Power Automate flow variables - How to use them 

This is a godsend... Thanks a LOT for this. It's a brilliant approach to simplify so many big and complex existing flows we've at work. Thank you for sharing.

I’m not sure how often folks leave comments on videos that they’ve seen once and then gone back the video much later. This is one of those comments. I came across this when I first came across the power platform. I’ve never been a programmer or anything like that, and this particular video was way above my ability to comprehend at that time. Today, about two years later, I will use this as a best practice. I’m guessing when it comes to leveraging values using loops, I have some experimenting to do. But I should be able to leverage the item property to get this done. Although at this time, I cannot afford to become a member of your channel, I know what I know today because of you… Thanks mate!

Reza, I love your channel man. Thank you for helping out the IT community. This would be very hard for me to pick up without your videos and initiative. Much respect.

This is so helpful and time-saving - you point out the essentials and more in a very concise way. Thank you!

You have inspired me to reshape my business by adding these technologies. Your lessons are very helpful. I’ve gotten myself in a bit too deep with a project for my number 1 client. I continue to search videos for answers to some of my new challenges. Nonetheless I always learn things from you. Thank You Reza

A great overview to using variables with expressions. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks a lot Reza, it is also a useful tutorial on how to update object properties and arrays elements in general. Thank you again for putting this together.

Reza, this video was brilliant! Thank you so much.

Nice Explanation RD! Thank you for the video and tips

WOW .. Great video. Love how your flows work 1st time all the time! 😅

Tips like these make our lives easier! ☺

Excellent, easy-to-follow instructions for someone that has been desperately trying to understand what variables are and what role they play in flows. Question - is there any way to hide the initial variables that you initialize so you just see the Compose? That would make it super clean! Regardless, I really appreciate your training style and info. On to your next tutorial. Cheers!

very interesting, thanks for share

This is Gold worth Information.. Saluting !!!

This is awesome. I watched this like 5 times. BTW, How did you do the magnifying glass? That was nice.

This is fantastic, thank you Reza!

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thanx Reza for such a beautiful explanation.....

Thank you again for this video... as part of my learning I would like to do a similar video and publish it in Italian. Thank you!

Awesome job, you explain very well.

This is very helpful thanks a lot Reza :)

Great idea. Love it !!!!

thanks - very informative!

Thanks so much for this, Reza! Running into a issue and hoping you can help. I have a variable called varProfile mimicking yours. I would like to use the compose function with the 'setProperty' expression. However, I would like it to compose two var's within the json of the variable, varProfile. For example, I would like it to set the "varApproverName" and "varApproverComments" within the variable varProfile. I am able to have it compose both of those but I can't get it to set both as it runs into an error of "The variable 'varProfile' of type 'Object' cannot be initialized or updated with value of type 'String'. The variable 'varProfile' only supports values of types 'Object'." Would I need to run the compose and set variable with the output twice for each value? Is it possible to do it in just one of each?

Hi @Reza... thanks for your videos... well I was curious if there are many variables in a flow can we store all of them in a single place(as we do to add all the related steps in scope), variables can not be added to scope.. so is there any why to place all in a single block.

Wow! I’ll give this a try

Excelent content!! How to learn more about expressions in power automate ? Thanks and great job!

Thank you very much, thanks to your videos I have managed to set up a workflow that works correctly from a form to the sending of a summary email. But I still have an minor issue. I constructed a Likert-type form. And I would like to get in a variable only a certain type of value. For example. Question 1 Answer 1 Answer 2 Answer 3 My idea would be to have a variable that would store only the A3's to display in an email, but I'm interested in another idea. The long way would be to do it with conditions, but that's not very elegant when you have a lot of possibilities.

Hi Reza: Thank you for this very useful video. Also, do you have a video showing a variable holding all the items in the list having say color column = Purple? and then in the automate use that variable (selected records of the list) to do the next step like compare with another list or update it, etc. If so, can you please direct me to that link? Thanks again for your ingenuity in making things easier for all of us!

Thanks Reza! However, does anyone know if it is possible to set multiple properties of a variable at once?

Hi Reza, thank you for all your videos, they are really helpful and I have created many flows using your videos. Would you be able to do a demo of how I could create a Power Automate Flow to calculate the number of characters in a specific question response whenever a MS Form is submitted. Currently my flow takes the Form into a List and I would like a field in this list to detail that character count (which includes all words, spaces, puntuation etc in the count). Hope you can help. Many tahnks

Hi Reza! Do you have any video that instead of using hard coded schema receives variables informations like a json ou collection coming from powerapps? tks!

Thanks 🙏🙏🙏 very interesting Reza

Thank you for theis great video! What about the Date/Time variables. I see them in the documentation for the desktop flow but not the cloud flows. I wanted to get the max and min of two dates but there is no straightforward way of doing it.

Hi Reza, Thank you for the informative video. I am about to be a power automate dev following your videos:) I am stuck to a place.. In Power automate/Flow, how can we set the value of any single cell (i.e cell A2) of a table (of Excel Online for Business) to a variable?

Thanks for the video! Question? So then what do you do with the JSON file you created? How do you use the file with all the variables in Power Automate?

Hi Reza, Amazing videos as always. What would be the syntax for updating the array element within the object variable? and also the syntax from removing an array element within the object variable? Thank you,

Hi Raza! I am new to Power Automate and have been learning from your videos. I am trying to send MS forms response to Sharepoint List. Some response questions have multiple choice, so I followed the popular method of initialize an array variable, remove extra symbols from Microsoft Forms string output, split the previous line into an array, append to array variable using a formula. It works perfectly, but now I have created multiple array variables for each multiple question in a single initiate variable action as you have described. How can I get the multiple choice response for each question from MS forms into its corresponding variable?

Really superb. Is there any help link available by Microsoft for those functions?

