3 Ways of using the “For a selected item” trigger on large lists in Microsoft Flow

Sometimes you want users to be able to select an item in SharePoint and then run a flow for the selected item. The For a selected item trigger is great but what if you have many items. There are a few options available. in this post I will look at the options.

Option 1 – Reduce the size of the view

Within SharePoint you can create custom views. This makes it possible to filter out any items that you wouldn’t want to run a flow on. e.g. filter out completed tasks.

Another option is to use the search option available on your SharePoint list so that less items are presented to you.

However the Flow options are not available when you do this.

When you use the filter options on a list however the Flow options do remain available:

Option 2 – Use PowerApps as a interface into the lists rather than using the lists

When you use PowerApps as an interface to replace the out of the box SharePoint lists then you can add advanced query options offered by PowerApps. Using filters on a gallery presenting the items a button could start the flow for you on the selected item.

Option 3 – Make Microsoft Flow ask you for the information that it needs

Using the Input options on the For a selected item action you can collect bits of information for the user.

This will add the option to the Flow menu to start the Flow

Now when you run the flow it asks for a Task ID

This Id you could now use to find the right item in the list. Not that I started the flow on any of the items in my list and then the actions inside my flow might do things ( e.g. complete a task) on the item that I’ve supplied the details for. Using an Odata filter/query on a Get Items action