Power Automate and Planner checklists

[Carbca]

Hi everyone,

I have successfully created a flow that will create a planner task with an 18 point checklist. The issue we are having at this point is during modifications to the checklist. Sometimes we will need to add or delete some of the original 18 generated points (it's a list of best fit). I can add and delete just fine, but am unable to add a new item and then move it within that automatically generated group (like if I now need to add a step between points 5 and 6). I suspect it has something to do with the fact that each ID is assigned at the time of automation and becomes 'fixed', though through manual entry in planner, this somehow doesn't happen. Anyone have any ideas of how to get around this? I can't just have multiple lists as our work fluctuates during the build process based on the needs of the business partners. Any ideas would be welcome. 

[manuelstgomes]

Hi @Carbca 

You're probably doing something like this, right?

But in your case, we should dive a bit deeper into the "advanced mode" and provide an array. To do that, click on this button.

And you'll get a text field with a JSON array. I don't know if you're familiar with JSON, but it's quite simple to replicate it. You can have a SharePoint list or an Excel file with the ID and Title and build the array yourself. Then you only need to update the list or Excel, and your Flow will always work the same way.

For the example above, we'll need to generate something like this:

[
  {
    "id": "ID 1",
    "title": "TITLE 1",
    "isChecked": false
  },
  {
    "id": "ID 2",
    "title": "TITLE 2",
    "isChecked": false
  }
]

To do generate the array:

1. Create an array variable
2. Fetch all items from SharePoint List or Excel.
   1. Use the "Append to array variable" to add the value with the following formula (replace the ID and the Title with the values from your Excel or SharePoint List columns.

concat('{"id":"',items('Apply_to_each')?['ID'],'","','title": "',items('Apply_to_each')?['Title'],'","isChecked": false}')

1. Finally, generate the final JSON with the join and Concat function again. Here's the formula: 

concat('[',join(variables('ARRAY'),','),']')

This will generate something like this:

[
    {
        "id": "3",
        "title": "Closed",
        "isChecked": false
    },
    {
        "id": "4",
        "title": "Spaces",
        "isChecked": false
    },
    {
        "id": "5",
        "title": "Characters",
        "isChecked": false
    },
    {
        "id": "6",
        "title": "Number in Text",
        "isChecked": false
    },
    {
        "id": "7",
        "title": "Manuel T. Gomes",
        "isChecked": false
    }
]

Here's the structure for your reference:

Is this what you need?

Cheers
Manuel

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[MichaelSeanGuez]

Hey Manuel,

I have a follow up question on this matter.  Do you know of a way to delete existing checklist items?  Carbaca claims that they are able to do this at the beginning of this thread, but he offers no explanation or visualizations of his automations.  To be specific, I want to be able to clear completed checklist items off a planner card.  I know how to create them.  What remains elusive is if there is a way to clear them out.  We have a board we are using to track to system updates.  I have actually linked our board to an excel document to create a history of completed tasks.  This works nicely at the task level.  It removes the completed task card from the board and caches the information into a sortable excel table, creating a nice work history for the department.  The issue I am having is that some of these cards fill up with checklist items and it hits the 20-item limit.  Currently, any checklist items are copied into a string when the task is completed, and that string is dropped into a column called "Sub-Tasks" on my excel document.  That works fine until you hit the checklist limit.  Then I have to start deleting completed checklist items to make room for new items that are still being added.  I want to make sure that all these sub tasks are being logged, so I don't want to simply delete them.  Ideally, I'd like to set up an evening crawl through all the task cards, caching completed checklist items to our excel archive and removing them from the card.  I can do the first part.  The second is vexing me and there is no documentation at all on the internet.  The best I can do is rename the completed task as "Empty" and uncheck the box.  Do you have an idea about how I could go about deleting them, or perhaps clearing the checklist completely so I can rewrite it?

[MichaelSeanGuez]

How did you go about deleting the checklist items?  We have a board we are using to track to system updates.  I have actually linked our board to an excel document to create a history of completed tasks.  This works nicely at the task level.  It removes the completed task card from the board and caches the information into a sortable excel table, creating a nice work history for the department.  The issue I am having is that some of these cards fill up with checklist items and it hits the 20-item limit.  Currently, any checklist items are copied into a string when the task is completed, and that string is dropped into a column called "Sub-Tasks" on my excel document.  That works fine until you hit the checklist limit.  Then I have to start deleting completed checklist items to make room for new items that are still being added.  I want to make sure that all these sub tasks are being logged, so I don't want to simply delete them.  Ideally, I'd like to set up an evening crawl through all the task cards, caching completed checklist items to our excel archive and removing them from the card.  I can do the first part.  The second is vexing me and there is no documentation at all on the internet.  The best I can do is rename the completed task as "Empty" and uncheck the box.  You seem to imply that your automation does exactly what I want: to delete a checklist item.  How did you accomplish this?

[Carbca]

Hi Michael,

The deleting of the task items was never automated - we would manually delete any checklist items that were not relevant from the automated list of best fit and then add in others. This post was asking if there was a way the manually added items could be placed within the group of those that were automated.