Sending dates from PowerApps > Flow > Sharepoint Library

[A_Shirani]

Any help on the following is appreciated as I am not sure if my mistake is in PowerApps, Flow or SharePoint.?

I am loading a document from PowerApps into a SharePoint online library, using Flow, composing and parsing a JSON function, then "Create File" under the Sharepoint actions. This is working well.

I am then adding some metadata on the PowerApps page, mostly text inputs. In Flow these are first initialised as string variables, when the flow runs it passes the variables to the "Update File Properties" also under the SharePoint actions.  So for each file created the flow gets the ID and updates with the properties. This also works fine.

My problem comes when I try and add a datepicker to the PowerApps page because I want to set the documents date in the metadata. The date picker is set to "local" if that is relevant? When I run the app the flow does show the variable is set to the date from PowerApps as a string value (e.g. dd/MM/yyyy format) . However when it tries to update the file properties in SharePoint I get an error that "String was not recognised as a valid DateTime". I have tried asking for the date directly in the "Update File Properties" control but I get the same response.

At one point I tried converting the SharePoint date column into single line text column, the flow then worked but of course I lose the date functionaility I want in SharePoint. I am presuming I have some sort of date format conflict between the value from PowerApps (string type) and the SharePoint Column (date type)?

A few screen shots below.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong and how to fix it would be great.

Running flow from PowerAppsDate initialised as a variableDate variable being used in Update File PropertiesResult of unsuccesful Flow run

[v-xida-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @A_Shirani ,

When you defined a String variable in your flow to receive the date value passed from your app, the passed date value would be converted into a Text string value.

Within the "Update File Properties" action, the DocReceiptDate column is required to provide a date time value rather than a Text string value.

Actually, it is not necessary to convert the Date time column into Text type column within your SP Library, instead, you just need to convert the date string value into date time value within your flow, then pass the converted date value for the DocReceiptDate column.

I have made a test on my side, please take a try with the following workaround:

The flow works well as below:

Within the "Compose" action, set the Inputs field to following formula:

formatDateTime(concat(split(variables('varReceiptDate'),'/')[1],'/',split(variables('varReceiptDate'),'/')[0],'/',split(variables('varReceiptDate'),'/')[2]), 'MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss')

On your side, within the "Update File Properties" action, set the DocReceiptDate field to following formula:

formatDateTime(concat(split(variables('varReceiptDate'),'/')[1], '/', split(variables('varReceiptDate'),'/')[0], '/', split(variables('varReceiptDate'),'/')[2]), 'MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss')

More details about the fortmatDateTime() function in flow expression, please check the following article:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/workflow-definition-language-functions-reference#f...

Please consider take a try with above solution, then check if the issue is solved.

Best regards,

[A_Shirani]

Updated my flow and it works perfectly.

Thanks for the help, I would have been stuck on that for a long time without it!

Just a note - I composed the datetime as per your expression, I then used the output of the compose in the Update File Properties.