Update & Create Excel Records 50-100x Faster
I was able to develop an Office Script to update rows and an Office Scripts to create rows from Power Automate array data. So instead of a flow creating a new action API call for each individual row update or creation, this flow can just send an array of new data and the Office Scripts will match up primary key values, update each row it finds, then create the rows it doesn't find.
And these Scripts do not require manually entering or changing any column names in the Script code.
• In testing for batches of 1000 updates or creates, it's doing ~2500 row updates or creates per minute, 50x faster than the standard Excel create row or update row actions at max 50 concurrency. And it accomplished all the creates or updates with less than 25 actions or only 2.5% of the standard 1000 action API calls.
• The Run Script code for processing data has 2 modes, the Mode 2 batch method that saves & updates a new instance of the table before posting batches of table ranges back to Excel & the Mode 1 row by row update calling on the Excel table.
The Mode 2 script batch processing method will activate for creates & updates on tables less than 1 million cells. It does encounter more errors with larger tables because it is loading & working with the entire table in memory.
Shoutout to Sudhi Ramamurthy for this great batch processing addition to the template!
Code Write-Up: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/resources/samples/write-large-dataset
Video: https://youtu.be/BP9Kp0Ltj7U
The Mode 1 script row by row method will activate for Excel tables with more than 1 million cells. But it is still limited by batch file size so updates & creates on larger tables will need to run with smaller cloud flow batch sizes of less than 1000 in a Do until loop.
The Mode 1 row by row method is also used when the ForceMode1Processing field is set to Yes.
Be aware that some characters in column names, like \ / - _ . : ; ( ) & $ may cause errors when processing the data. Also backslashes \ in the data, which are usually used to escape characters in strings, may cause errors when processing the JSON.
Office Script Code
(Also included in a Compose action at the top of the template flow)
Batch Update Script Code: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kfzd2NX9nr9K8hBcxy60ipryAN4koStw/view?usp=sharing
Batch Create Script Code: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OeFdl7em8IkXsti45ZK9hqDGE420wE9/view?usp=sharing
You can download the Version 5 of this template attached to this post, copy the Office Script codes into an online Excel instance, & try it out for yourself.
-Open an online Excel workbook, go the the automate tab, select New Script, then copy & paste the Office Script code into the code editor. Do this for both the Batch Update and the Batch Create script code. You may want to name them BatchUpdateV6 & BatchCreateV5 appropriately.
-Once you get the template flow into your environment, follow the notes in the flow to change the settings to your datasources, data, & office scripts.
If you need just a batch update, then you can remove the batch create scope.
If you need just a batch create, then you can replace the Run script Batch update rows action with the Run script Batch create rows action, delete the update script action, and remove the remaining batch create scope below it. Then any update data sent to the 1st Select GenerateUpdateData action will just be created, it won't check for rows to update.
(ExcelBatchUpsertV5 is the core piece, ExcelBatchUpsertV5b includes a Do until loop set-up if you plan on updating and/or creating more than 1000 rows on large tables.)
Anyone facing issues with the standard zip file import package method can check this post for an alternative method of importing the flow: Re: Excel Batch Create, Update, and Upsert - Page 33 - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)
Or this one: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Cookbook/Excel-Batch-Create-Update-and-Upsert/m-p...
Thanks for any feedback, & please subscribe to my YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/@tylerkolota?si=uEGKko1U8D29CJ86)
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