Really really helpful video. I'm curious though, is it possible that each time a row of data in sql has been created, that a flow can take that data and initialise a variable in another flow, using the same idea you've demonstrated here?

Excellent

Genius!

👏👍

Hi Reza, do you have video wherein You copy the array values from one sharepoint to another? but instead of an array you convert it into a text value? Thanks in advance

Nice video. It save my work. Can we get the json code from a file? thanks

Hello rezza , Good morning . Hope you are doing good and staying safe. Wanted to check if there is another way to declare and initialize multiple variables in one place. Creating so many variables makes the flow design very bigger and fatterand wierd to read. I have one use case where i need to send emails to owners and admins to have right no of ownership for their sites . there will be scenarios like 0 SCA and 1 owner , then send email to owners , 1 SCA and 1 or more owners , send eamil to SCA. , like that for other more scenarios. as of now I created a flow with declaring 2 string variables for Owners and admins respectively . 4 array variables for owners to store the names of owners based on their count calculated using length function . Similarly 4 variables for admins doing the same thing. Then in apply to each loop I am applying conditions based on the count and appending it to respective array variables which would then be used to send emails to respective count owners (like 1 wale or 2 wale )in last step. then in another apply each same thing is designed for admins. now when I try to combine both the outputs in my final condition to send email then I am getting warning it should be part of parent for each . Is there another way to do so without creating so many variables doing above steps . I want to make my flow simpler .with my approach I am assuming it is becoming more complex

any way to make these variables into global variables that can be used in PVA to carry information across multiple topics?

Hi Reza, can you explain how to convert a SharePoint date (string: 2011/4/25) into a number format to update an Excel field value that won't accept a date in string format? Thanks!

How do you update multiple values in the object? For me my object is with empty variables at first, but if I put multiple SetProperty, SetProperty etc in the Compose Input, I get multiple Outputs with only the associated variable updated

Thanks Reza, This is very useful video and I am using the same approach in my tasks, However I am having query, how to update multiple properties. in your video you have demonstrate to update one property using setProperty however If I would like to update vName, vTitle and vCompany using one compose, is that possible?

Awesome

Hi Rezza , I am using setproperty in an apply to each loop and updating new updated value of the object to excel column data but after the first iteration the data resets to 0 rather than holding the previous updated value can you help me with this

4:33- is this what I need to do to take the objects out of my arrays in Power BI? Power BI dynamic content is arrays, not objects, so every time I try and do something, it puts it in an Apply to Each, and there are just WAAAY too many loops going on in my flow, it's insane. Do I have to do this Expression thing to all my dynamic content so I can have a normal clean flow?

Is it possible to use object variables in a loop action (sum)?

hello can you tell how we can use And OR opertion in condtion in powerflows

What if you have multiple vName values and you just want to select Justin Smith as an example, how would you do that?

What if you need to us the "Ask in Power Apps" feature? How would you type that?

Thank you Rezza, I'm wondering how can we use variables when we have to call a soap API?

Hi Reza I have a question: Is it possible to remove comma from a number value and convert that decimal number to whole number in power automate platform. For example: I want to convert 1,27.89 to 128. Here I want to remove comma after 1,2XXX and covert the decimal number 127.89 to 128. Please help

Hi Reza, I came here from a video on Jon Levesque’s channel about reducing the number of variables in order to reduce the number of API calls the flow uses. In this case wouldn’t it end up using more API calls than just using lots of variables? Since using this method you only have to set up one variable but then use 2 API calls (compose, then set) every time you want to update a variable, whereas without this method you would have to set up a bunch of variables but then only use one API call to update them? This is for a large amount of updates for variables

Trying to understand the benefits of using this method. The idea was to reduce the number of variables and complexity. But, If the variables you want to work with all require manipulation, you will need to create a compose statement for each variable anyways. So you are essentially replacing the initialize variable with a compose. So not sure if you are really reducing the flow's complexity. You are making it easier to read the variables up at the top. However, making it more complex to read the operations that are performed on variable throughout the flow. As each manipulation will require a compose and set variable. And to analyze what the operation is doing; I have to analyze an expression of each of the compose. I am new to power platform, and maybe I am missing something.

Thanks Reza

Can we set boolean in set property.

How can I merge a function into an expression to compose one outcome? Goal: To return the JSON value of a property name dynamically as a simplified Switch control. E.g. outputs('monthsTableJSON').March but I want that .March or ?['March'] to be replaced with a String coming from formatDateTime(utcnow(), 'MMMM')

I have an MS Form that creates or updates tables on Dataverse through Power Automate which all works fine. I have a section which requires a one to many relationship (as a repeating table) for the record I am updating. In this section the form has a set of 3 questions which are repeated should the worker have extra work and needs to enter more answers as shown in the diagram. I set up a simple JSON which brings out the first set of data but I don't know how to pick up all three. To complicate matters the user may not need to fill any of the sets if there are no extra works. Do you have a video on getting a 'one to many' records from an MS Form to Dataverse or similar? Form Main Table Multi Table Question1 ID Auto ID Field1 Field2 Field3 Foreign Key Question2 123 234 Answer1 Answer2 Answer3 123 Question3 235 Answer1 Answer2 Answer3 123 More Questions Y/N 236 Answer1 Answer2 Answer3 123 Question1 Question2 Question3 More Questions Y/N Question1 Question2 Question3 More Questions Y/N

I attempted to recreate your simple example and run the flow, but I got the following message: The variable 'varExpertise' of type 'Array' cannot be initialized or updated with value of type 'String'. The variable 'varExpertise' only supports values of types 'Array'. Where did I go wrong?

Hello... How could I initialize a variable (integer) with null value?

Can you take the variable output into a csv file?

i used parallel flow, if i used for 10 comment for this can be?