Array Processing in Power Automate – Tip 2
18/04/2024
Power Automate Select Action for array processing
Array processing advancement
Discover an even faster way to capture the array and maintain the ordering, using the “Select” action in Power Automate.
In Tip 1 for Array Processing, we looked at the following example:
Using a SharePoint list containing random survey answers, users give answers between 1-10. We want to capture the 500 latest submissions and put them into an array, to use in our Power Automate flow. We need to obtain the following fields question ID; the rating, and who submitted the answer.
Power Automate Tip 1 used concurrency on the workflow to run the loop in batches. This greatly increased speeds and reduced them from 4 minutes to 32 seconds.
Although this solution is simple and effective, it neglects the ordering of those records.
Steps to using Select Action in array processing
Workflow step 1
You will need to begin in the same way as Tip 1, by using the "Get Items" action. This will get items in the SharePoint List.
Give the list a top count of 500 items, ordering the list into descending order, based on the ID.
Workflow step 2
Initialize a variable named “MyArray” to store your information.
This is where the Select Action comes into play
Utilise the "Select" action by inputting a table of data, specifically focusing on the values retrieved from the "Get items" action. Assign these values to names of your preference.
Set the output of the "Select" action to the MyArray variable.
For more information from Microsoft on Power Automate – click here
