Learning Microsoft Power Automate

Chapter 5. Implementing Logic

In Chapter 4, you learned how to add and configure triggers and actions in a flow. You now know how to create a flow from scratch with a trigger and add actions to it that do things in a sequence. But not all business processes can be accomplished using that kind of sequential logic. What if a flow needs to do something different depending on the data it discovers? What if you need to do more than one thing at a time? Or what if you need to process multiple rows of data? In this chapter, you’ll learn how to build a flow that adapts to the data it is processing by implementing a logical flow. I’ll explain how Condition and Switch actions can be used to travel down different paths by evaluating the values of data in the flow. I’ll show you how to use looping actions to do the same set of steps on multiple rows of data in an array. Finally, I’ll cover how to split your flow into multiple parallel branches so it can do several different things simultaneously. By the end of the chapter, you’ll have all the tools you need to begin building complex flows that automate real-world business processes in your organization.

The Control Connector

Six actions may be used to change the logical path followed by a Power Automate flow. These actions are all found in the built-in Control connector:

• Condition
• Apply to each
• Do until
• Scope
• Switch
• Terminate

I’ll detail how to use the Scope and Terminate actions in Chapter 7 when I discuss troubleshooting. But here ...