Power Automate: make the "Resubmit" in Power Automate to change the outputs of the JotForm trigger

I have a Power Automate flow that (instead of saving file upload URLs to Sheets via the JotForm-Sheets integration) edits the corresponding Sheets row to paste in JotForm document upload URLs as plaintext.

This fixes a dumb bug that results from null hyperlinks evaluating to whitespace (a newline character in fact). That is to say, any empty document slot in the form will show up in Sheets as a newline character if you push it to Sheets via JotForm's own direct integration with Sheets.

If, however, you use power automate to update the row with the plaintext document URLs, you can avoid this stupid hyperlink bug. The bug is treating the null hyperlink parameters as an array, where the comma in the null hyperlink function evaluates to "end of row". Hence the whitespace/newline.

This is what you see in sheets for empty document slots:

=HYPERLINK("","")

Well anyway, I had this crap fixed. I had it working. JotForm -> Google Sheets integration creates a row with all the data from the form submission EXCEPT for the URLs to the document uploads. Those I disable. Then I have a Power Automate trigger "When a response is submitted" which finds the row by looking for whichever one matches a certain parameter and updates the empty URL cells with plaintext URLs. No more stupid null hyperlink whitespace bug. Or so I thought.

Not sure what has changed, but one of my forms is now outputting URLs like this:

<ul></ul>

when null and like this when not:

<a href="https://www.jotform.com/uploads/..................Fillable.pdf" target="_blank" title="HEAT_Carrier-Setup_Fillable.pdf">HEAT_Carrier-Setup_Fillable.pdf</a>

I may not be describing the situation entirely accurately. I guess a comma in an array in Sheets would separate row indices, whereas a semicolon indicates end of row. So the whitespace is maybe more appropriately referred to as a space character. Idk, whenever I copy that whitespace string from a null URL cell in Sheets and paste into a Notepad window, it shows up as a newline character.

So what the heck is going on and how do I get document URLs to play nice with Google Sheets and Power Automate?

Greetings,

We apologize for the inconvenience.

The issue with empty document slots (HYPERLINK("","")) is already escalated to our developers to investigate further:

https://www.jotform.com/answers/2926681

Not sure what has changed, but one of my forms is now outputting URLs like this:

<ul></ul>

Could you please kindly let us know the form, where you are facing that issue? You may also provide the IDs of the submissions related to that issue:

https://www.jotform.com/help/549-where-to-find-the-submission-id

We are looking forward to your response.

Thank you in advance!

By the way, this issue with my URLs being wrapped in <ul></ul> was caused by the JotForm Power Automate flow trigger not applying the HTML vs. text toggle upon re-runs of past flow runs.

So if it was accidentally left on HTML and I then toggled it to text, that setting change would not apply unless an entirely new JotForm submission were received!

Re-running the flow with an old submission by clicking the JotForm submission edit link and re-submitting would count as a new JotForm submission in Power Automate, if I am not mistaken, which means the output of the JotForm trigger would change if the HTML vs. text toggle setting has changed since the last run of that submission.

However, re-running the actual Power Automate flow using a past run would not change the outputs of the JotForm trigger. See, it's often necessary when testing or troubleshooting to re-run failed or timed out flow runs. Instead of retriggering the entire flow from the start (say, by resubmitting form again or submitting with edit link), it's often necessary to retrigger by using "Resubmit" in Power Automate. This manually retriggers the flow with a sort of simulation of the actual trigger.

In my experience, changing the settings of a flow trigger should change it's output upon re-runs. If I click "Resubmit" in Power Automate to re-run the flow with a given instance of the trigger, any settings changes I have made to the trigger should be applied on that flow run. Results may vary, obviously, with different triggers, but in general the settings changes apply on "Resubmit".

Not so with JotForm trigger. Resubmitting the Power Automate flow run will not output JotForm data with its trigger settings changed applied. That requires at the very least a resubmission of the JotForm via edit link.

Does that make sense? Essentially the <ul></ul> thing goes away once you switch to text instead of HTML and submit the form again. The failure of the setting to apply on resubmitting the Power Automate flow is just a counterintuitive result. Would be nice if it would apply the settings change, but not a huge bug I suppose.

Hi, if I understood correctly, when the settings of a flow trigger has been changed, you would like the "Resubmit" in Power Automate to change the outputs of the JotForm trigger, instead of having to re-run the flow with an old submission by clicking the JotForm submission edit link? If that is correct, please confirm, so we can create this feature request.

If you could share screenshots that show the results when submitting from the JotForm edit link vs using the "resubmit" in Power Automate, we could add it to the ticket.

Yes, that is exactly right!

It's counterintuitive to change the HTML/text toggle in the JotForm trigger for Power Automate, and then see the same output upon subsequent "Resubmissions" of that Power Automate flow run. It actually may be the better behavior honestly, like I'm not data expert. I just know it was confusing as hell to understand why my errors were not going away during troubleshooting.

I don't have time right now to non-destructively re-run the flow and make screenshots, but I will add them to the ticket later as long as I receive an email notification about it.

Alright, I have sent this request/suggestion to our back-end team. You will be notified here if there is any update in the future.