Person/Group selection, converting to single text and comparing to an entry in MS Forms

[Anonymous]

I'm encountering a problem with a series of my flows which interact with a data source.

I have a system whereby it holds customers names.

Flow1: One flow triggers a 3 month follow up email to be sent to the customer with a MS forms customer survey link embedded in the email.

Flow2: The next flow, creates the responses into a sharepoint list. Two of the questions in the survey are "First Name" and "Last Name", within the flow that capture MS forms to SP List Survey Responses I used one column set as "Customer Name" and within the flow I did this by <first name> <last name>.

Flow3: When a new item is created in my SP List Survey Responses I run a series of verifications to try and determine who has responded and communicate that back to my Main Customer SP List. The three verifications I check look for are email1, email2 and name. I have been able to make the flow work verifying for email1 and email2, however, I can't figure out name for some strange reason. In the main Customer SP list, the name is pass into the SP list through a powerapp using a person field. The data source I'm comparing it to receives the name as single text from MS forms as I've outlined above. I've tried comparing the MS forms name value to the SP list display name and that failed to correctly detect that they were a match.

Does this mean that when you pass a name into a SP list, or have a column set as Person/Group, and try to compare it to a single text column in another SP list technically they are not 100% identical? They are only visually identical on the monitor screen?

Additionally, I tried passing the name value in the person/group column into a single text column but that also failed to correctly detect that the values were the same.

Any thoughts team?

Tom

[v-yuazh-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

If you want to compare the name from the question response from Form and the person type column in sharepoint list, you should compare the question response with the person column Displayname dyanmic content.

I have made a test on my side to create a AssignedTo column with Person type in sharepoint list, and I have created a flow as screenshot below to compare the name:

The expression in the Condition as below:

@equals(body('Get_response_details')?['r2cceb158c7124c5183b19a5a65743c34'], body('Get_item')?['AssignedTo']?['DisplayName'])

The flow would run successfully to compare the name:

Best regards,

Alice

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-yuazh-msft,

My flow is a little more intricate than that. This solution may work, and I think an opportunity for you to see the flow live may provide the solution. Any chance we could meet virtually via Skype? Could I send you a meeting invitation?

Thanks,

Tom

[v-yuazh-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

Please take a try on your side to see if my solution works.

And please let me know if it works or you have any question on it.

Best regards,

Alice

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-yuazh-msft,

As previously stated, my flow is not as simple as the one you've provided above. I've set out my flows below to give you some insight into the problem I'm having. I fear it may be the way my flows are interpreting the first name and last name.

I've created a flow that collects the responses in a SP list, and also sends an email to notify the administrator of a new response (see directly below). My MS Forms asks for first name, and last name, and then I place them together, with a space between them to create the RespondersName.Create in SP list and notify

The creating of a survey record in the SP list that holds the responses triggers my flow to verify/check to see who responded. I've made this flow quite intricate because I am actually performing 3 checks to verify who has responded. I check:

1) The customer email address used and compare to the record in my Main SP List

2) The customer email provided (in case they decided to use a personal email address while filling out the survey) and compare it to the record in my Main SP list.

3) Finally, I compare the FirstName LastName provided in the survey response to the DisplayName in the SP List.

I've been able to successfully test and prove out #1 and #2 above without issue. You'll also see that my flow runs with a Do Until variable = complete. If my flow captures and correctly verifies any of the three items above, I set the variable to "Complete" and the Do Until Loop stops. The last step of this flow is a condition that asks what the variable is. If it is set to "Complete" I do nothing, else I send an email to the Administrator notifying them that a new response was received but we do not know who responded to it and further investigation could be done based on the MS Forms survey responses.

Again, my problem is that the display name is correctly matching to the first name last name combination.

Can you help? Does MS Forms pass two fields (firstname, lastname) that would be identical to the display name?

[Anonymous]

@v-yuazh-msft

I should add that the MS Form is a free form. Here is the survey form in case you needed a snapshot of it.

[Anonymous]

Hello @v-yuazh-msft

Furthermore, I tried replicating exactly what you have shown and the test failed. See image below: