 " without end. wait i am doing wrong? thank you

[gndn1981]

Thank you for your answer, you've brought me closer to a solution. Can you please add a little more detail here? I am trying to do exactly the same thing but also add n number of days. I'm not sure what goes in the place of: "WHOLE_EXPRESSION_FROM_DUE_DATE"