Filter Query in SharePoint Get Items in Power Automate
Have you tried the experimental version of Filter query in the SharePoint Get Items action in Power automate yet?
Filter Query in Get Items
In this post I will look at the experimental Filter Query feature and how you can make use of this in your production environment. I hear you! Experimental features in production? Of course not!
A while back I wrote a post about filter queries in the Get Items action. It is one of the most popular posts on my blog with about 400 views every day. this shows how many people struggle to get it right.
Microsoft have realized this and they are working on an easier to use filter query settings. You can already use this by enabling the experimental features.
You can enable these from the settings in Power Automate. Just click on the View all Power Automate settings.
And you will get the following dialog and all you have to do is toggle the experimental features on.
Before you do this, do make sure that you have saved your flow first!
Then you can now reload your flow or create a new one and you will notice straight away that the get items has a nicer looking Filter Query there.
Quite quickly you can now add the options that you need. in your expression.
And before you know you have multiple filter queries configured with some boolean logic. It is even easy to make the queries a bit more complicated. As shown below I have 3 separate part in my logic.
How many times have people contacted me with a query like this
(....) and ( ... ) and (...)Well it will not work, why not? Well we will see this very soon.
Time to switch the experimental features off. Again make sure that you first save the flow! En when we then reload our flow from before we get given the filter query that we need:
The boolean logic has the right brackets. Did you know that and and or can only handle two parameters? Well this is why it failed so often in the past. Also That ugly internal fieldname in SharePoint, I didn’t have to type that all in. Or how about getting the startswith syntax right?
I wouldn’t use experimental features in a production environment, but temporarily using them might just about be very helpful. One word of warning please do create a backup of your flow first!
Thanks for elaborating on this!
It might come in handy (if I don’t forget about it when needed ;-))
It is especially good to know about the (max) two parameters to AND and OR!
I may have stumbled upon it in the past.
Thanks for your post. My filter query with 2 params using AND used to work but no longer do so. I had to get rid of one param and then it worked fine again. Will try out the expt. feature. thanks.
You are welcome.