SharePoint Get Items and Filter Query in Flow [Part-1]

In Flow, Get Items is a SharePoint action which allows you to get items from SharePoint list. Similarly There is another SharePoint action called Get files which allows you to get files from Sharepoint document library. You can not use Get files for SharePoint list but the capabilities for both the actions are same.

Important Points-

• The default item limit is 100. Items are paginated by default.
• For larger list, you can increase this limit up to list view threshold limit of 5000 items.  Flow will generate error dialog if you are going beyond 5000 limit.

Note: You may get items beyond defined threshold.

• Top count returns number of specified items like 1000 etc. By default it is set to return all items.
• You can limit items to a specific folder.
• You can also limit columns return by a view. by default, get items returns all unnecessary columns. it would be optimal to limit the columns by column view.
• Filter query is used to get only required SharePoint list items.
• Another important point is OData in Get items- Filter query & Order by field.

OData (Open Data Protocol) is a standard that defines a set of best practices for building and consuming REST APIs.

• A retry policy applies to intermittent failures. The default Retry Policy is set to an exponential interval policy which will retry 4 times.

Current feature Vs Preview feature-

To apply preview feature, Go to Settings-> View all Power Automate settings->turn on experiment features

In Preview feature, Filter query has UI feature for building your query while in current version we need to write expression.

When we develop flows for SharePoint in Microsoft Flow you will find yourself many times dealing with list items. When you get items without any filter query, you get all items whether it is necessary or not. Then we use condition action to find out correct list item but It will have impact your flow performance. Because condition action loops every item from get items array to get correct list item.

When your list item count is low then it is okay to use above approach but when your list item count is more than 100 imagine the impact on flow performance. Here comes the role of  Filter query.

In my next article i will cover Filter Query in details.

Thank You!!!

-Gopenly