Power Automate Fundamentals # 42: Get Lookup Field Text in Power Automate

[codevenkat]

Power Automate Fundamentals # 42: Get Lookup Field Text in Power Automate

Introduction:

In Power Automate one of the common scenarios was to extract Look up Field Text which will be a nightmare for the people who are new to Power Automate about how to extract details of lookup field. As an example, on update of Contact Table, Account Details will be extracted.

Step 1:

Login to the required Power Apps environment using URL make.powerapps.com by providing username and password and click on Flows on the left-hand side as shown in the below figure.

Step 2:

After Step 1, Click on New Flow and select automated cloud flow and choose the trigger as when a row is added.modified or deleted under Dataverse Connector and click on Create as shown in the below figure.

Step 3:

After Step 2, name the flow as Get Lookup Field Text and step as When a row is added, modified or deleted [ Contact Table Updates] with the following values as inputs

Change type : Modified

Table name : Contacts

Scope : Organization

as shown in the below figure.

Step 4:

After Step 3, take new step and select Dataverse Connector and under Dataverse select action Get a row by ID and name the step as Get a row by ID [ Get Account details based on Account Lookup] and select Company Name Value under step When a row is added, modified or deleted [ Contact Table Updates] with the following values as inputs

Table name : Accounts

Row ID : Company Name (value) {triggerOutputs()?['body/_parentcustomerid_value']}

as shown in the below figure

Step 5:

After Step 4, take compose action and name it as Extract Account Name and under Inputs select Account name from Get a row by ID [ Get Account details based on Account Lookup] step

Inputs : Account Name {outputs('Get_a_row_by_ID_[_Get_Account_details_based_on_Account_Lookup]')?['body/name']}

Step 6:

After Step 5, save the flow and now open contact record and update as shown in the below figure

Step 7:

After Step 6, now go to the flow run and observe Account name was extracted in the compose action as shown in the below figure

Note:

1. Make sure to save and run the flow whenever you try expressions.

Conclusion: In this way we can extract lookup value name during update of a table using Power Automate Flow easily.

[testasdfasfsafa]

I cannot believe Microsoft is not returning the label value of the lookup like the original dynamics 365 Actions.... VERY BAD MOVE... going backwards.

[rodrick_hales]

@testasdfasfsafa This is so true! We have make a separate call just to the text when it should have been available in as a formatted value when we started.

[asdfaf4]

@rodrick_hales If you were using Flow many years ago, and using the original Dynamics 365 actions, or the first version of the Common Data Service, you were getting the full label for reach lookup column, it was brilliant and simple to use.

Now, Microsoft. with its infinite wisdom and complete disregard for customer requests, decided to remove such feature in the latest Dataverse connection.  Yes, to make customers even more puzzled, they included the labels in the action's response but don't expose it into the picker....

The decisions made by the Power Automate leadership is frequently bad... especially about any UX/UI.  Too many duplicate connectors, no way to sort/filter/search a simple flow or solution list, flow search is unusable with hundreds of flows, no real version history, I could go on for another hour....